I’m not a Donald Trump fan. I disliked Trump even before it was cool – going back to the ’80s, even, when I thought his “if you’re not a billionaire, you’re a loser” schtick was too stupid to take seriously.
I still do.
But today, in USA Today, we see Trump being blamed for…
…a question asked at a Trump rally?
“We got a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. We know he’s not even an American. (Trump: We need the question.) But anyway. We have training camps brewing where they want to kill us. That’s my question. When can we get rid of them?”
Trump didn’t directly address what the man said about the president — nor did he correct him — and replied:
“We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things. A lot of people are saying that. A lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking into that and plenty of other things.”
Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the likelihood that the “questioner” was a plant; our experience during the Tea Party, when lefty provocateurs were busted red-handed posing as Tea Partiers, bringing signs, is still fresh in my mind. Back then, there’d be an occasional ring of fringies around the edges of the protest, who’d gravitate toward the cameras – unless the rally made a point of publicizing that its security people would be taking pictures of provocative signs to crowdsource; they tended not to show up. Candid shots of “racist tea partiers” tended to turn out to be slumming lefties.
No, we’ll leave that aside for now.
It’s a Republican event – and no Republican, least of all Trump, is immune to what seems to the great truth of American politics and media in the 21st century
- Nothing any Democrat says, or does, up to and including violating federal law and national security, will ever be held against them
- Anything untoward done, said, hinted at, or speculated to have been done, said or hinted at by any Republican officeholder (no matter how obscure or inconsequential), candidate, party official, contributor, voter, supporter, rally attendee, or putative supporter, contributor or rally attendee, or anyone claiming or reputed to be or to have at any time been a Republican party member, supporter or sympathizer, will not only be treated like it’s evidence in a federal trial, but imputed to every conservative, anywhere, regardless of its context, accuracy or even truthfulness.
Oh, yeah – and the story will focus exclusively on violations of political correctness, and studiously ignore any actual issues that may have been addressed.
This behavior is so pervasive and predictable, I have canonized it as “Berg’s Seventeenth Law“.
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