We Are All Deplorables Now, by Pat Buchanan.
Four days after he described Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as a “very credible witness,” President Donald Trump could no longer contain his feelings or constrain his instincts.
With the fate of his Supreme Court nominee in the balance, Trump let his “Make America Great Again” rally attendees in Mississippi know what he really thought of Ford’s testimony. …
‘I don’t remember.’ ‘How did you get there?’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘Where is the place?’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘How many years ago was it?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’”
By now the Mississippi MAGA crowd was cheering and laughing.
The above is the scene that the ABC News here in Australia has run twice to criticize Trump, having first treated Blasey-Ford’s allegations as if they were true and thus telling the ABC audience — nudge nudge wink wink — that Blasey-Ford is true and Trump is lying. Apart from the shot of Trump saying the above, no ABC watcher would have any clue that Blasey-Ford’s account is uncorroborated by anyone or anything and is, by any legal standard, laughably weak. Naturally ABC viewers only saw a few seconds of this:
Trump is in form. Want some more? (No chance of seeing this on the ABC.)
See also from 8:30.
Since that day three years ago when he came down the escalator at Trump Tower to talk of “rapists” crossing the U.S. border from Mexico, few Trump remarks have ignited greater outrage.
Commentators have declared themselves horrified and sickened that a president would so mock the testimony of a victim of sexual assault.
The Republican senators who will likely cast the decisive votes on Kavanaugh’s confirmation—Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski—they all decried Trump’s mimicry.
Yet, in tossing out the “Catechism of Political Correctness” and treating the character assassination of Kavanaugh as what it was, a rotten conspiracy to destroy and defeat his nominee, Trump’s instincts were correct, even if they were politically incorrect.
History rhymes. This is the fourth time:
In our widening and deepening cultural-civil war, the Kavanaugh nomination will be seen as a landmark battle. …
Consider. In the last half-century, which Supreme Court nominees were the most maligned and savaged?
Were they not Nixon nominee Clement Haynsworth, chief judge of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, Reagan nominee Robert Bork, Bush 1 nominee Clarence Thomas, and Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the last three all judges on the nation’s second-highest court, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals?
Is it a coincidence that all four were Republican appointees, all four were judicial conservatives, and all four were gutted on the grounds of philosophy or character?
Is it a coincidence that Nixon in Watergate, Reagan in the Iran-Contra affair, and now Trump in Russiagate, were all targets of partisan campaigns to impeach and remove them from office? …
We are all deplorables now:
Trump is president because he gets it. He understands what this Beltway elite are all about — the discrediting of his victory as a product of criminal collusion with Russia and his resignation or removal in disgrace. And the “base” that comes to these rallies to cheer him on, they get it, too.
Since Reagan’s time, there are few conservatives who have not been called one or more of the names in Hillary Clinton’s litany of devils, her “basket of deplorables” — racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, bigoted, irredeemable.
The battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination, and the disparagement of the Republicans who have stood strongest by the judge, seems to have awakened even the most congenial to the new political reality.
We are all deplorables now.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
