Post by The PeelerOn Tue, 26 Nov 2019 14:25:00 -0800, clinically insane, pedophilic, serbian
bitch Razovic, the resident psychopath of sci and scj and Usenet's famous
sexual cripple, making an ass of herself as "Grikkbassturde®™", farted
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/26/general-election-jeremy-corbyn-anti->>semitism-chief-rabbi-brexit/
One of the Great Satan's former 'secretaries of state' under
"Fuck the jews; they don't vote for us anyway."
- James Addison Baker III (1930 - )
You got a hang-up about "the Jews", pedophilic gay psychopath? How come?
The Judenvolk are superior to the mangina.
Now here is Jack Marshall writing about the Big Lies of the Resistance!
http://ethicsalarms.com/2019/11/25/the-big-lies-of-the-resistance-a-directory-complete-and-updated/
The Big Lies Of The “Resistance”: A Directory, Complete And Updated
NOVEMBER 25, 2019 / JACK MARSHALL
Introduction
The “Big Lie” strategy of public opinion manipulation, most infamously
championed by Adolf Hitler and his propaganda master Joseph Goebbels, has,
in sinister fashion, become a routine and ubiquitous component of the Left’s
efforts to remove President Donald J. Trump from office without having to
defeat him at the polls. One of the most publicized Big Lies, that the
President had “colluded” with the Russian government to “steal” the
Presidential election from Hillary Clinton was recently exposed as such by
the results of the Mueller investigation, and Democrats, with blazing speed,
replaced it with another Big Lie that there is a “Constitutional crisis.” I
could add that one to the list, I suppose, but the list of Big Lies is
dauntingly long already, and this one is really just a hybrid of the Big
Lies below.
Becoming addicted to relying on Big Lies as a political strategy is not the
sign of ethical political parties, movements, or ideologies. Perhaps there
is a useful distinction between Big Lies and “false narratives,” but I can’t
define one. Both are intentional falsehoods designed to frame events in a
confounding and deceptive manner, so public policy debates either begin with
them as assumptions, thus warping the discussion, or they result in
permanent bias, distrust and suspicion of the lie/narrative’s target. For
simplicity’s sake, because I believe it is fair to do so, and also because
“Big Lie” more accurately reflects just how unethical the tactic is, that is
the term I will use.
Big Lie #1. “Trump is just a reality TV star.”
This is #1 because began at the very start of Trump’s candidacy. It’s pure
deceit: technically accurate in part but completely misleading. Ronald
Reagan was subjected to a similar Big Lie when Democrats strategically tried
to denigrate his legitimacy by referring to him as just an actor,
conveniently ignoring the fact that he had served as Governor of the largest
state in the nation for eight years, and had split his time between acting
and politics for many years before that, gradually becoming more involved in
politics and public policy. (Reagan once expressed faux puzzlement about the
denigration of his acting background, saying that he thought acting was an
invaluable skill in politics. He was right, of course.)
In Trump’s case, the disinformation was even more misleading, He was a
successful international businessman and entrepreneur in real estate, hotels
and casinos, and it was that experience, not his successful, late career
foray into “The Apprentice” (as a branding exercise, and a brilliant one),
that was the basis of his claim to the Presidency.
The “reality star” smear still appears in attack pieces, even though it
makes even less sense for a man who has been President for three years. The
tactic is ethically indefensibl . It is not only dishonest, intentionally
distorting the President’s legitimate executive experience and success,
expertise and credentials, it is also an ad hominem attack. Reality TV is
primarily consists of modern freak shows allowing viewers to look down on
assorted lower class drunks, vulgarians, has-been, exhibitionists, idiots
and freaks. Class bigotry has always been a core part of the NeverTrump
cabal, elitist snobs like Bill Kristol, Mitt Romney the Bushes, and George
Will revealing that they would rather capitulate to the Leftist ideology
they have spent their professional lives opposing than accept being on the
same team as a common vulgarian like Donald Trump.
With all of this, the final irony is that “The Apprentice” wasn’t even a
true reality show. It was an elimination contest, with Donald Trump as the
arbiter.
This earliest of the Big Lies backfired on its creators. Trump’s
adversaries began to believe it themselves,causing them to under-estimate
their adversary. They realized, too late, that they weren’t running against
poor Anna Nicole Smith, Kim Kardashian, or Scott Baio, but a tough,
ruthless, confident street fighter with some impressive leadership and
public speaking skills.
It is a mark of how flat the learning curve of the President’s adversaries
is that they still think calling him a “reality TV star” shows anything but
their own dishonesty and ignorance.
Big Lie #2. “Trump is not a legitimate President”
Although this was not the first of the Big Lies, it was the foundation of
all the others to come. The assertion, seeded by Hillary Clinton and spread
by pundits and the news media, is pure poison to the democracy, national
unity, the public trust, and the national welfare.
It boggles the mind that progressives and Democrats have been willing to
risk so much harm to the United States and its culture for the sole purpose
of waging political warfare against the President of the United States. I
have to believe that at other times in our history, any party considering
such a strategy would be stopped short by a respected and responsible
leader. Incredibly, the Democrats didn’t have one (and still don’t). The
obvious individual who could have minimized the political and cultural
carnage was Barack Obama. He possessed neither the courage, the character
nor the bi-partisan concern for the nation to do so. This was one more
failure of leadership for the second most wildly over-praised President in
U.S. history, barely trailing Jack Kennedy.
The damning aspect of the Democrats’ refusal after the election to follow
the tradition of all previous losing parties is that the party’s leaders had
lectured Donald Trump, when they were certain of victory, about how he was
obligated to accept the will of the voters.
Hillary Clinton, another leader of the party with sufficient influence to
have killed this insidious tactic in its cradle, was very clear on how
essential such acceptance was—when she thought Trump would be the loser:
“To say you won’t respect the results of the election, that is a direct
threat to our democracy,” she said at a rally at a late October rally the
University of North Carolina. “We’ve been around 240 years. We’ve had free
and fair elections and we’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have
liked them and that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate
stage during a general election.” Later, she said unequivocally that “The
peaceful transfer of power is one of the things that makes America America.”
For once, Hillary was right. Unable to accept accountability for her
shocking defeat, however, she engaged in the exact conduct that she
had—correctly—condemned as dangerous and unpatriotic, and allowed (and I
assume encouraged) her party to employ it—to this day—as its signature Big
Lie.
The claim that an elected President is “illegitimate” is technically
sedition: it is an invitation and incitement to insurrection. The violent
antifa riots around the Capital during the inauguration were the predictable
result of the accusation, which had and has literally, beyond question, not
an atom, not an electron of evidence to support it, only unhinged, unjust,
hyperbolic contrivances. They begin with the fact that Trump lost the
popular votebeing suddenly pronounced as unacceptable. Four previous
Presidents also lost tin the popular vote, in a system that is enshrined in
the Constitution and that every citizen, politician and elected official
accepts as a condition of being an American,
Rep. John Lewis, whose position for two decades has been that no
Republican President is legitimate, went a long way toward spreading Big
Lie #2 by saying on NBC that he did not see Trump as a legitimate President
because “Russian interference” resulted in the revelation of DNC documents
and may have altered the election results. No evidence had surfaced or has
ever surfaced that the Russian shenanigans changed sufficient numbers of
votes or any votes at all to effect the results of the 2016 election.
We now know that the Obama Administration let the Russian efforts go on
unimpeded—it takes a twisted path to reach the argument that Trump is an
illegitimate President because the previous President, from the adversary
party, neglected his duties. Most troubling of all is that in the case of
the hacked documents, Americans learned quite a bit about how corrupt
Clinton and her campaign, as well as the DNC , were, and it was information
the public had a right to know. If an American had hacked the exact same
documents and the media revealed them, as of course they would, the claim
that any influence on the election was unfair would have been regarded as
laughable. If Hillary Clinton had been elected without the public knowing
about the Clinton Foundation’s corrupt maneuvers, the campaign’s using a CNN
contributor to cheat in debates and town meetings, and the sinister sabotage
of Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the nomination, there would have been a much
stronger argument that she was “an illegitimate President’ than any of the
claims made about Donald Trump.
The “Illegitimate President” trope seeded all of the “not my President ”
demonstrations with a false rationalization, and justified, also falsely,
the effort to try to hijack the Electoral College, the argument that the
President should be impeached before he was even inaugurated, and the
organized attempts to sabotage the President’s inauguration, traditionally a
unifying and healing event. I largely blame Lewis for the latter, as well
as Trump’s foolish (and sadly typical) insults leveled against “the civil
rights icon” which gave members of the Congressional Black Caucus the excuse
they needed to let them join the boycott.
After that, the “illegitimate” slur gave Democrats, “the resistance” and the
media, as well as many unethical professional groups, a catalyst to
activate various plots to remove him without risking the uncertainty of
another election. I tried to find any serious effort to assemble real
evidence for the “illegitimate” claim. As is typical when using Big Lies,
most screeds asserting this one just restated the lie. That’s enough to
accomplish Goebbels’ goal: make the target and his supporters deny the lie,
making it a controversy and keeping the lie before the public.
Thank heaven for Old Big Mouth himself, Michael Moore. In January, before
the Inauguration, he listed on Facebook his six reasons why Trump was “not a
legitimate President.” He had nothing. Here are the six:
The Electoral College shouldn’t count. But it does, and that’s the law, you
hack.
Trump “isn’t well.” That’s funny; I don’t think Moore is well. This is, of
course, just a proto- Plan E , later resurfacing as the 25th Amendment plot,
aided by unprofessional psychiatrists who purported to diagnose someone they
had neither examined nor even met. Not only is the claim unsubstantiated,
it’s irrelevant. Being “not well” wouldn’t make Trump’s Presidency
illegitimate. If the public knowingly elected a certified lunatic as
President, the election would still be legitimate. No one can claim the
electorate didn’t know Trump’s personality, character and eccentricities by
the time they went to the polls.
The Russian interference. Moore, hilariously, said this unmeasurable factor
required a “do-over.”
The FBI chose sides, Moore says. This one is especially funny in retrospect.
For #5, Moore just splashed around like a wounded cod. The President is
illegitimate because he appointed someone Michael Moore doesn’t like (Ex-SOS
Rex Tillerson) as Secretary of State. This “reason” actually exposes what
the whole Big Lie is about in its entirety. Trump is “illegitimate” because
progressives don’t like him or what he wants to do.
is ridiculous, and yet it is something we still hear from our “unwell”
friends and relatives. “Trump has potentially committed a number of
felonies,” The statement isn’t law, it isn’t reason, it’s just “I think he’s
a bad guy, and I just know I’m right.”
Big Lie #2 is infantile. It is constructed of nothing of substance, just
bias and free-floating anger. Yet, as I wrote at the beginning, it, and the
false assertions within it, form the foundation of all the Big Lies to come
Big Lie #3: “Trump Is A Fascist/Hitler/Dictator/Monster”
#4 is the Big Lie of longest duration wielded against Donald Trump. It arose
early in the 2016 campaign, before Trump had been nominated. It’s a framing
lie, designed to color everything he does or says within an established
bias. If there is some interpretation of his words, however far-fetched,
that can be used to support the premise that Trump is a
fascist/Hitler/dictator/monsterit will be. #3 is also useful for spreading
fear and hate. It is a direct cognitive dissonance ploy: on the cognitive
dissonance scale,
…all of those labels are about as low as they can be in the value systems of
most Americans. Linking any individual to them, even a President,
effectively pulls his positive rations down without evidence or support.
#3 is a traditional anti-conservative, anti-Republican lie, and is
distinguished in Trump’s case only by the fury and persistence with which it
has been used by Democrats and progressives. President Roosevelt, in his
1944 State of the Union address, described Republican policies in the 1920s
as “the spirit of fascism:”
His successor, Harry Truman, warned that a Thomas Dewey victory in 1948
would bring a fascistic threat to American freedom even more dangerous than
the perils from communism. In 1964, Walter Cronkite suggested on the CBS
Evening News insinuated that Goldwater (an advocate of small government
whose father was Jewish) was a Nazi, as Cronkite biographer Douglas
Brinkley noted 2012. Nixon, of course, was often called a fascist for his
administration’s dedication to “law and order,” also called “enforcing the
laws.” He was an early recipient of the “Worst Nazi President Ever” award
for opening diplomatic channels with Red China.
A Democratic congressman accused President Ronald Reagan of “trying to
replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from ‘Mein
Kampf.’ ” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s pronounced President George W. Bush as a
“fascist” in 2008. Even Senator John McCain, later beloved by the
“resistance” for his petty and destructive personal vendetta against the
President, was called a fascist when he was running against Barack Obama
(who was himself labeled a fascist by conservative pundit Mark Levin). Nice,
mild, Mormon Mitt Romney was a nascent fascist according to Watergate
has-been Carl Bernstein, who wrote in 2012 that “today’s Republican Party
(and its Tea Party wing) represent the first bona fide radical political
party to rise to dominance in Washington in nearly 100 years.”
One would think that the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” principle would kick in after
70 years or so, but today’s political audiences are like the short-term
memory amnesiacs in “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat.” As George
Orwell observed, “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it
signifies ‘something not desirable’.” Comparing another limited government,
pro-Jewish state Republican to Hitler should be embarrassing to the wielders
of Big Lie #3, but it isn’t, in part because the slander has been bolstered
by the mainstream media’s alliance with “the resistance.” The “Trump is
Hitler” lie is versatile; it supports the vague “authoritarian” accusation
that has been levied against every strong President since Washington.
(Nobody ever called James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Rutherford B. Hayes,
Warren G. Harding of Jimmy Carter “authoritarian.”) It was recently used by
the spectacularly irresponsible and ignorant Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, among
others, to condemn Trump’s detention centers on the Southern border are no
different from those used by Clinton, Bush and Obama.
Big Lie #3 been unethically employed to frighten and mislead the public
while “otherizing” the President of the United States. You can’t be more
un-American than Hitler, after all. It’s purpose is to justify blind,
unreasoning hatred that justifies the coup attempts of the Democratic Party-“resistance”-mainstream
media alliance.
Big Lie #4: “Trump Is A Racist/White Supremacist”
There is not, nor has there ever been, any evidence, event or statement by
the President that suggested his support for white supremancy. Indeed, his
statements have indicated the opposite. The persistent and apparently
undebunkable sub-Big Lie cited by Trump’s foes is that the President called
the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville “fine people.” He didn’t. Here’s the exact
quote:
“Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some
very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine
people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me,
I saw the same pictures you did. You had people in that group that were
there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue
and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name…. I’m not
talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be
condemned totally.”
For the record, I might join a protest against taking down a statue of
Robert E. Lee (or George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson,
Woodrow Wilson—oh heck, even John C. Calhoun) and I know that I’m a very
fine person. I just have a principle objection to statue-toppling and
historical airbrushing.
British commentator Lionel Shriver has pointed out that like “fascist,” the
white supremacy accusation has lost all meaning from indiscriminate use. He
writes,
“... [A] guest commentator on Sky News sputtered that Donald Trump has
‘normalised white supremacy’….Welcome to the world of impotent hyperbole.
That dig about white supremacy is a good example of contemporary word
inflation, in some ways worse than what’s happened to grades. (The
fetishistic lefty resort to normalise deserves parsing as well: the verb
seems to decode ‘Maybe it’s not strictly illegal yet but we don’t like it,
so it should be illegal’.) Now that white supremacist no longer refers
specifically to Anglo-Saxons who proudly believe their race is superior, the
term means nothing..”
Well, it means you should blindly hate your President, just like Big Lie #3,
and shouldn’t even have to listen to those supporting him.. Here’s an absurd
but typical example: Ravelry, a KNITTING website, announced that “We are
banning support of Donald Trump and his administration on Ravelry.” The ban
includes “support in the form of forum posts, projects, patterns, profiles,
and all other content.” The company assures users that if they get booted
from the site for supporting Trump, “we will make sure that you have access
to your data.” “We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also
allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration
is undeniably support for white supremacy,” the site explains.
We can trace Big Lie #4’s origin to the day Trump announced his candidacy,
unequivocally condemning illegal immigration as it should be condemned. This
was quickly spun into anti-brown bias (Trump has never suggested that
America’s interest in not allowing law-breakers to breach the borders has
anything to do with race), and Trump’s endorsement of deportation of
law-breaking non-citizens was (shamefully) conflated by Democratic
demagogues with Hitler’s deporting, imprisoning and liquidating law abiding
Jewish citizens. Oh, never mind, close enough—if one’s goal is to falsely
impugn legitimate governing principles as evil.
The lie that Donald Trump is a racist is perhaps the most vile, vicious,
and damaging of the Big Lies, as well as one of the most often evoked. It is
related to Lie #3, of course: racism goes along with being a fascist and a
monster. It is also perhaps the worst label that can be placed on a public
figure, making it a very useful Big Lie, as well as one that weaponizes the
Cognitive Dissonance Scale.
So deep is racism on the scale’s negative territory on the scale is racism
that the mere accusation acts like an anchor, not just on anyone accused,
but also on anyone who supports the accused. Joe Lockhart, one of Bill
Clinton’s former press secretaries, tweeted,
“Anyone who supports a racist or a racist strategy is a racist themselves.
2020 is a moment or reckoning for America. Vote for @realDonaldTrump and you
are a racist. Don’t hide it like a coward. Wear that racist badge proudly
and see how it feels.“
Of course, this is just an extension of the “resistance’s” effort to brand
the unremarkable Trump campaign slogan “Make American Great Again” as a
racist taunt (in the Bill Murray meta zombie comedy “The Dead Don’t Die,”
villain Steve Buscemi wears a red cap with the slogan, “Make American White
Again’) by interpreting a general assertion that “things can be much better
and I’m the one to make them better” into some kind of reactionary dream to
go back in the land of cotton, where old times are not forgotten. Casting
good faith opposition to Obama era policies as racism is and has always been
a dishonest, divisive and despicable tactic, even when it did not involve
beating up or intimidating citizens for the crime of supporting the elected
President of the United States.
Lie #4 is also a continuation of Hillary Clinton’s smear when she thought
she could prosper by calling Trump supporters “deplorables.” If they
supported Trump, they supported a racist, ergo they supported racism,
therefore they are racists, and nothing is more deplorable than racism,
right? This approach helped lose La Clinton an election a trained baboon
should have been able to win, so it is fascinating that Democrats are still
devoted to it.
Lie #4 has been the Big Lie of choice for much of Trump’s first term, in
part because the Left’s efforts to overturn the 2016 election by any means
possible is becoming more desperate, frantic and shrill by the hour,
butTrump’s own lack of discipline doesn’t help. He is an equal opportunity
insulter, but when he has tweeted out attacks on “The Squad,” “persons of
color” all, or the late Elijah Cummings, or CNN’s black news host Don Lemon,
it immediately and predictably prompts much of Progressiveland, pundits, the
Democratic Party’s mainstream media mouthpieces and the Facebook Borg (of
course) is to immediately resort to “Trump is a racist/white supremacist”.
To wit:
Jonathan Chait (New York Magazine): “Why Trump Spent His Summer Vacation
Sending Racist Tweets”
David Zurawik (Baltimore Sun): “Trump’s Twitter attack on Cummings and
Baltimore: undiluted racism and hate — After three years of denouncing
President Trump’s use of media to attack, denigrate and, yes, spew racist
hate, there are days when I think I do not have a drop of vitriol left for
Trump and what he’s doing to this country.”
Peter Baker (New York Times): “Trump Assails Congressional Critic, Calling
His Majority-Black District a ‘Disgusting’ Rat-Infested ‘Mess’..”
Charles M. Blow (New York Times) (naturally): “The Rot You Smell Is A Racist
Potus.”
[ For the record, again, Baltimore IS a rat-infested mess, and the fact that
its late representative in Congress (and recently- resigned corrupt mayor)
were black should not restrict anyone’s right to say so.]
Wrotes Ann Althouse,
The Trump critics should know by now that calling Trump racist will not
cause him to back down. In fact, this newest reason to call him racist has
the tendency to make us forget the last thing that made them call him
racist — seriously, I’ve forgotten! — and to dilute the meaning of the
epithet. Trump is pointing at something concrete — living conditions in
Baltimore — so news reports will need to show pictures of living conditions
in Baltimore and interview residents. I had to stop and think for a while to
remember the previous Trump-is-a-racist topic. It was those tweets about
Congresswomen who should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime
infested places from which they came.”
Althouse, being fair, honest, and like me an opponent of the ongoing
tendency to distort the President’s words to comport with Big Lies,
correctly states what he tweeted on that occasion, which was also not racist
(as I discussed here), proof of racism, or how it has been widely (and
intentionally) misquoted.
What is fascinating about Big Lie #4 is that it is so easily shown to be
based on confirmation bias, rumor, and slander. It is, of course, impossible
to prove most negatives, and showing someone isn’t a racist is particularly
difficult. Racism is a belief and a bias; most civilized people recognize
that racism is unacceptable and manage to conduct themselves as racially
unbiased. That does not mean that are not racists.
I have my suspicions about most of the Presidents of the United States, as
well as a large proportion of the people who call Donald Trump a racist.
Nonetheless, fair and ethical human beings do not conclude the worst about
other human beings without convincing evidence, and the evidence that
President Trump is a racist is just not there.
It is instructive to challenge someone who states that the President is a
racist to back up the assertion. I did exactly earlier this year when a
friend, a conservative Never-Trumper, wrote on his Facebook page,
“Stipulated, Trump is a racist.” I asked him to back that statement up with
solid facts; in law, you may only stipulate to established fact. I also said
that if he could make the case, I would publicly announce that I have been
wrong on the topic.
He’s a smart guy, he knows me, and he did not take up my challenge, but one
of his Facebook Friends, a stereotypical echo-chamber anti-Trump blow-hard,
did, and his best efforts were, as I predicted, woefully inadequate for the
task. He defaulted to Trump’s foray into birtherism (the same ugly strategy
he tried on Ted Cruz, who is white); Trump’s correct conviction that the
U.S. should not tolerate illegal immigration; the old, old dispute with the
Justice Department over alleged discrimination on Trump properties, and
equally dubious examples. These, and other alleged evidence of racism
consist of either deliberate unfair assumptions, confirmation bias, hearsay
from from various sources, unverified accusations, or ridiculously broad
definitions of racism. (Also, as I pointed out to the blow-hard, even if a
decades-old episode did indicate racism, this would not be evidence of Trump’s
current state of mind—unless one also wants to stipulate that Barack Obama
and Hillary Clinton are homophobic, based on their now-revoked opposition to
same-sex marriage. )
A Vox hit piece on the topic is a classic: here are some of what Vox
regards as “Trump’s long history of racism of racism”:
“1988: In a commencement speech at Lehigh University, Trump spent much of
his speech accusing countries like Japan of ‘stripping the United States of
economic dignity.’ This matches much of his current rhetoric on China.”
“1989: In a controversial case that’s been characterized as a modern-day
lynching, four black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the “Central Park
Five” — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City.
Trump immediately took charge in the case, running an ad in local papers
demanding, ‘BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!’ The teens’
convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison,
and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in
October 2016 said he still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence
to the contrary.”
“1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because
it transferred black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time
gambler’s prejudices.”
“1993: In congressional testimony, Trump said that some Native American
reservations operating casinos shouldn’t be allowed because “’they don’t
look like Indians to me.’”
“2005: Trump publicly pitched what was essentially The Apprentice: White
People vs. Black People. He said he ‘wasn’t particularly happy’ with the
most recent season of his show, so he was considering ‘an idea that is
fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans
versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it
is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.'”
“2010: In 2010, there was a huge national controversy over the ‘Ground Zero
Mosque’ — a proposal to build a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan,
near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump opposed the project, calling it
“insensitive,” and offered to buy out one of the investors in the project.
On The Late Show With David Letterman, Trump argued, referring to Muslims,
‘Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and
somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.””
2011: Trump…argued that maybe Obama wasn’t a good enough student to have
gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law School, and demanded Obama release his
university transcripts. Trump claimed, “I heard he was a terrible student.
Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”
When advocates for a proposition have to stoop to ridiculously weak
arguments, that is a strong indication that they don’t have a legitimate
case. In order, no, accusing Japan of financial and trade misconduct isn’t
evidence of racism; no, expressing outrage over an infamous crime and
antipathy against the alleged perpetrators are not racist; no, pandering to
the whims of a “whale” at a casino who happens to be racist isn’t itself
racist; no, it is not racist to question the legitimacy of tribal casinos;
no, proposing a “whites vs. blacks” format is not racist (I’d love to hear
someone try to explain the theory that it is); no, being wary of Islam isn’t
racist (in fact, it’s very reasonable); no, questioning Barack Obama’s
academic record is not racist. (Trump’s academic record has been similarly
questioned.)
This is typical of Big Lie #4, and all big lies, under the Hitler-Goebbels
formula. If you have to argue against it, then the lie is working.
Trump, unfortunately, is defiant and reckless by nature, and will
deliberately (and stupidly) give ammunition to the race-baiters, as he did
with the infamous tweets that attacked four radical Democratic Congresswomen
as if they all were immigrants from Somalia.
That, however, is a different issue.
Big Lie #5: “Everything is Terrible
This Big Lie, and the fact that it is one, will be a theme of the 2020
Presidential campaign. “Everything is terrible” has been a veritable mantra
from the “resistance,” Democrats, progressives and the mainstream news media
literally from the second Donald Trump had been declared the winner of the
2016 election, when New York Times columnist Paul Krugman announced that the
stock market had declined and would never recover. The fact that he was
spectacularly wrong didn’t dissuade Krugman or his ideological allies at
all. They set out to make President Trump a failure by simply saying that he
was, over and over, regardless of facts and reality and often without
linking their pronouncements to anything substantive.
The fanciful narrative, in turn, was advanced in casual conversation by
fear-triggered citizens, in interviews by celebrities, actors and
performers, in website comments and letters to the editor, in television
dramas and sitcoms, novels and blogs, as they alleged dark “threats to
democracy,” “increasing hate,” “dangerous times” and various “crises.” The
fact that none of this hysteria was rooted in truth hasn’t slowed Big Lie #5
down a bit: it is immune from rebuttal because it was never based on
substance to begin with, but rather extreme bias, emotion, and vicious
political warfare.
Everything is not terrible. Indeed, by all past standards of what
constitutes national misery or crisis, very little qualifies as terrible.
The economy remains strong, unemployment is minimal, black and Hispanic
employment have improved, and wages are up. Under President Trump, the
Washington Post announced that “For the first time, most new hires of prime
working age (25 to 54) are people of color…Minority hires overtook white
hires last year.”
Worst white supremacist President ever!
Police shootings are down, and violent crime is down. There has been exactly
one Islamic terrorist attack in Trump’s three years. As he promised, the
President has reduced the suffocating number of government regulations, and
has fought the sinister “open borders” movement on the left, by refusing to
allow illegal immigration to be romanticized and enabled.
The latter is in the category of developments that progressives
violently—sometimes literally violently–disagree with, but their subjective
displeasure doesn’t mean things are objectively terrible. Many developments
fall into this category, like the withdrawal from the non-substantive Paris
Accords on climate change, the Department of Education’s reversal of
destructive Obama Administration policies, the President’s determination to
confront China on its long-standing trade practices, refusing to be
manipulated by North Koran saber-rattling and killing the Iran nuclear
testing deal. A three-year media assault has deliberately framed these and
other foreign policy initiatives as unequivocally negative, which is
disinformation and anti-Trump propaganda. It is also one of the main reasons
public trust in the news media is evaporating.
In an exchange between former Defense Secretary Mattis, who was promoting
his book, and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell,began a question with the presumption
that the President had weakened the NATO alliance. Mattis directly
contradicted that assumption from a position of authority, leaving Mitchell
flustered and without a response.
No, everything isn’t terrible or even close to terrible. The claim is based
on a bizarre definition: when Democrats are not in power and their agenda
isn’t being fulfilled, it’s an existential tragedy for the nation,
democracy, and humanity. Or, using a simple metaphor from childhood, the
Democrats, like children who cannot get what they want, have been throwing
a loud, emotional tantrum claiming that their lives are unbearable, even
though they have loving parents, nice clothes, a safe home, three meals a
day and a bright future.
Ironically, among the conditions that are terrible now are many that have
been created by “the resistance,” not President Trump. Imagine a deranged
family member who screams epithets and insults at top volume, all day and
all night, listing grievances that culminate in “And it’s so NOISY here!
There’s no peace! It’s unbearable!” That’s “the resistance,” assisted by the
news media and your Trump Deranged friends on social media.
Ann Althouse has been especially vigilant in documenting this phenomenon.
For example, she republished part of a post from August of 2015, where she
had written,
“I hate the news right now. Everyone seems to think the thing to talk about
is Donald Trump, which strikes me as profoundly stupid. I watched
5-and-a-half Sunday morning talk shows yesterday, and I heard the same thing
over and over. Trump has lost some unregainable portion of the women. He can
never get them back, but he could never have won anyway, and really what he
is is America’s expression of anger. We’re an angry, angry America, and this
lout is, apparently, an embodiment of our collective id.”
She commented this year, “I can’t take the anger. I can’t take the constant
obsessing over Trump. And that was 4 years ago. Little did I know how much
anger and obsessing would follow. But, as I did then, I can get away from
the media-enforced anxiety.”
Yes, the constant anger, hate and anxiety is terrible. The divisiveness is
terrible; the fear-mongering is terrible; the contrived impeachment attempt
is terrible; the unprecedented expression of contempt and disrespect for the
nation’s leader is terrible; people being physically attacked for expressing
support for their President is terrible; masked thugs attacking
conservatives is terrible; re-segregation is terrible; campus censorship of
non-conforming opinions is terrible; the cancellation culture is terrible;
social media intimidation and denigration of conservatives is terrible; the
blatant use of false narratives and Big Lies to undermine a President is
terrible; the Democratic Party’s refusal to accept the results of an
election is terrible; the constant efforts to find some way to oust the
President from office is terrible, the way the Russian collusion conspiracy
theory was used by Democrats and the news media to interfere with the
President’s efforts to do his job was terrible; the mainstream media’s
complete abdication of journalism ethics is terrible; the absence of any
honorable, trustworthy political leaders is terrible—and all of these
terrible developments for the country and more are the direct result of the
relentless efforts by the same people who are insisting that everything is
terrible.
Much about the President himself is, in fact, terrible. His manners are
terrible; his tweeting is terrible; his character is terrible; his habits,
self-indulgence, lack of impulse-control, chaotic leadership style, honesty,
trustworthiness and ethics are all terrible. The character and style of a
President, however, while important, are not as important as conditions in
the the nation itself. Presidents, as much as Barack Obama has tried to
argue otherwise, get credit for how the country is faring while they are in
office….and far from being in a terrible crisis, the United States of
America is doing just fine—not perfectly, but fine— under President Trump.
Big Lie #6: “Trump’s Defiance Of Norms Is A Threat To Democracy”
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the two authority-abusing political
scientists who wrote the equally indefensible “Why Democracies Die.,” have
been the leaders of this particular slur. They were at it again in a New
York Times op-ed titled “Why Republicans Play Dirty (They fear that if they
stick to the rules, they will lose everything. Their behavior is a threat to
democratic stability.)”
Even though the latest from these two partisans posing as objective scholars
focuses on the GOP rather than the President, the dishonest strategy is the
same. The exact conduct being engaged in by the “resistance” and the
Democrats is projected on their adversaries, accompanied by the false claim
that they are endangering American democracy. In truth, the calculated
efforts to de-legitimatize the President, his election, and the Supreme
Court by “the resistance”(and in this group we must include unethical
academics like Levitsky and Ziblatt) has already harmed our institutions and
the viability of democracy, perhaps beyond repair. For these two
propagandists to make the absurd argument that it is the President who
undermines institutions and his party that “plays dirty” when it is so
obvious to any honest and objective observer that it is their party and
their political allies who are doing so is as insulting as it is
infuriating.
And, of course, the New York Times gives the two a platform for their
distortions. Of course.
Here’s the opening argument of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s op-ed:
“The party’s abandonment of fair play was showcased spectacularly in 2016,
when the United States Senate refused to allow President Barack Obama to
fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in
February…. While technically constitutional, the act — in effect, stealing a
court seat — hadn’t been tried since the 19th century. It would be bad
enough on its own, but the Merrick Garland affair is part of a broader
pattern.Constitutional hardball has accelerated under the Trump
administration. President Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency” to
divert public money toward a border wall — openly flouting Congress, which
voted against building a wall — is a clear example. And the Supreme Court’s
conservative majority, manufactured by an earlier act of hardball, may
uphold the constitutionality of the president’s autocratic
behavior.Constitutional hardball can damage and even destroy a democracy.
Democratic institutions function only when power is exercised with
restraint.”
The only way this argument could be made without giggling is if the
advocates deliberately ignore the other side of the aisle—in other words,
lie. Yes, the burying of Merrick Garland’s nomination by the GOP Senate
majority, was indeed “playing dirty,” but no more so than the rejection of
Robert Bork’s nomination for the Court by a Democratic Senate majority,
permanently shattering the tradition of Senate confirmation of any SCOTUS
pick who was qualified for the job. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid was the one who took the “nuclear option,” of eliminating the
filibuster for judicial nominations—that was “playing dirty” by Levitsky and
Ziblatt‘s definition.
So was the unprecedented use use of the arcane device of “reconciliation” by
Reid to sneak Obamacare through Congress without reconsideration by the
House after the Senate majority had shifted. So was Reid’s outright lie
that Mitt Romeny hadn’t paid any taxes for years (“He lost, didn’t he?” was
Reid’s smirking justification later) So was Barack Obama’s attempt to use an
executive order to block federal prosecution of immigration violations; so
was Obama’s attempt to intimidate conservative Supreme Court Justices into
upholding the Affordable Care Act; so was the use of the IRS to hamstring
Tea Party groups during the 2012 Presidential campaign; so was the
orchestrated public disinformation regarding what really happened in
Benghazi. There are many, many more examples, topped by the three year
efforts by Democrats to manufacture a justification to impeach Donald Trump,
turning on its head the institutional tradition of having clear evidence of
“high crimes and misdemeanors” first, followed by fact-finding and
bi-partisan assessment of the responsible response.
This is not an “everybody does it” justification of “Constitutional
hardball,” but rather a demonstration that the argument that Trump and the
Republicans are uniquely “breaching norms” in dangerous ways despite the
fact—and it is a fact— the Democrats have done so and are doing so now as
flagrantly or worse is a lie. It is an especially cynical lie (designed in
part to hide from the public what Democrats have been doing to undermine
democracy for three years) and a Big Lie worthy of the Goebbels playbook
As for the Big Lie’s application to Donald Trump, Big Lie #6, the ridiculous
claim, plausible only to Trump-Hating partisans and the historically
ignorant, that the this President is behaving autocratically and
“abnormally” by defying the “norms” defined by his predecessors, I already
debunked this thoroughly in 2018 when Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt came out
with their book:
The authors of the book, Professors Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and
Daniel Ziblatt, were the most credentialed of the “resistance” attack dogs
sicced on Donald Trump to carry a core message of the movement: unlike any
other President, this one was willing to discard tradition, established
practice, and “democratic norms.” The New York Times wrote about it; so did
the Atlantic and others. The theme began emerging when the President fired
James Comey. Yes, yes, the critics said, a President can fire an FBI chief,
but Presidents don’t because of the importance of keeping law enforcement
apolitical. Well OK, Bill Clinton fired one, but that was special. All right
all right, every President from about 1945 to 1972 SHOULD have fired J.
Edgar Hoover since he abused his power outrageously–that’s five
Presidents—but Trump doing it proves he’s a dangerous authoritarian.
This deliberately misleading talking point comes from the quieter Siamese
Twin of Fake News, Fake History. Every President defies previous norms, or
makes up new ones, and the stronger the Presidents involved are, the more
norms they shatter. This doesn’t automatically threaten democracy, as the
“resistance” and the news media, adopting the boot-strapping argument of
“Why Democracies Die” claim. What threatens democracy is efforts to
de-legitimize presidential power as an alternative to winning elections.
Andrew Jackson threatened to lead an army into a state and hang a Senator,
John C. Calhoun. No President had ever done THAT before. He openly defied
the Supreme Court. He set out to kill a powerful government institution, the
Bank of the United States, and did. This is only a sample of Jackson’s
norm-denying conduct, but he was a transformational President, and he didn’t
leave the democracy in tatters.
John Tyler defied the consensus regarding what the Constitution meant about
Presidential succession when a President died. Everyone told him that as
Vice President, he was just a place-holder until a special election could be
held. Tyler said, in essence, “I’m President now, so bite me. The next
election will be in four years.” That’s how we ended up with the smoothest
succession system in the world. James K. Polk expanded the U.S. territory
by starting a war. Abe Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and
locked up a newspaper editor for publishing critical editorials during the
Civil War. Andrew Johnson openly defied a law passed by Congress as
unconstitutional. Grover Cleveland talked a private citizen into floating a
loan to keep the U.S. from bankruptcy; he also hid a serious operation—he
had part of his upper jaw removed—from the public. Teddy Roosevelt invited a
black man, Booker T. Washington, to the White House. TR traveled outside the
United States; he shattered previous norms of Presidential dignity and
decorum. He remade the office in his own image, and to fit his unique
personality.
Much of the caterwauling about Trump’s “authoritarian” defiance of norms is
fed by his idiotic tweeting and use of the social media platform to attack
individuals and the news media. There are no “norms” regarding social media.
Other Presidents didn’t use Twitter this way because, of course, there was
no Twitter. I made a list of the past Presidents who would have eagerly
resorted to Twitter to fight the press and critics, or reach the public
directly. A conservative list would be John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson,
Lincoln, A. Johnson, Teddy, Wilson, Coolidge (a limit in characters wouldn’t
bother Cal at all), FDR, Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Regan and maybe Clinton.
Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson shattered a norm when he addressed Congress
directly with his State of the Union message rather than just submitting it
in writing. Franklin Delano Roosevelt paid no attention to “norms.” He
defied the two-term tradition. He defied the norm of not locking up American
citizens because of their heritage, one of the most disturbing abuses of
Presidential power in our history. He defied the norm of not trying to
change the size of the Supreme Court. He defied the rather crucial norm of
not secretly plotting behind Congress’s back to send aid to combatants in a
foreign war in violation of a law passed by Congress. He defied a norm by
dictating who would be his Vice President. One of his Vice Presidents,
President Truman, then defied a norm by personally attacking a newspaper
columnist. Jack Kennedy ignored a norm by appointing his own brother as
Attorney General, and also broke one of decorum, allowing citizens to see
him, indeed touch him, while he was in a bathing suit. LBJ showed his
abdominal scar to the world. Both Nixon and Clinton, trying to stave off
impeachment, broke with multiple norms in their claims of executive
privilege. Gerald Ford became the first President to pardon a predecessor.
Jimmy Carter, in my personal least favorite norm defiance, met with ordinary
citizens on TV and asked them how they would run the country. ( Carter
violated a crucial Presidential norm by being a weenie.)
Believe me, this is just a tiny sampling; I could go on and on. The point is
that Presidents break norms, and norms are made to be broken…unless they are
broken by President Donald J. Trump. Then doing what all strong leaders do
is proof of dangerous authoritarian motives that threaten democracy.
Big Lie #7: “Trump Is Anti-LGBTG”
This Big Lie, which I have been hearing and reading from my many theater
friends and colleagues, was nicely highlighted by the Washington Blade, an
LGTB publication of long standing in the District. It published an
extensive post called “All of Trump’s anti-LGBT actions since last Pride
(plus a few welcome moves).” As with Micahel Moore’s self-rebutting list
of why Trump’s election was illegitimate, the piece neatly shows why the
accusation of anti-gay bias is a politically convenient fabrication.
Big Lie #7 was launched immediately after the election. Gay rights activists
decided to join in the attacks on Trump by their fellow progressive base
members, even though Trump’s history and statements suggested that he was
the most gay-friendly Presidential candidate in history.
“This morning, LGBTQ people — particularly young people and their parents —
woke up scared and filled with questions about our country and their place
in it,” Sarah McBride, national spokeswoman for the LGBT Left Human Rights
Campaign, said. McBride added that “much of our community’s progress over
the last eight years is at risk after yesterday’s election.”
This was fantasy, fear-mongering, and deliberate misrepresentation. The
greatest threat to gays was the presence of Mike Pence, who had adamantly
opposed gay marriage as Governor of Indiana, as Trump’s Vice-President. He
was chosen to appeal to the Religious Right, and the Mid-West. Vice
Presidents are almost always chosen for their states, regions, and
constituencies, not ideological affinity with the President. Ike chose
Nixon as his VP, and detested him. Kennedy disagreed with LBJ on many
issues, but needed Texas in the electoral vote column.. George H.W. Bush was
well-Left of Reagan, but Ronnie needed to mollify the Republican center
(back when it had one). I think it is fair to regard Pence as anti-gay, but
Vice Presidents are not Presidents…that is, unless you impeach the President
and put the VP in the Oval Office. Nobody called Barack Obama an idiot just
because Joe Biden is.
As for Trump, he couldn’t have been much more pro-gay. He had donated
heavily to charities that focused on the AIDS outbreak in the 80s and 90s.
In 1999 he went on record saying talked about adding sexual orientation to
the Civil Rights Act. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is believed to be the first private
club in Palm Beach to admit gay couples.
In June 2015, Trump condemned the terror attack at the LGBT Pulse
nightclub, and uttered the inconvenient truth that Islam and the LGBT
community were incompatible. Trump told Republican delegates, “As your
President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens
from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.” (Islam is a
hateful ideology, you know.)
Trump unequivocally reiterated his acceptance of same sex marriage in an
interview with Lesley Stahl. “It’s irrelevant because it was already
settled. It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done,”
he said when Stahl asked if he supported marriage equality.
At the same point in his Presidency, Barack Obama was saying that he was
“evolving,” but not yet ready to accept same sex marriage. Oddly, nobody
among LGTBG leadership sounded the alarm as Obama took office, or spun dire
prophesies about the anti-gay purge to come.
Trump also said he would not try to appoint judges who would seek to
overturn the same sex marriage ruling, again saying, “It’s done. It– you
have– these cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They’ve been settled. And,
I’m fine with that.”
Why were LGBT leaders telling members of their community that Trump’s
election presented a threat to gay marriage? They were lying, that’s all.
They were and are allied with the Democratic Party and the Left, the Left
was and is violently opposed to Trump. Gays were being good soldiers, and
like the rest of the “resistance,” dishonest and corrupt ones.
Now let’s look at what the LGBT community cites to justify its continued
false narrative (aka Big Lie) that President Trump is a foe of their rights.
Here’s a typical example: “Trump’s TIMELINE OF
HATE!”
..which leads off with the sentence,
“Since the moment Donald Trump and Mike Pence walked into the White House,
they have attacked the progress we have made toward full equality for the
LGBTQ community and undermined the rights of countless Americans.”
The quality of logic employed here is signaled very early, with statements
like, “Trump signed an executive order stating policy to repeal the
Affordable Care Act (ACA) — landmark legislation that provides access to
healthcare for millions of LGBTQ people.” Yes, I remember well how the
principled objections to Obamacare were based on its alleged benefits to
LGBT citizens. Another alleged example of Trump’s “anti-gay hate”? “HRC and
millions of demonstrators around the world came together for the Women’s
March to protest Trump and his new administration aimed at tearing back our
progress.” Ah! If people organize protests claiming something is true, then
it is true.
Got it.
My rule for all such lists is that if the accusers have a legitimate case,
he, she, they or it will not include contrived, ridiculous, obviously
tortured claims like these. In law school, we were taught to avoid
desperate or contrived arguments in our briefs, because they undermined the
strong ones and signal weakness of an advocate’s position.
The few genuine examples of the Trump Administration opposing items on the
LGBT political agenda on this site are policy disagreements, and that’s all
they are. Big Lie #7 is predicated on the “If you’re not 100% supportive of
everything we want, then you’re against us, and that means you hate us,
because we are obviously infallible and always right” theory. This isn’t
unique to LGBT advocates; it is the same theory whereby all critics of
affirmative action, opponents of slavery reparations, those who didn’t think
Barack Obama was wonderful, or who question whether every cop who shoots an
unarmed black man is a murderer have proven they are racists. This is right
out of the progressive play book.
To it’s credit, the Blade’s list includes the positive, LGBT-supportive
measures the Trump Administration has undertaken in the past year:
Trump restaffed the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS with 11 new
appointees.
Trump has appointed LGBT individuals to various posts, including Mary
Rowland, a lesbian with ties to the LGBT group Lambda Legal whom Trump named
to a federal judgeship in Illinois, and Patrick Bumatay, a gay federal
prosecutor whom Trump named for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of California.
President Trump’s State of the Union address announced an initiative to end
the HIV epidemic by 2030, asserting “remarkable progress in the fight
against HIV and AIDS” in recent years. The plan seeks to reduce new HIV
diagnoses by 75 percent within five years, and by 90 percent within 10
years. Efforts will focus on 48 counties, D.C., and San Juan, Puerto Rico
and seven states where the epidemic is mostly in rural areas.
Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2020 followed up on the State of the
Union address pledge, seeking $300 million in new funds for domestic HIV
programs.
In his tweet recognizing June as Gay Pride Month, Trump emphasized
acknowledged his global initiative to decriminalize homosexuality. Same-sex
relations are illegal in 71 countries. The project is led by U.S. Ambassador
to Germany Richard Grenell, the highest-ranking openly gay person in the
Trump administration.
The President tweeted: “Great news today: My administration just secured a
historic donation of HIV prevention drugs from Gilead to help expand access
to PrEP for the uninsured and those at risk. Will help us achieve our goal
of ending the HIV epidemic in America!” The Department of Health & Human
Services had reached a deal with Gilead to make PrEP available for generic
production one year earlier and to secure a donation of the medication for
up to 200,000 individuals each year for up to 11 years.
The United States joined 15 allied countries at the U.S. Organization for
Security & Cooperation in Europe in an investigation of alleged anti-gay
human rights abuses in Chechnya.
Prof. Glenn Reynold’s running joke whenever the President engages in more
support for Israel comes to mind here: “Worst Nazi President ever!” Those
seven items are inconsistent with a President who is “anti-LGBT,” and in
fact disproves the accusation all by themselves. If President Trump were
truly “anti-LGBT,” why would he bother to embrace any of these measures?
That community is allied with his enemies; it is not a constituency that he
needs to pander to, since it gives him nothing but abuse.
The negative items on the Blade’s list, meanwhile, demonstrate neither
bigotry nor hate. Some are definitely wrong-headed (and, in my view,
unethical), such as the so called “conscience clause” protections for health
workers and pharmacy workers who have religious objections to same sex
relations. These positions and actions, however, are not anti-LGBT just
because that community supports different ones. There are legitimate reasons
to oppose the Equality Act (#3 on the Blade’s list) , for example, other
than “anti-LGTB” hate.
The Blade’s list also shows the telltale signs of desperation and
bootstrapping. For example, President Trump, says the Blade, showed his
anti-gay bias by meeting with Ginni Thomas and other anti-LGBT activists,
and “quietly listening.” (This is #2 on the list) My favorite of the Blade’s
alleged smoking guns is “anti-LGBT” action #17, however:
“Trump gave an unflattering moniker to Pete Buttigieg, the gay presidential
candidate with growing support in the Democratic primary. Trump dubbed him
“Alfred E. Neuman,” the Mad Magazine character famous for the phrase, “What
Me Worry?” In a dog whistle that perhaps gay people could hear, Trump said,
“Alfred E. Neuman cannot become president of the United States.”
I love it. It’s so, so MSNBC, so progressive, so typical of the “Gotcha! You’re
a racist/xenophobe/sexist/homophobe!” tactic that was polished into high art
during the Obama Administration. Trump engages in juvenile name calling with
everyone from Rosie O’Donnell to Marco Rubio to Hillary Clinton to Adam
Schiff, but when he does the same with Buttigieg, it’s proof of anti-gay
bias.
Sure. I’m convinced!
Does anyone seriously believe that Trump wouldn’t have called him “Alfred E.
Newman” if he were as straight as laser beam?
Enough. The Big Lie that Donald Trump is anti-LGTB is a cynical device
without evidence or justification that relies on the audience’s ignorance
and bias to succeed.