God, remember a simpler time just one week ago when we were all talking about how Donald Trump calls soldiers, veterans and POWs “losers” and “suckers”? We should still be talking about that! But now we’re talking about how Trump lied for months about the dangers of the coronavirus, all while he was speaking to Bob Woodward constantly and admitting that he had a clear grasp on how dangerous the pandemic would be to the country and the world. So against this backdrop, Trump decided to do a superspreader “campaign rally” in Michigan and he tried to give people a bigly history lesson about Winston Churchill.
President Donald Trump is now not just downplaying the coronavirus — he’s resorting to absurd historical allusions about great World War II leaders to try to disguise his culpability in 190,000 American deaths. Trump ridiculously invoked the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a Thursday night rally, claiming that like them, he had tried hard to calm public panic in a dark hour. It was a historically illiterate gambit, since unlike Trump in the pandemic, both statesmen leveled with their people about grave national crises.
But it reflected his struggle to explain his failure to tell the American people the truth about the seriousness of the virus — even though he told Bob Woodward in interviews for his new book in February that it was “deadly stuff.” In a low-energy news conference earlier in the day, Trump doubled down on falsehood, declaring that “I did not lie” when he warned Woodward the pathogen was worse than the flu while publicly comparing it to the seasonal illness.
In one stunning moment, he said that if the Washington Post reporter, whose book “Rage” comes out Tuesday, was so concerned about what was said in their taped conversations, he should have gone to the “authorities” so they could prepare the country. Of course, under the Constitution, the President is the ultimate authority and whether Trump likes it, the buck stops with him for the pandemic and every other national crisis.
“I don’t want to jump up and down and start screaming death, death,” Trump said, after Vice President Mike Pence bizarrely suggested Trump’s negligence in fact typified a British propaganda campaign that was never widely used during the war and has become part of marketing kitsch in recent years: “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
At his Michigan rally, Trump jumped on the metaphor, comparing himself to the wartime prime minister.
“We have to be calm. We don’t want to be crazed lunatics. … When Hitler was bombing London, Churchill, a great leader, would oftentimes go to a roof in London and speak. And he always spoke with calmness,” Trump said, mangling the history of Churchill’s late night trips to view the raids with his separate radio addresses to the British people.
Yeah, not to sound like the History Channel, but Churchill and FDR were considered great leaders in times of crisis because they told America and Great Britain how bad it would get. They provided information, they warned people to brace themselves for the hard times to come, and they literally provided moral and structural support to their countries. Trump has lied, failed to come up with a national plan to deal with the pandemic, and he would have given Adolf Hitler everything he ever wanted.
This whole Michigan rally was a complete catastrophe, from the “motang” to the galaxy-brain who played Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.”
Oh, the irony (pay attention to the lyrics) pic.twitter.com/hAmzO3uSZi
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 10, 2020
"Michigan gave us Motang" pic.twitter.com/HKt5BZkbBe
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 11, 2020
Absolutely insane. It’s a superspreader event, Idiocracy come to life. https://t.co/SwUJe4rjUK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 10, 2020
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
I don’t know how others feel but I despise him so much that everything he does is a big No for me now. I am no longer clear headed as far as he is concerned; I just want him gone
Ditto.
Couldn’t agree more.
Surprised he knows who Churchill is.
Like pretty much everything except maybe TV ratings, he has a fleeting grasp of him and thinks it can pass for substantive knowledge. He is not the BS artist he thinks he is. Except to 40% of Americans, I guess.
yeah, I was going to say dollars-to-donuts that NONE of his sycophantic supporters even know who Churchill is.
He knows who Churchill is bc they are/were both racists. They’re both disgusting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/03/the-dark-side-of-winston-churchills-legacy-no-one-should-forget/
Came hear to say something similar. Churchill was a virulent, genocidal racist too, so he’s right on that count. On the other hand, Churchill had it in him to at least try to be useful on behalf of the people he though mattered. Trump can’t even do that, because the only person that really matters to him is him.
Racist, privileged, self indulgent, white man who doesn’t care how many pay the price for his ineptitude, recognises another. Not surprising Boris Johnson is another one in the Winston Churchill fan club.
The only thing they have in common is that they are both quite rotund. That is it.
And f’ugly. Don’t forget the f’ugly.
Orange Voldemort is comparing himself to the wrong WWII leader. He’s not like Churchill; he’s more like Mussolini
Motang. He shouldn’t stay in office for another nanosecond.
Go here if you have a minute:
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/famous-quotations-and-stories/
Remembering September 11, 2001, and my friends killed that day.
Yeah, because Churchill was totally off playing golf while London was being bombed…
First of all, Bob Woodward absolutely should have released this information and the tapes way earlier than he did.
Secondly, I know Trump loves talking to reporters, but why on earth did he think Woodward would write anything remotely flattering? It seems like deliberate self sabotage except I really think Trump is that stupid/narcissistic.
I think he’s so deluded about himself that he believed he could say whatever he liked to Woodward, and Woodward, like Bigly’s dumbarse supporters, would not only swallow it whole, but convince the rest of America that Mr Babyhands Was well worth another four years as The Fatarse Emperor. I don’t think there’s even a term for his level of narcissism.
I was listening to CCR the other day, and thought about how “Fortunate Son” IS describing Orange. Millionaire’s son, born with “silver spoon in hand”…
The song literally says that the rich “fortunate” sons get to avoid war, and the singer is not one of the privileged. I understood that the first time I ever heard it (which was after the war). Yet they played that song as he emerged from the plane, and the irony likely escaped whatever few onlookers were there.
I would guess that someone was trolling him, but staff ineptness is usually the simple answer.
No, it’s because he likes the song. John Fogarty has requested that he not play it but he ignored him. He doesn’t understand the meaning of any of the songs he plays. Jagger pointed that out back in 2016 when he was always coming on stage to You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Jagger pointed out that if he were running for political office, that definitely isn’t a song he would play – it’s not about getting what’s best it’s about settling for what you have and maybe it will be enough but probably not. Why advertise yourself that way?
I think no one in the GOP ever listens to lyrics.
they used Born in the USA for Reagan, not realizing what the song was really about.
Because shit stain doesn’t do panic or fear or anger or crazy. He does calm and informative and gently caresses the country through verbal excellence.
All those people in that hangar with no masks or social distancing — wonder how many new cases of covid there will be as a result? Herman Cain truly died in vain.
Not sorry: Herman Cain got the death he deserved for being such a stupid, reckless idiot. And also not sorry to say I sincerely will not shed a tear if each and every single idiot at these rallies drop dead of Covid as well. Same goes for Sturgess rally participants too. The only people I will cry for are all the innocent people who are infected/Impacted/killed by these selfish f@cking morons. The sooner they all drop dead, the better because it will mean they have less chance to harm the rest of us. And YES, I do mean ALL of them-even the kids whose parents have allowed them to be there!
I couldn’t agree more.
I hate Trump…I hate every time he opens his mouth to talk…even his own words though don’t seem to do anything for his followers. I have a friend who went off on FB saying if the nasty words dems would just listen to what Trump said, they would understand how great it was. I do not understand HOW people can still love him. How do they follow every single thing he does or says?????
Because they have drunk the koolaid.
Because there’s a shitload of really dumb, selfish, uninformed, racist buttheads that he is elevating and exploiting. If there’s one thing Trump’s good at it’s using people, giving assholes like his base a voice and they’re too stupid to understand that they’re being played like an accordion and their so-called great country is going down the dumper at an alarming rate.
Considering the terrible shit about Churchill I learned that most Americans never hear about, I…Idk if he is too far off.
The only scary thing about trump right now is him possibly being re-elected. I vividly remember telling my family and friends Trump had a chance to win and no one believing me. (Full disclosure, didnt know he would be THIS crazy) Welp. This man represents a lot of AMERICANS. They feel and think like him. They will vote for him. Again. And he has NEW supporters. Anyways, end rant.
LMAO at Fortunate Son.
While it is eye-wateringly stupid that Trump had Fortunate Son played, I can’t laugh at it. John Fogerty WAS drafted and did his time in the miltary on active service. Trump had 5 deferments to get out of it- he is the living embodiment of the protest the song is making. It’s infuriating – he taints everything he touches. John Fogerty has spoken out about it since.