‘All they had to do is not look crazy…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Under any of his predecessors, President Donald Trump’s televised Oval Office address Monday, presenting his case for a border crisis that warranted immediate executive action, would have seemed perfectly reasonable.
Instead, Trump’s own cult of personality—paired with the partisan media attacks and increasingly radicalized, obstructionist Democrats—turned it into something bordering on the surreal.
This was, in large part, due to the unprecedented move by opposition-party leaders to demand equal time for a rebuttal.
Although they may have upstaged the president, their effort to optically outmaneuver the former reality TV star proved instead to be an unmitigated disaster for the Left and pure gold for social-media meme lovers.
Squeezing behind a single podium, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., attempted to frame themselves as America’s concerned mom and dad reacting to Trump’s “temper tantrum.”
However, many instead saw the pair evoking everything from coerced hostages to Grant Wood‘s “American Gothic” to aliens and lizard-people.
As one Twitter user pointed out, their objective should have been a simple one:
All they had to do is not look crazy…. pic.twitter.com/SKqZFl4Q8J
— EducatédHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) January 9, 2019
Even liberals, more emboldened recently to espouse their true political intent, declared their exasperation with the wooden performance.
Paste magazine angrily charged that the duo had conceded the messaging battle by claiming—without justification—that Democrats supported tighter border security.
Pelosi “does not argue for the humanity of the poor people trying to cross into the United States, or condemn the bigotry of Trump’s attempt to paint them broadly as terrorists and rapists and murderers and every other species of criminal,” bemoaned Paste writer Shane Ryan. “Instead, Pelosi is appealing to the imagined beliefs of an ‘ordinary’ American…”
While some in the mainstream press continued to lay cover, such as NBC News — which egregiously used its “fact-checking” label for a blatant cheer-leading campaign — the groundswell of ridicule underscored the hollowness of the Left’s opposition to the wall.
Despite what may appear to be a losing proposition for Trump (he reportedly told the press Wednesday, “I didn’t want this fight”), some have speculated that the longtime deal-broker may have more strategy in sight than he is revealing.
Regardless, it is becoming increasingly clear that in digging in and doubling down, the president’s winning plan is mainly to let Democrats defeat themselves.
And as Twitchy reported, it appears to be working, with Cher on Wednesday becoming one of the first public figures to call on Congressional Democrats (in all caps) to stop the madness.
FOR trump THIS IS POLITICAL..BUT REAL PPL ARE REALLY SUFFERING ‼️
WHERE WAS THE FKNG
CRISIS 1 MONTH AGO,1YR AGO⁉️WHERE HAS IT BEEN FOR THE LAST 2 YRS. HAVING SAID THATNANCY YOU ARE A HERO LET HIM HAVE HIS FKNG MONEY‼️PPL WILL STARVE
LOSE THEIR HOMES, B UNABLE 2 C DRS🙏🏻— Cher (@cher) January 9, 2019