Whew! Last week was a doozy: the illicit release of Trump’s taxes; the raucous Trump-Biden debate; James Comey’s selective memory at the Senate hearing; and the timing of positive COVID cases in the Trump camp.
While Trump’s COVID diagnosis was the seismic event of the week, the most irritating one was Fox News's Chris Wallace and John Roberts jumping on the white supremacy bandwagon.
Think of it: Antifa and Black Lives Matter groups – staunch Biden supporters – have been looting businesses, decimating cities, and screaming for the death of police and capitalism every day for months, and these guys focus on the amorphous menace of white supremacy.
Kamala Harris, who marched with BLM, praised that tyrannical group during a recent interview tied to an NAACP convention.
“I actually believe, as a former prosecutor, that Black Lives Matter has been the most significant agent for change within the criminal justice system,” she said.
Harris said nothing – nor was she asked – about the group’s violence, their lawless intimidation, their looting, their burning of businesses and their Marxist leanings. She whispers this stuff in a surreal world while in the real world these groups, like termites, eat away at our institutions.
But somehow Wallace saw fit to wander off to some dark corner on a fictional street inside La-La Land to ask Trump – for the zillionth time – about white supremacy.
“What are your views on the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy,” Wallace asked.
Recommended
Just a sec. I’m getting my debates mixed up. Wallace asked that question at the 2016 debate.
But since I brought it up, here’s how Trump answered the question four years ago:
“I totally disavow the Klu Klux Klan [mispronounced]. I totally disavow David Duke. I’ve been doing it now for two weeks. You’re probably about the eighteenth person that’s asked me the question. It was very clear. That question was also talked about in the form of groups. I wanted to know which groups; ‘Which groups are you talking about?’ Ultimately, he talked about the Klu Klux Klan which, obviously, I’m going to disavow.”
Wallace asked the question this way last week:
Wallace: Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland. Are you prepared to specifically …?
Trump: Sure, sure
Biden: Do it!
Wallace: Well go ahead, sir!
Trump: I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing; not from the right wing.
Wallace: What are saying …?
Trump: I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace …
Then both Biden and Wallace ganged up on him and demanded that he make the canned condemnation, which cut Trump off from making a point that, as usual, we all had in our heads: Why are we talking about white supremacists, or the Proud Boys as Biden suggested, when all the mayhem is so obviously coming from Antifa and Black Lives Matter?
Because Trump tried to make that point before answering the dumb question, his “declining to condemn white supremacists” dominated the news cycle until his COVID announcement Thursday night.
Fox’s John Roberts, shockingly, was one of those media bedwetters. He repackaged the same question at the White House Press Briefing to Kayleigh McEnany after the debate:
“I’d like to ask you for a definitive and declarative statement without ambiguity or deflection – as the person who speaks for the president – does the president denounce white supremacism and groups that espouse it in all their forms?”
McEnany rattled off a litany of quotes of Trump’s previous condemnations, including one he had made the previous day. But that wasn’t good enough.
“But just to clear it up this morning; can you naming it, make a declarative statement that you denoun … that the president denounces it?”
When McEnany insisted that she did, she called on another reporter, but a now irritated and increasingly rude Roberts interrupted and told her that all she did was read “a bunch of quotes from the past.”
That irritation boiled over when Melissa Francis of Fox’s Outnumbered asked Roberts to give his firsthand account of the contentious exchange. He did.
Then he blurted: “And for all of you on Twitter who are hammering me for asking that question: I don’t care! It’s a question that needs to be asked. And clearly, the president’s Republican colleagues – a mile away from here – are looking for an answer for it, too. So stop deflecting! Stop blaming the media.”
Then a red-faced Roberts, shorn of all professionalism, muttered with exasperation: “I’m tired of it.”
When he said – on air! – that he was tired of a few disagreeable tweets, I could only think of all that Trump’s been through over the past four years while hauling the weight of the world on his shoulders: The all-day, every-day, baseless defamations hurled by bomb-throwing window-lickers. The high-level Russian coup attempt. The trumped-up impeachment fiasco. The deliberate attempts by Democrat governors and mayors to use COVID to sabotage his sterling economy. The attempts to use force-fed, vote-by-mail ballots to steal the election. And on and on it goes.
No, John Roberts and Chris Wallace – given the context of the historic attempts at insurrection by Antifa, BLM, their funders, their media cheerleaders, and the Trump-haters who refuse to loudly condemn them – you just asked a really dumb question.
Here’s a simple way to illustrate how all the crazy talk about white supremacy sounds:
Let’s say one side believes that grass is pink, and the other side believes that grass is green. We all know that grass is green. Yet you have this earnest reporter, insisting that he’s just doing his job, giving credence to the idea that grass is pink?
So the reporter asks: “Mr. President, the Pinks – and a growing number of Americans – believe that grass is pink. Can you, as you’re standing here today, say unequivocally and without deflection that you’re not a racist against the Pinks. And, sir, will you condemn Green Supremacists, many of whom say they support you?”
“No Chris,” says the president, “I just believe that grass is green.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member