Attention NBC News: MAGA doesn't need an interpreter
PLUS: How President Bush could influence the 2024 election
I placed the concession call for John McCain to Barack Obama. It was my honor to do so. The result was clear in a free and fair election.
Here is what John McCain said that night in a speech written by Mark Salter:
My friends, we have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly. A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama — to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.
In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.
This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.
A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to visit — to dine at the White House — was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.
Sen. Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day — though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her Creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise.
Sen. Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country, and I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.
I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.
Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.
Here is what Vice President Gore said in his 2000 concession, after the race was decided in a controversial Supreme Court ruling:
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity of the people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
I also accept my responsibility, which I will discharge unconditionally, to honor the new president elect and do everything possible to help him bring Americans together in fulfillment of the great vision that our Declaration of Independence defines and that our Constitution affirms and defends. Let me say how grateful I am to all those who supported me and supported the cause for which we have fought.
This has been an extraordinary election. But in one of God’s unforeseen paths, this belatedly broken impasse can point us all to anew common ground, for its very closeness can serve to remind us that we are one people with a shared history and a shared destiny.
Indeed, that history gives us many examples of contests as hotly debated, as fiercely fought, with their own challenges to the popular will. Other disputes have dragged on for weeks before reaching resolution. And each time, both the victor and the vanquished have accepted the result peacefully and in the spirit of reconciliation.
So let it be with us.
I know that many of my supporters are disappointed. I am too. But our disappointment must be overcome by our love of country.
And I say to our fellow members of the world community, let no one see this contest as a sign of American weakness. The strength of American democracy is shown most clearly through the difficulties it can overcome.
Some have expressed concern that the unusual nature of this election might hamper the next president in the conduct of his office. I do not believe it need be so.
President-elect Bush inherits a nation whose citizens will be ready to assist him in the conduct of his large responsibilities.
I personally will be at his disposal, and I call on all Americans — I particularly urge all who stood with us to unite behind our next president. This is America. Just as we fight hard when the stakes are high, we close ranks and come together when the contest is done.
And while there will be time enough to debate our continuing differences, now is the time to recognize that that which unites us is greater than that which divides us.
While we yet hold and do not yield our opposing beliefs, there is a higher duty than the one we owe to political party. This is America and we put country before party. We will stand together behind our new president.
Donald Trump broke faith with the traditions that sustain the American way of life and safeguard our liberty. He did not act alone. His coup was a conspiracy. Ronna McDaniel is deeply implicated in it.
She has maintained that the 2020 election was not “fair:”
I think there were lots of problems with 2020. Ultimately he [Biden] won the election, but there were lots of problems with the 2020 election. I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t. I’m not going to say that.
This is poisonous nonsense, and it is delusional. The 2020 election was, at a technical level across all 50 states, the smoothest presidential election in American history. It was legitimate, honest and lawful. Joe Biden won the election, and did so decisively.
I want you to watch what I said in September of 2020 about what would happen when Trump kept denying an election result. I wondered who would cross the rubicon with him:
Ronna McDaniel made the crossing, and it took her to a land from which there is no return. She betrayed her duty and her country for the sake of her party and a lust for power.
There was no election fraud, but McDaniel poisoned faith and belief in the legitimacy of the result as the leader of the party that elected Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. When it was born in 1854, it was declared to be the “greatest party for freedom the world has ever known” by Horace Greeley, one of its founders.
Trump betrayed the American people and his constitutional oath. Ronna McDaniel betrayed the United States for Trump. NBC News betrayed its standards, credibility, and truth for Ronna McDaniel — to say nothing of the contempt, scorn and hypocrisy in which they drowned their viewers with a hire that the network denounced in one form or fashion every hour of every day for the preceding nine years — until suddenly, according to NBC senior vice president of politics Carrie Budoff Brown:
It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team.
When I read it at first I thought it wasn’t real, but it is.
It made me think about this quote regarding cynicism from Maya Angelou:
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
What an awful moment. What a joke. Truly. The wretchedness of the decision simply beggars belief. In an instant, NBC News immolated its core values. Call it whatever you want, but it’s not journalism.
Who does it help when no one believes in anything and distrusts everything? What happens when there is no ability to discern the difference between the truth and a lie?
Historically, catastrophe happens.
The most nonsensical aspect involved in the decision to hire a political extremist, who tried to overthrow the US Constitution and helped bloody the peaceful transition of power by standing loyally by a man who promises to imprison journalists, opponents and others, while promising retribution and vengeance against all who oppose him, is that MAGA doesn’t need an interpreter.
What insight does Ronna conceivably have that could enlighten anyone about anything? I get it. Who wouldn’t be titillated by finding out what Vivek Ramaswamy had for lunch at the Capitol Hill Club?
By the way, what about the fact that Trump, for whom McDaniel dropped the “Romney” from her name, has been found liable for raping a woman and defaming her? Does NBC News not understand who Ronna McDaniel is, and where she fits into all of this?
Do they not understand that she has been a willing and active participant in smearing NBC News personnel?
Are they unaware of her lying directly and purposefully to the American people about the results of an election in service to Trump over America, reality and basic empirical facts?
What Ronna McDaniel did between this moment and election day 2020 was contemptible, dishonest and wrong. NBC News has rewarded a liar, proving yet again that a fish rots from the head down. In the end, if nothing is real and nothing is on the level then what Trump says becomes true. Doesn’t it? Every single day, Trump slanders truth, and even invented a term of art for it: “fake news.”
Did no one at NBC News understand that he was talking about them because he was afraid of the battle between his lies and the truth? Did no one comprehend that he was attempting to eradicate the ability to discern between the truth and the lie as a tactic to take political power atop an autocratic movement? Well, one thing is for sure now with Ronna on the “team,” the lie and the truth have found a comfortable bed together, and no one can tell them apart anymore. “Fake news” might have been a pretty spot-on brand after all.
VIDEO COMMENTARY: How President Bush could influence the 2024 election
I joined the Scripps News’ “Race Weekend” panel to discuss how the Trump family is controlling the Republican Party, and how George W. Bush could influence the 2024 election:
I do not think George W. Bush is going to push back against Trump. I could be wrong, but I don’t think he will. Dick Cheney plans to vote for Trump. Despite everything that happened with his daughter, he has said he will vote for who ever the Republicans nominate.
Pass the Kool-Aid.
I just read an article, WSJ, where the President of MSNBC stated that there are no plans to have McDaniel on. Along with the big online push back, apparently the “stars” of MSNBC have also been pushing back. Using the phrase “no plans”, versus absolutely not, leaves a bit of an opening. My opinion.
Bush needs to speak up. He probably won’t, but I think he has an obligation to do so.