In “What Do You Think of Thomas Jefferson? (Trump Asked),” the Fine People on Both Sides calumny against Donald Trump was covered here. Now, let us fact-check two other infamous Trump sayings.
Repeatedly we hear former president and current presidential candidate Donald John Trump accused of declaring he would be “a dictator on Day One,” and that, therefore, we cannot trust him to respect the Constitution.
Sure. He said it. No doubt. But the original statement was a bit of jesting with Sean Hannity:
Hannity had asked if he would ever use power as retribution against anyone, and Trump responded orthogonally, saying “except for Day One,” then clarifying: he’d close the border and “drill, drill, drill.”
He was answering a different question. This is quite clear. You have to be somewhat illiterate not to understand what Trump was doing here. So can we assume that they really object to is his border policy and petroleum production stance?
Trump is charged with threatening a bloodbath if he is not elected. And he did say the word. But the context was also closer to anodyne. He predicted a bloodbath if tariffs in automobiles from Mexico were not raised “100 percent,” which he promised to do:
Now, the ultra-protectionist policy Trump lays out here may be close to insane. But it’s not threatening-riots- or threatening-insurrection-insane. That is just a fantasy. Of his opponents.
It is worth remembering, also, that there is a difference between a prophecy (or prediction) and a threat (or dire promise).
We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they’re going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer — and they’ve had almost 30 years of it — shouldn’t we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater.
Ronald Reagan, “A Time for Choosing,” a televised speech in support of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign (October 27, 1964).
On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for the United States Presidency, Barry Goldwater, thereby launching Reagan’s political career. The speech came to be known as “A Time for Choosing.”
Two years earlier, Vasili Arkhipov, a flotilla commander present on the Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B‑59 in the Caribbean sea, defied the order of the sub’s captain, Valentin Savitsky, to launch a nuclear device. The captain had concluded that war had started while the submarine had been submerged. He had inferred this from the depth charges that American ships had deployed in order to force the submarine to the surface during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Captain Savitsky, seeking the necessary approval of two others on board, ordered political officer Ivan Masslenikov and the flotilla commander Vasili Arkhipov to launch a nuclear torpedo.
Masslenikov agreed. Arkhipov refused.
The date was October 27, 1962, and World War III was prevented by this one man, Arkhipov, who held his ground while facing the increasing anger of the submarine commander, refusing to approve a nuclear torpedo launch that would most almost certainly have triggered a conflict that would have doomed civilization, perhaps most or all of humanity.
That, we can now agree, was a “time for choosing” — and the correct choice was made.
It’s risky, covering the Trump Phenomenon so close to the election and mere hours after the Joe Rogan Experience dropped a much-awaited interview with the candidate.
But in the week following an over-hyped and rather lame October Surprise — the old accusation (from 2022) about Trump griping about not having loyal generals, as Hitler had — it’s worth mention that the most notorious accusations about Trump have fizzled spectaclarly.
And we’re not talking just about the Russia Collusion nonsense, which early could be spotted as made-up “oppo research” fantasy.
Consider just three:
In each case we have something Trump actually said (there are few good reasons to be sure about the “Hitler’s loyal generals” comment), but taken completely out of context by his Democratic opposition and by the regular run of news “journalists.”
Let’s take the first accusation today: that Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the August 2017 Charlottesville protests, meaning neo-Nazis were fine and their counter-protesters were fine. Everybody’s fine! But, as Snopes.com explained, Trump meant that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Confederate statue iconoclasm issue.
But we know this not just because Snopes said so. Watch Trump’s original statement, but let it run more than ten seconds:
As Snopes summarizes, “He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be ‘condemned totally.’”
Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed that he ran for the presidency primarily because of the sheer awfulness of Trump’s “very fine people” comment, and candidate Kamala Harris has repeated the calumny. While Joe may have a senility excuse, does Kamala?
Meanwhile, something was lost in the brouhaha: it was Trump’s comments on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson that were most interesting.
Should we take down statuary of the first and third presidents because they owned slaves?
“What do you think of Thomas Jefferson?” Trump asked a reporter. “You like him?”
Trump was clearly more interested in the iconoclasm issue. But Democrats avoid rationally exploring that subject.
Tomorrow: “Dictator on Day One” and “Bloodbath.” And more!
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
William Cullen Bryant, The Battlefield (1839), st. 9. Martin Luther King, Jr., cited this poem (Dec. 3, 1956, as quoted in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Advocate of the social gospel, p. 162) thusly: “There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying Truth crushed to earth will rise again.”
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.