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: So it was all quite predictable now, wasn’t it? Joe Biden had boxed himself into a corner by declaring he would pick only a woman as his running mate, and then the corner got even smaller when it became equally clear he would bow to the additional demand that it be a woman of color. But given the likelihood that the 77-year-old presidential nominee won’t be able to make it through one term, let alone two, he had to pick someone with enough experience in national politics to reassure voters that she’d be ready to step in as president at any time. And Kamala Harris was the only one in that narrow woman-of-color universe who fit that description.
And when she went public the day after her selection, the senator and former attorney general of California cleverly left out any of the radical positions she championed during her own badly failed presidential campaign and reminded people of her prosecutorial background as she predictably condemned President Donald Trump.
Kamala Harris: As somebody who has presented my fair share of arguments in court, the case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut. Just look where they’ve gotten us. More than 16 million out of work, millions of kids who cannot go back to school, a crisis of poverty, of homelessness afflicting black, brown, and indigenous people the most.
Tim: So she laid all the blame for this Chinese bat virus and the resulting economic devastation at the feet of Trump but went further in saying things were different during the good old days of Barack Obama.
Kamala Harris: Six years ago, we had a different health crisis. It was called Ebola. And we all remember that pandemic, but you know what happened then? Barack Obama and Joe Biden did their job. Only two people in the United States died. Two. That is what’s called leadership. But compare that to the moment we find ourselves in now. When other countries are following the science, Trump pushed miracle cures he saw on Fox News.
Tim: That statement might actually boost the already soaring ratings of Fox News — it has destroyed competitors during prime time the last few months. But you can see that one prong of the Democrats’ attack is that Trump essentially has the blood of over 160,000 COVID victims on his hands. But the closest thing to a surprise in Kamala’s scripted speech was trying to credit Obama for the roaring economy pre-COVID.
Kamala Harris: Trump is also the reason millions of Americans are now unemployed. He inherited the longest economic expansion in history from Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And then, like everything else he inherited, he ran it straight into the ground.
Tim: You wonder if saying Trump ran the economy straight into the ground is a credible charge given that we had record low unemployment across the board, including in every community of color, until we were hit by this damnable pandemic. Only the voters can ultimately make that decision. Well, one of the most predictable things that happens after a major announcement like this is the immediate release of both glowing ads and attack ads on the new nominee — and the Trump campaign pounced immediately.
Trump campaign ad: Kamala Harris ran for president by rushing to the radical left, embracing Bernie’s plan for socialized medicine, calling for trillions of new taxes, attacking Joe Biden for racist policies. Voters rejected Harris. They smartly spotted a phony. But not Joe Biden, he’s not that smart. Biden calls himself a transition candidate. He is handing over the reins to Kamala while they jointly embrace the radical left. Slow Joe and Phony Kamala, perfect together.
Tim: So we’ll see if the Trump nicknames stick — Slow Joe and Phony Kamala — but while it’s quite obvious Trump will take no prisoners in his campaign, the approach in Biden’s latest ad is the opposite, softer and gauzier, using a single sad tale of a COVID victim and her daughter to convey the message that Trump doesn’t care but he and Kamala will.
Biden campaign ad: We didn’t even know that she had COVID till a week later in her passing. The president made a huge mistake in downplaying this virus. There was a lack of leadership, a lack of responsibility, and a lack of resources. I felt like our elderly have not been a priority for this administration, that they don’t matter. And I feel like my grandmother didn’t matter.
Tim: Trump the attack dog unmasking the Swamp creatures versus warm, comfortable, and fuzzy Joe and Kamala. That’s the campaign on the ground, at least for now, and I wouldn’t expect it to change much.
Meanwhile, there were a couple of almost unbelievable statements during the week, one of which must have made the Biden campaign cringe and makes you wonder if the nation’s most powerful Democrat, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), is losing it like Biden. After a shutdown of the entire world because of a virus emanating from China, and Biden already under attack for his ties to China over the years, and his son Hunter having made a bundle off his father’s dealings with China when he was vice president, and the disapproval rating of China among Americans soaring to record highs, Pelosi went on CNN and said this.
Nancy Pelosi: The Chinese, what they said is, China would prefer Joe Biden, whether they do, that’s their conclusion, that they would prefer Joe Biden.
Tim: Folks, that is staggering, staggering to admit what most insiders know: that Biden will go as soft on China as Trump went hard. That’s called a gaffe and one of almost epic Biden-like proportions, which in Washington parlance translates to accidentally telling the truth.
But there was no accident in the jaw-dropping statement of Ariel Atkins of Black Lives Matter Chicago. After a fake news report that a young black man had been shot by a cop in the Windy City, gangs of criminals ransacked Chicago’s famed Magnificent Mile, crashing and looting high-end stores and carting away probably millions of dollars in stolen merchandise. And here’s how the head of Black Lives Matter Chicago reacted.
Ariel Atkins: I don’t care. If somebody decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike, because that makes sure that that person eats, that makes sure that that person has clothes, that’s reparations. That is reparations. Anything they want to take, take it because these businesses have insurance. They’re going to get their money back. My people aren’t getting anything.
Tim: Takes your breath away, doesn’t it? But that woman and so many like her have now progressed from refusing to acknowledge the insanity, to defending it, to now justifying it. Welcome to America circa 2020.
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Read more from Tim Donner.
