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QOTD: Beto O’Rourke

Published by digby on August 5, 2019

QOTD: Beto O’Rourke

by digby

Joan Walsh echoes my feelings about O’Rourke’s comments:

[T]hat’s what I thought too, honestly, when I saw news outlets covering Trump descending from Marine One Sunday afternoon—after he essentially golfed through two massacres, including one in Dayton, Ohio, where the shooter’s motive still isn’t clear—as though he’d say something meaningful. At the bottom of the stairway from the helicopter, a marine stood at attention, just as he would for any other president, and so did the media, cameras and notebooks ready. Trump shared his trademark mix of lies, evasions, and word salad—he makes Sarah Palin look articulate—and it went out live to television watchers all over the country.

These rituals in which Trump is treated like any other president demean the memories of those who died in El Paso, at the Tree of Life and Poway synagogues, and those who might have died had the bombs that Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc sent to Democrats and the media detonated earlier this year.

Afterward, anchor people and reporters dutifully fact-checked Trump’s tarmac lies; some even noticed the absence of any mention of the racism that drove the El Paso murderer. But covering Trump’s return from golf as though it was newsworthy is just another way the media normalizes him.

On Monday morning, Trump had a better speech prepared. “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” he intoned. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.” But the fact that he called Dayton “Toledo” got more immediate attention, and mockery, than the hypocrisy of denouncing “white supremacy” when his administration advances it every day. “He really did set a different tone than he did in the past when it comes to condemning this hate,” an NBC White House correspondent claimed. In some quarters, Trump even got praise for using the term “white supremacy,” as though it heralded a change in his policies. It will not.

As tristero pointed out below, O’Rourke continued this morning:

Bonus quote from Jerry Nadler:

Babies in cages, urban “infestation”, “send her back”, invasion and on and on and on. They are right.

There is talk that if O’Rourke would decide to go back home and run against John Cornyn, the whole country would support him. I normally don’t engage in the common Democratic hectoring of people to run for different offices because I feel it’s presumptuous. There are no indispensable politicians and if one decides not to run for a certain office, there’s always someone else to do it.

However, in this case I will make an exception. I like O’Rourke, always have. I don’t know that I would vote for him in a primary but I wouldn’t be upset if he won the nomination. Having said that, I think it’s obvious that his heart and passion lie with his city and state and considering that something pretty big is happening in Texas (the 4th GOP congressman announced his retirement today) it is possible that Beto could win in a presidential year (he almost won in a midterm) and could help turn Texas blue. I realize it’s a long shot but it’s one worth trying — if they could escalate a phenomenon that many of the analysts say is happening anyway, it would be the ballgame. Republicans can’t win without Texas.

And, by the way, the other two former governors Bullock of Montana and Hickenlooper of Colorado could do the same thing. Nothing changes as long as the gravedigger of democracy, Moscow Mitch, leads the Senate.

Update:

This is the problem.

She has the chronology wrong. Trump first came out after Charlottesville and said this:

Saturday afternoon, President Trump, speaking at the start of a veterans’ event at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., addressed what he described as “the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia.”

In his comments, President Trump condemned the bloody protests, but he did not specifically criticize the white nationalist rally and its neo-Nazi slogans, blaming “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

“It’s been going on for a long time in our country, it’s not Donald Trump, it’s not Barack Obama,” said Mr. Trump, adding that he had been in contact with Virginia officials. After calling for the “swift restoration of law and order,” he offered a plea for unity among Americans of “all races, creeds and colors.”

Then, after criticism, he made his canned speech condemning the Ku Klux Klan etc. That was followed a couple of days later by his famous “both sides” press conference.

After everything we’ve seen some reporters are still giving him credit for being sincere when he makes these ridiculous teleprompter speeches with dead eyes and a very dry mouth. It’s unbelievable.

George Conway had this right:

So we all know what’s going to happen here. Something like this:

Trump will go on TV tomorrow and give a speech. On paper, the speech may say some of the right things. It will look somewhat presidential. There’s an off chance it might even be good (grading on a curve).

But the problem will be that it was given by Trump, who’s incapable of sincere empathy. So it’ll be hard to believe that he believes the words he said. And his speech won’t address his own hateful, racist rhetoric.

So he’ll be roundly criticized for that. And he’ll also be criticized on policy grounds, because whatever he says on that score will not suffice for many people.

He’ll see and hear all this criticism on TV, and he’ll stew. And stew. He’ll grow angry and resentful that he was forced to give the speech in the first place.

Finally, perhaps within 24 or 48 hours, the narcissistic pressure will break the dam, and his anger and frustration will gush forward.

He’ll tweet, otherwise say, or do something that’ll completely undo whatever positive benefit came from the speech.

We’ve seen this movie before how many times?

Every. Single. Time.

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