Editor’s Note: Say What? is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing, and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class.
Tim Donner: From the moment Donald Trump took the oath of office three years ago, the public face of the Democratic Party reflected two things, Trump hatred and socialism, a toxic mix of doom and gloom that had Dems looking like petulant children screaming and stomping their feet and refusing to go to their rooms because they lost to Trump. But if that wasn’t bad enough, this week they added a third element to that public face: gross incompetence.
With the nation watching, the curtain rose in Iowa on the opening act of the Democrats’ lone attempt to remove President Trump the old-fashioned way, through the ballot box. A party already bracing for the final impact of its failed foray into impeachment could not have experienced a cold-sweat nightmare any worse than the embarrassment of a caucus process that failed to render any results before the world moved on and made fun of the Democrats.
Quality control was offered as a pathetic excuse for a vote count that left people hanging for hours on end and then days on end and was amateur hour on parade — on the world stage. Five candidates delivered their pre-written victory speeches in a results-free environment. It was Bizarro World. Trump must have been doubled over laughing, but that was just part one of the trifecta. The very next day, Trump delivered a triumphant State of the Union to an audience of millions, which doubled as an extremely effective campaign speech, enumerating one impressive fact after another on the economy, jobs, and income. Here are his baseline message and a couple of key points he made that flew largely under the radar.
Donald Trump: If we hadn’t reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration, the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success … Under the last administration, more than 10 million people were added to the food stamp rolls. Under my administration, seven million Americans have come off food stamps and 10 million people have been lifted off of welfare … After decades of flat and falling incomes, wages are rising fast, and, wonderfully, they are rising fastest for low-income workers who have seen a 16% pay increase since my election. This is a blue-collar boom.
Tim: That food stamp number is like a reverse indicator of the state of the economy, and wages rising among the working and middle classes faster than rich people’s will be a central message of the Trump campaign. Remember that phrase, blue-collar boom. You will likely be hearing it a lot.
Completing the trifecta that started on Monday and concluded Wednesday was the acquittal of President Trump — right after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) offered up perhaps the best speech he’s ever given, laying waste to the Democrats’ scorched-earth crusade to reverse the will of the American people.
Mitch McConnell: We will reject this incoherent case that comes nowhere near, nowhere near justifying the first presidential removal in history. Leaders in the opposite party increasingly argue that if our institutions don’t produce the outcomes they like, our institutions themselves must be broken. Within months, Secretary Clinton was suggesting her defeat was invalid. She called our president illegitimate, and members of Congress have used similar rhetoric, a disinformation campaign, weakening confidence in our democracy … Remember what Chairman Schiff said here on the floor: If the American people re-elect President Trump this November, that election will be presumptively invalid as well.
Tim: As soon as that speech ended, every Democrat voted to convict, and every Republican, except one, voted to acquit, providing the long-expected outcome, 19 votes short of conviction, not close. But the one Republican who did vote to remove Trump was the man who failed to do what Trump did, win the presidency, and who has been on an extended rampage about it. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said God made him do it.
Mitt Romney: The allegations made in the articles of impeachment are very serious. As a senator juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious.
Tim: Stop the tape. Let’s briefly deconstruct that statement, “I am profoundly religious.” As a conservative Christian in an evangelical church, a guy who’s been an elder and taught adult Sunday school, I can tell you that no one of deep faith that I’ve ever met describes himself or herself as religious. Why? Because Christianity teaches that Jesus is God’s way to man. Religion is man’s way to God. Faith is Jesus. Religion is the Pharisees. So when I hear Romney put his decision off on God, because he’s profoundly religious, it just deepens the skepticism about his true motives in all this.
Romney: It was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.
Mitt Romney (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Tim: Right. Let’s just give you a final bottom-line summary of what Romney and the Democrats believe: We should kick this president out of office nine months before a presidential election for delaying aid to a country for a couple of weeks that had been denied to that country for eight years by the previous president. To help a country defend itself against the people the left still claims turned Trump into a Manchurian candidate, Russia — turning logic on its head. And requesting an investigation that was never provided on Joe Biden firing the prosecutor investigating the company that paid his son $3.5 million over 18 months for nothing — other than influence in the corridors of power. But the Democrats used unadulterated deception, or call it the big lie, to try to convince the American people that Trump was an out-of-control dictator. And it was repeated one last time by Alabama Democratic Senator Doug Jones, who started with an old political standby, trying to invoke sympathy for a vote that he knows will almost certainly result in his defeat for re-election.
Doug Jones: Throughout the impeachment trial, I couldn’t help but think of my father. As many of you know, I lost my dad over the holiday recess. My dad was a great man, a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, who did his best to instill in me the values of right and wrong … Throughout the trial, one piece of evidence continued to stand out for me. It was the president’s statement that under the Constitution, we have Article II, and I can do anything I want. That seems to capture this president’s belief about the presidency, that he has unbridled power, unchecked by Congress, or the judiciary, or anyone else.
Tim: So that is the tactic of politicians and the central lie of the Democrats. Evoke sympathy and then say Trump claims he can do anything he wants. Trump said that specifically, and only, about his right to fire James Comey, or Robert Mueller, or anyone else in the executive branch that he runs. He did not say in a vacuum that he can do anything he wants. But then, he never said white supremacists in Charlottesville were fine people, but the left perpetuates that big lie with their cheerleaders in the media as well.
Consider the sad spectacle of the Dems’ presidential race. It’s the Killer B’s: Biden (at least for now), Buttigieg, and Bernie. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) may take control of this race, but the Democratic National Committee (DNC) establishment has taken steps to kneecap Bernie again, by changing the rules to allow billionaire Mike “Don’t call me Michael” Bloomberg into the debates. And if you think Bernie’s people are going to sit still for it, listen to the most famous of the Bernie Bros, a guy who tells it like it is, a favorite on our show, Michael Moore, go postal on Bloomberg.
Michael Moore: He doesn’t have to show he has any support amongst the American people. He can just buy his way onto the debate stage, and I’ve got to tell you what’s so disgusting about this, the DNC will not allow Cory Booker on that stage, will not allow Julian Castro on that stage, but they’re going to allow Mike Bloomberg on the stage, because he’s got one billion f—— dollars.
Tim: And you know what? He’s absolutely right. The question now is not whether this soulless technocratic control freak billionaire can buy all the air time and staff he wants, and buy his way into the debates, but whether he can actually buy his way to the nomination and into the White House.
~
Read more from Tim Donner.
