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The Left’s Emmanuel Goldstein and Today’s Two Minutes of Hate
Many of you have heard the waves of derision being dumped on Donald Trump following his failure to appropriately “correct” a questioner who had, astonishingly, questioned the nature of President Obama’s religious convictions. The exchange which followed, the first question of what appears to have been Trump’s first town-hall type event, was related as follows in the Huffington Post:
The first man to grab the microphone at an event in Rochester, New Hampshire, said: “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. You know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American.”
Trump’s rebuttal?
“We need this question? This is the first question?”
The unidentified man in a “Trump” t-shirt continued: “Anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us… That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?” Trump’s rebuttal?
“We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things. You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We’re going to be looking at that and many other things.”
When asked after the event why the property tycoon didn’t correct the questioner, his campaign manager ran to a familiar excuse: He didn’t hear the question.
Beleaguered apologist Corey Lewandowski offered the following mitigation: “All he heard was a question about training camps, which he said we have to look into. The media want to make this an issue about Obama, but it’s about him waging a war on Christianity.”
Well, I was there. In fact I was sitting about 20 feet from the man who asked the question. The distortion of the event by the liberal media (such as in this clip from MSNBC) is revealing. It is also rather sad.
But first, let me tell you what happened.
The man stood up and for about five seconds, before actually saying anything, he swayed and gesticulated erratically. Then, he sputtered out his question in a barely coherent fashion as can be made out on the MSNBC tape. As soon as he stood up I felt – and I suspect most of the rest of the audience felt – uh-oh, this guy has a couple of screws loose.
Trump was (again as the MSNBC tape makes clear) surprised and a bit amused by the question and tried to make a joke out of it initially. “This is the first question,” he said with a wry smile and a laugh. What he did next was to basically pacify the guy and say something bland like: “a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying bad things are happening … we’re going to be looking at that and a lot of other things.”
In other words: next question!
It was clear to everyone there that all Trump was doing was trying to get past this seemingly troubled individual (assuming, of course, that he wasn’t planted there by people who were setting this up). Suppose Trump did start engaging and challenging the guy? First, the guy came across as unstable and might have blown up. Even if he didn’t explode, he probably would have pontificated even more about his demons. There was simply nothing to be gained – and time to be lost – by arguing with a man who by all appearances was a kook. Trump didn’t need it and neither did anyone else who had come to see him.
As for Lewandowski saying that Trump had not heard the question, I suspect that even before the guy opened his mouth Trump was no longer paying any attention to what he was saying. (“Oops. Got a live one here…”)
If this was not, in fact, a set-up for a media storm by the left (or similarly, the GOP establishment) then it was just the little jewel our left-wing media had come to extract from a Trump event. And it shows how pathetic they are. In the course of a free-flowing Q&A that went on for at least a half hour, the most damaging thing they could come up with was this one, unbalanced guy. And Trump’s sin? He did not pull a John McCain moment by dressing down the questioner.
They are desperate.
Published in General
Of all the outrage I’ve heard about this questioner not getting Obama’s religion right, I’ve not heard anyone say what Obama’s religion is.
They probably don’t know. Hell, I don’t know.
Don’t tell me it’s “Christianity” because that’s not a religion. That’s a bunch of religions.
At long last, what religion is this guy?
Mr Obama has claimed in an interview with Georgie Stephanopolis to be a muslim.
He has claimed that he attended a madrassa
He has claimed in a book that someone wrote for him to have been born in Kenya.
So why is any of this an issue?
Judging by how many of the conservative commentariat have succumbed to Trump Derangement Syndrome, he’s not just the Left’s Emmanuel Goldstein.
I’m about as vocal an anti-Trumper as you’ll find on Ricochet, and even I think this is a stretch.
Obama is a follower of Black Liberation Theology. We’ve known that since the 2008 campaign. Remember Reverend Wright? The church in Chicago he attended for 20 years. The anti American sermons. That’s the religion he and his family chose. The one he was married in.
It is no mystery. The mystery is why the American people voted for him twice.
Tommy,
Obama’s religion is Barrack Obama. I’m really not joking. He stated, at least once, his definition of sin would be doing something he believes is wrong. That makes him his own god (Higher Power). That’s also why he can defy the Constitution he swore to uphold without even a twinge of conscience, for instance.
That’s not a religion either. Theology is the study of a religion. You have to have the religion first.
What is his religion?
Unfortunately for us that religion has enough followers to get him elected twice.
Michael Stopa,
Thank you for writing this. I’m no Trump fan, but what you describe is how it seemed to me.
Next up: Jeb Bush denounces Donald Trump for not immediately leaping to Obama’s defense.
Anyway, it’s always amazed me just a bit why Republicans put up with idea that they’re responsible for what comes out of the mouth of every potential supporter yet democrats aren’t even responsible for felonies they commit themselves.
But it no longer surprises me.
Trump handled this question very well and the fact that he did not defend Obama is a good thing in my book—I’m sick and tired of Republicans defending Obama.
Great story. Thanks for posting it. It is not Trump’s job to defend Obama. And Obama’s people – Josh Earnest – are treating the statement that Obama is a Muslim as a slur. I thought the White House was multi-culti and whatever you are is fine by them!
Trump 2016!
Boy Nick, is that ever true! I think we can look forward to kicks in the shins and spits in the eye for every event Trump does going forward.
And it might make him even more popular with his faithful followers.
Ansonia, I was amazed when I woke up this morning to this hullabaloo. I heard this being discussed on Boston’s local NPR daytime show as I was driving into town. I called in immediately and told them that I was there and that they were completely blowing this up and it was balderdash. They disagreed. But they did let me say my piece. (I had been interviewed on local TV by one of the hosts when I ran for Congress…so he was very polite).
Tommy,
Here’s a 2007 NYT article that’s pretty thoughtful, all things considered:http://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/politics/30obama.html?pagewanted=all&referrer=
Obama belonged to Jeremiah Wright’s church, which was United Church of Christ officially but Obama was probably there more because of the pastor than the particular theology, as so often happens in small Protestant sects with charismatic leaders.
I think that now Obama does not attend any particular church regularly; I remember reading that he has a pastor who emails him prayers, Bible verses, and inspirational materials.
I also remember reading that when the Rev Wright controversy erupted the true answer to the question of how he could sit there and listen to the anti white rhetoric was that Obama really wasn’t there too often to hear it, so he really didn’t know.
The bottom line I’d say is that Obama is basically a secular Christian who has fashioned his religious beliefs not from the doctrine or creed of any particular denomination but from whatever he felt meets his needs.
In other words, he’s run of the mill spiritual but not religious.
The questioner is questionable. On hearing the guy speak, I immediately thought it was either a joke or set up. Made to order controversy. Hillary loved it. She is at her best expressing pure moral outrage at the behavior of miscreants.
Strange the media has not yet identified this fellow. Most lefties would love to get his name, research his nut case associations and hang him around the neck of Mr. Trump as typical of one of his “imbalanced, intolerant followers”. If on the other hand he was a plant, his identity would not be of interest to the lefty press……now would it? Hummmmmmmm.
If one cares to thicken the plot (not that there is one), consider a plant by the “not-so-vast, elite establishment republican conspiracy”. I can’t really believe I am even writing this. Good grief it’s only September…….. symptoms of Trump derangement syndrome to be sure.
It’s good, Dustoff. Go with it.
MICHAEL STOPA
It’s Friday. I need a drink.
Cheers, Dustoff!
Obama’s minister was Reverend Wright.
Trump’s minister was Reverend Norman Vincent Peale.
“I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling.” — Adlai Stevenson
Norman Vincent Peale’s Reformed Church of America was or is supposedly like a liberal Presbyterian church. Well, what was Adlai Stevenson? Unitarian Universalist? I guess that might be the one thing further to the left.
Well, some of us found Reverend Wright more appalling than appealing.
Mr Obama is a Marxist who once claimed he was born in Kenya (maybe to get through College with little expense and sell books). Funny that not much is known about those years – it’s like they were wiped with a cloth, or something.
But he was brought up for a while as a Muslim, his father was a Muslim, and in some branches of Islam that makes him a Muslim, automatically.
So, yeah, the questioner was obviously crazy, as are all Trump followers.
I’m not at all surprised that the event was as you described it, and while everyone knows I’m no Trump enthusiast, that sounds entirely plausible — and thanks for letting us know what happened.
That said, where Trump deserves the flak is that it’s no good for him to say, “The media distorted what happened at my campaign event.” Trump is no stranger to the media or the way things look on television. And no one running for president can afford to be: That’s a job where the camera is always on you, and you need to think about “how things will look” all day long. Just part of the job.
So … not much sympathy from me for candidates who can’t handle these sorts of things with an awareness of how they’re apt to look. That’s part of the job for which they’re auditioning.
I would accept Black Liberation Theology as a fair description of the church (and therefore, the type of Christianity) Obama chose to be publicly associated with. It is worth noting, though, that by Islamic law, he is Muslim because his father was Muslim. To be more precise, he is an apostate, because he was born Muslim and then renounced that religion. The penalty for that, as specified in the Koran, is death. C’est la vie. But if I had to guess what’s in his heart, I would guess atheist or agnostic.
Or is there a word for a religion where you worship yourself and expect everyone else to worship you as well?
Come on, he chose to pretend to be a conservative, what did he expect from the media? If he wants honest treatment he should run in the Democrat primary, they really need him.
Autotheism
Which I’m pretty sure is also Donald Trump’s true faith.
If being Muslim is as wonderful as Obama and other Liberals would have us believe, then why is it insulting to call Obama a Muslim?
I wish someone would ask Josh Earnest that question.
As to what religion Obama practices, I agree with the earlier comment that he worships himself.
PELAYO
Spot on.
Thanks Claire,
But I think Trump handled it fine. The closest that he said to an endorsement of what the questioner was saying was “a lot of people are saying that.” And as I say, it was mostly just blather to get on to the next question without this guy capturing the event.
Trump said today (typically, in a tweet) that he is not morally obliged to defend Obama from criticisms, even at his town hall events (leaving aside that being a Muslim is not criticism). Trump is clearly at his best when he is *not* parsing every word with PR implications in mind. I would certainly not advise him to now start parsing every word of his interlocuteurs to that end.
…I googled it but I couldn’t find it. Sorry Dustoff. What is PELAYO?
I like to know these things :-).
No kidding. For someone who goes on about how he is going to be the greatest at everything, handling a town hall would be a good start.