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Mr. President, Be Best!
President Trump’s poorly aimed Tweet early Monday morning diminished a weekend worth of public goodwill. He must, for the first time, apologize. He must apologize or lose all. This ain’t 12-dimensional chess, and this isn’t 2016, as he recognized in his speeches this past weekend. Now he needs to Be Best! He was right to tweet against NASCAR, but erred badly in naming the only black driver in the top racing circuit rather than the Suits in the NASCAR boardroom. He needs to make this right before the week is out, and could win bigly in so doing.
Here are some of President Trump’s great words from Saturday’s Salute to America:
The more you lie, the more you slander, the more you try to demean and divide, the more we will work hard to tell the truth. And we will win. (Applause.) The more you lie and demean and collude, the more credibility you lose. We want to bring the country together, and a free and open media will make this task a very easy one. Our country will be united. After all, what do we want? We want a strong military, great education, housing, low taxes, law and order. We want safety, we want equal justice, we want religious liberty, we want faith and family, and living in a great communities and happy communities and safe communities. And we want great jobs and we want to be respected by the rest of the world; not taken advantage of by the rest of the world, which has gone on for decade after decade. We should all want the same thing. How can it be any different than those things?
The more bitter you become, the more we will appeal to love and patriotism, and the more we will rise above your hate to build a better future for every child in our great country.
Here is a passage from President Trump’s remarks at Mount Rushmore:
THE PRESIDENT: One of their political weapons is “Cancel Culture” — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America. (Applause.) This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly. We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children, end this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life. (Applause.)
In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us. (Applause.)
Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.
To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.
These are genuinely Trumpian words and thoughts, just as the Berlin Wall speech was Reagan through and through. Peter Robinson was not a puppet master putting great words in the mouth of a B-list actor. Whoever wrote the Rushmore and Salute to America speeches fed off of the energy and ideas of the man, Donald J. Trump. Any honest observer who bothers to scan back over the decades will find the man consistently holding a fundamental love for America and an outrage against the shame of forgotten Americans of every hue being neglected and done wrong by politicians. It was Donald J. Trump, not Reagan or the Bushes, who formally asked for the votes of African Americans and proposed a specific set of policies, a New Deal for Black America, in 2016.
So, early Monday morning, it was entirely appropriate for the president to go on offense against a corporate target that had peddled the hoax of white supremacy in its fans and even in its employees. NASCAR had the internal knowledge to instantly confirm or deny the “hate crime” story they themselves created. Bubba Wallace should be understood at being used, misled, by the NASCAR suits who were looking to deflect heat from their unpopular ban of the rebel flag, a flag long associated with the regional outlaw origins of the sport, moonshine runners who souped up “stock” cars to both carry a large liquid load and evade the law with speed and handling. Instead, President Trump misaimed:
Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2020
This let Bubba Wallace throw the president’s words back in his face. I take the ratings claim as true. A tweet may be both true and politically self-defeating. Grant that Bubba Wallace is complicit and happy to ride the political corporate wave. Grant that the Hodge Twins are entirely on target. Bubba Wallace’s pinned tweet from 2017 points out his singular status within the first ranks of NASCAR:
There is only 1 driver from an African American background at the top level of our sport..I am the 1. You're not gonna stop hearing about "the black driver" for years. Embrace it, accept it and enjoy the journey..
— Bubba Wallace (@BubbaWallace) November 8, 2017
So, President Trump named the only black driver and said he was the one who needed to apologize. This is a complete loser tweet. Kayleigh McEnany turned this lemon into lemonade with the unwitting help of the White House press jackals, but President Trump cannot afford to be burning bridges to the very black and independent voters he seeks in his tough reelection fight. Bubba Wallace and the NASCAR Suits happily assumed the moral high ground, turning the president’s fine words from Saturday back on him:
Bubba Wallace is no Colin Kaepernick. First, Kaepernick was no pioneer, no standout. The hard work of breaking down NFL racism was done by other men who proved that black men had the brains and leadership to be winning quarterbacks. Second, Wallace is not wearing gear depicting police as pigs or posturing while cut from the racing circuit. No, he has not won yet, like Danica Patrick, but he is a serious competitor. The culture war issue rests in the corporate head shed, not in a young athlete losing his way in his sport. So, President Trump misjudged if he thought success lay in targeting a player, however his press secretary tried to explain the written words.
Yes, the White House press corps was unhinged. Yes, they fell into the trap laid over the past three weeks by Kayleigh McEnany. After Kayleigh McEnany ripped them a new one, CBS News reported on the other black lives, the inconvenient deaths on our Democrat-ruled city streets. Well, they give it two minutes:
Over the Fourth of July weekend, cities across the country saw widespread outbursts of violence. Dozens of people were shot, and at least five children died. Mark Strassmann reports.
ABC News gave it 3:49 on their Monday evening broadcast:
So, now we have the beginning of an acknowledgment of the carnage on our streets, thanks to the president and to his press secretary. What President Trump must do to clean up and go on to win is make a move towards a daring young man and pivot against the corporate Suits. He should tweet a simple apology along the lines of:
I said it wrong: @BubbaWallace has nothing to apologize for. NASCAR corporate bosses do. It should not have taken days and FBI resources.
NASCAR bosses had the security video and control of all employees. Should have solved the mystery and reassured their great young driver @BubbaWallace on Day One.
My apologies to @BubbaWallace and nothing but wishes of success in his racing career. I invite him and other athletes to join in a “Cease Fire” campaign for our great cities.
The president should then start turning corporate posturing and support for a Marxist front group into support for communities burned down and riddled with bullets. He should launch a “Cease Fire” public campaign for our cities. Ask Jim Brown to lead it.
To prevent future misfires, President Trump should take words from his speech, and his wife’s words, and make them his smartphone wallpaper:
Appeal to love and patriotism
Rise above their hate
Build a better future
Be Best!
Published in Politics
The original pull down loop was in white cord that looked like clothesline. The latest version is hemp.
Again, is that an artifact of different white balance/ color temperature, plus different resolution? I can clearly see that the original was in fact tied in a Uni Knot. The section just above the loop stands out in the first photo because of the series of wraps around the line.
Probably a good description, Michael. I did not vote for Trump in 2016, and will not this year, because I think we should nominate grown-ups to such august offices. However, there is no question that Biden is worse, partly because he is equally stoopid in slightly different ways, and mostly because he is an unprincipled lefty hack who would sell this country out to any party just to satisfy his ego and drive to be president (a characteristic he shares to varying degrees with John McCain, to a smaller but still real degree, Jeb Bush- who along with Murphy is more responsible than any other party for the fact that Trump got nominated, and several others.
The best approach, in my view, is for people in totally non-competitive states such as mine (deep-blue Maryland) to write in good candidates like Nikki Haley or Tom Cotton, etc., but definitely vote, and against Biden and his puppet-handlers. People in states that are Red or in any way possibly competitive should vote for Trump because of Barr, Pompeo, DeVoss, Wheeler, etc.
You should vote for Trump so that he doesn’t get the ‘he didn’t win the popular vote’ criticism again. And who knows what state is a forgone conclusion. hillary didn’t guess right, did she?
No, the best approach is to vote for President Trump. Don’t assume that he can’t win your state. He can with your help.
I do not trust Nikki Haley and would far prefer Rand Paul and or Kristi Noem. Rand Paul is probably too short and Tom Cotton would also be OK. I expect Trump to be re-elected in a landslide.
https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/07/06/electoral-model-trump-91-chance-winning/
Florida has a Republican governor, both senators and voted for Trump in 2016. And somehow Biden is leading in FL?
He’s cornered the diminished capacity voters, unrepresented since Wilson.
There is likely a real issue with discontent, right now, with the lack of stronger action on violence and the lockdowns/ “experts say.” That is not about how people will vote but how they are feeling right now.
If you believe the polls. And I don’t.
Very true in Minnesota and New York and Washington, at least Seattle. How does that hurt Trump? You could ask that he intervene against the wishes of those Governors/Mayors but do you think that is wise?
also, the joint chiefs of staff are undermining the commander in chief… one would assume generals would understand and comply with chain of command
And the only one in a position to effectively discipline them for such egregious breaches of protocol would be the Commander in Chief.
There is a theory that the global billionaires are funding the BLM and Antifa riots in hopes of either provoking Trump to intervene (Kent State style) or to lose control of the cities, prompting a military coup by the Obama era retired generals. I am not quite that paranoid but it is hard to be too paranoid these days. Most of those generals are working for military industrial corporations. Mattis’ judgement can be estimated by his position on the Theranos Board and his efforts to get the military to buy their phantom product. A man can be fooled by a pretty woman but he doubled down in wanting to use his influence to support a scam.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/8/31/20839873/james-mattis-book-theranos
Theranos was one of the largest business scandals of the past decades, described by the Securities and Exchange Commission as an “elaborate, years-long fraud” in which CEO Elizabeth Holmes and President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, “exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”
Mattis not only served on Theranos’s board during some of the years after he’d retired from military service, while it was perpetrating the scheme, but he earlier served as a key advocate of putting the company’s technology (technology that was, to be clear, fake) to use inside the military while he was still serving as a general. Holmes settled the SEC case, paying a $500,000 fee and accepting various other penalties, while Balwani is fighting it out in court. (Holmes and Balwani are both battling criminal fraud charges.)
Here is what President Trump should have tweeted about following his great speeches on Independence Day weekend, “No justice, no sleep:”
Heh. Want to bet your retirement account on that?