After watching a few minutes of Donald Trump’s CNN New Hampshire town hall with fellow Republicans and undecided voters, I thought to myself: why am I watching a rehash of the last two or three years?
First of all, there was no “news” coming from this town hall. So we can take the “News” out of Cable News Network and replace it with Nitwit. Trump was recycling old reruns or the 2016/2020 elections. I particularly got a kick out of Trump saying he got 12 million more votes in 2020 than he got in 2016. It was more like 11.2 million votes. But who’s counting. Surely not Trump–at least not accurately.
Trump’s 2016 and 2020 election results are similar to two Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl appearances. In 1978 the Cowboys beat the Denver Broncos 27-10. However, in the following Super Bowl they scored 31 points, four more; but lost to the Steelers by four points. Sure they scored more points against the Steelers than they did against the Broncos; but they still lost.
The CNN town hall reminded me of what my Dad would say after a somewhat racus, animated business meeting. When the discussion came to an end and bummed-out people were leaving he would say: Don’t go away mad. Just go away. This is my question: When is Donald Trump going to go away.–mad or otherwise? It is obvious that to make America anything this guy has got to get off center stage. And CNN is not helping by giving him another 15 minutes to pedal his self-concocted version of reality TV.
How is it possible to report on Trump and not speak of the big lie, or say they’ve broken norms if not laws?
Robert Reich LAProgessive
Our political situation has us doubling down on everything. We have a couple of octogenarians running for president. The nearest GOP challenger to Trump as of now is the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. And he has not even announced if he is running. At 44 he is a little more than half the age of the Joe Biden and Trump. DeSantis, however does not want to make America great, he wants to take America on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. He seems more interested fighting “woke windmills” and running against Mickey Mouse (who will turn 95 in November). Two of Trump’s other challengers come from South Carolina. This could be a political comedy: “Guess Who’s Coming to the Chicken Plate Fundraiser.”
Biden’s only announced rival is a reboot of the ’60s with Robert Kennedy, Jr. He says his “mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening… to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country.” It sounds good but I think most Americans could not tell the difference between a feudalistic economy and a socialist economy let alone describe corporate feudalism. As a nation we have not yet come to grips that this country based its economy on slave labor for its first 200 years of its existence. Nobody today remembers when “cotton was king” and made up nearly 60 percent of America’s exports in 1860.
Our political parties have us backed into a corner in a room without windows to even jump out of. Despite being under criminal investigation the GOP is clinging to Trump like the last piece of flotsam from a sinking ship. The Democrats, on the other hand, will ride Biden and the Old Gray Mare to wherever the old horse will go. It use to be a politician could leave office out the front door. Walter Mondale and Al Gore come to mind. Some, however, slither out the back door or jump out of the side window. Presidential aspirants like Gary Hart and John Edwards come to mind. I don’t think a criminal conviction would convince Trump and his followers it’s time to turn out the lights the party’s over. And it could be for the GOP. As for Biden, the pasture might be a pleasant place to graze away the days.
Turn out the lights
Willie Nelson
The party’s over
They say that all
Good things must end
Call it a night
The party’s over
And tomorrow starts
The same old thing again
Andy Warhol is credited with saying “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” The statement assumes that after your 15 minutes you would step off the stage. But that was said in a time before social media and cable news. People like Donald Trump have managed to turn their “world-famous” 15 minutes into years. It really is about time we brought the curtain down on Trump and shove him off center stage because as we saw on CNN it was the same old thing again.
https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/when-cotton-was-king/
https://www.laprogressive.com/the-media-in-the-united-states/why-the-hell-did-cnn-do-it
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/04/25/robert-f-kennedy-jr-biden-2024/11733782002/
mystoryorhistory 