Where to begin? What a week — and it just started! Is this not the best week in the entire Trump presidency?
1. The Don Lemon Iowa Caucuses
If Don Lemon were in charge of running a Democrat caucus, instead of just shilling for it, the 2020 Iowa caucuses would have been his baby. It took someone that stupid to pull this one off.
On the one hand, I teach my congregation to see the Hand of G-d in everything that unfolds, both macrocosmically and microcosmically. On the other hand, I warn even my rabbinic colleagues always to maintain the humility to remember that we cannot be certain why things happen as they do. We do not know why hurricanes happen as or when they do, why earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, fires, floods, ice storms, or Nancy Pelosi happen. At best and at most, we sometimes perhaps can discern deeper meaning only years or generations later. For example, only now do we grasp that Joseph (of the Bible) was sold into slavery for a deeper forthcoming historical purpose — to lay a framework that would bring Jacob and his small family of 70 people from Canaan into the Land of Egypt, where they would evolve into a nation of millions, isolated in Goshen from the rest of society so that they could develop their own unique culture, language, names, and even clothing. The reason for all that unfolded in Joseph’s life became more clear only over time.
As we now look back on three years of Democrat attacks against fundamentally decent human beings, from Carter Page to Donald Trump, accusing each and every one of them of circumventing democracy and sabotaging American elections, we now see something extraordinary. Call it “the Hand of G-d.” Call it “karma.” Call it “measure for measure.” Call it “Socialism in Action: The Obamacare Website Roll-Out Phase Two.” But we now have seen that the only true sabotage of an American election, perhaps in American history, has been perpetrated by … the Democrat Party, from top to bottom.
More than the way that Hillary Clinton moved money around to the Perkins Coie law firm who hired Fusion GPS who hired Christopher Steele who smeared Russians and compiled the most phony “dossier” of pure garbage …
More than the way that the Democrats stole their 2016 nomination from the communist Bernie Sanders with their unelected “superdelegates” who would assure the Clinton nomination, even as Donna Brazile was on the CNN payroll and secretly and illegally passing along to Hillary advance copies of questions she would be asked during debates …
More than the way that the Democrats now further are trying to steal another nomination from Communist Bernie by changing the debate rules that they would not change for “people of color” like Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Julián Castro but that they gladly will change for billionaire Mike Bloomberg …
The Don Lemon Iowa Caucuses were the promontory point of subverting American democracy and stealing an election. Only an imbecile as low on the Richter Scale of brains as a Don Lemon conceivably could have done this in broad daylight. Let us consider briefly:
Iowa is a very small state. The reason it matters so dearly in presidential politics is that its people represent an important cross-section of middle America — some farmers, some G-d-fearing Christians, some university students, some blue-collar workers who may not have finished high school, some factory workers. Iowans matter, even if their state is small. For many months, therefore, prospective presidential candidates pour millions of dollars into campaigning in Iowa, ahead of the caucuses. They endure countless fairs and eat so much barbecue that the taste becomes less delectable even for those who live on pork and smoked beef. They wake early each morning to meet at coffee shops in cold weather, fielding the same questions. They go to countless public school auditoriums to answer the same questions. And they keep pouring millions into the effort — not only media advertising but assembling teams and campaign staffs throughout the state. It is brutal — but it all matters because the Iowa caucus results can destroy the weakest campaigns immediately (as they did to the faltering efforts of Booker, Harris, Castro, Robert O’Rourke, Kirsten Gillibrand, and the others who saw their polls at zero, even as they sank their millions into breaking through at Iowa).
For those who survived until Monday of Caucus Day, so much was on the line. A solid win for Communist Bernie would catapult him to win New Hampshire. Would Elizabeth Warren survive her collapsing poll numbers sufficiently to manage to limp into New Hampshire, where she at least could hope for a boost from her state’s proximity? In New Hampshire, they actually get Massachusetts television stations, so she hoped she could get some resonance out of Iowa. Buttigieg hoped he could leverage Iowa to raise more money and build a narrative that he is the better option for Biden voters. Biden hoped to emerge with “survival.” Klobuchar, too, hoped Iowa would establish her as the Midwestern alternative to the fading Biden.
And then the Don Lemon Lummoxes blew it. Who ever heard of not being able to report the vote? Even Broward County in Florida, the prior world center of moronic electoral management, always has been able to get out vote counts. Sure, they take too much time, and they had all those chads. But who in America ever heard of a day going by without a clue? The impact and result is that the entirety of the 2020 Iowa caucuses ended up being utterly meaningless. If they ever do get the vote reported, America will have moved on … to the State of the Union … to the Impeachment acquittal … to New Hampshire.
So it was not the Russians, not the Ukrainians, not Carter Page, not Donald Trump. It was the Democrat Party itself that sabotaged the 2020 elections. And now we, too, move on …
2. Tearing Up Over the State of the Union
Maybe President Trump’s State of the Union (SOTU) speech was his best speech ever. Maybe it was just one of his better presidential moments. Certainly, the showmanship and drama was unequaled in American history. If the bat-crazy Democrat women thought they were impacting dramatically last year by all dressing white, they clearly lacked the imagination to understand that the bride does not wear white to two consecutive weddings. This year’s effort to dress uniformly like ghosts lacked drama and seemed to underscore so much about the Democrats: they lack imagination and cannot move forward. Even their own television networks — CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC —did not focus on them. If orange is the new black, white is the old white.
The real drama came from two sources. First, the president and his team put together one tear-jerker of a show. First they tell you about the little Black girl who dreams of getting a decent education outside Philadelphia’s failed Democrat-run public schools. You feel so much for her, but you wonder where this is going. Then you meet her tearing-up Black mother who desperately wants this for her daughter. And then — wow! — Trump picks the gift behind Curtain Three, and the kid gets the education of her dreams. Then they highlight the Boy of Color (Black? Hispanic?) from Arizona who dreams one day of being in the space program or the new U.S. Space Force. OK — cute, sweet. But where is this going? And then they shift over to the boy’s 100-year-old great-grandfather, one of the last surviving Tuskegee Air fighters. And all you can say as you start tearing up is, “Wow!”
And then Rush Limbaugh. A polarizing figure? But he bravely has made public that he is fighting a terrible disease, refusing to wilt, promising to be on air as long as he can, whenever he can in between treatments. And we all nod with gratitude to this great man. But then — wow! — he is being conferred the Presidential Medal of Freedom … and — wow! — right now, right in the middle of the SOTU. We all watched, teary-eyed, as Rush teared up. We all teared up. Next — the mom and kids who have not seen their husband and dad through four tours of duty in a place like Afghanistan. And then — wow! — the guy shows up and kisses the family. And everyone tears up. And the brother of the guy murdered by an illegal alien whom Sanctuary State California protected from ICE apprehension. And the parents of Kayla Mueller learning that the military dedicated the excision of ISIS rapist and terror leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in their daughter’s memory. They tear up — and so do we. And the wife and children whose husband and father never will return because Qassem Soleimani organized the IED roadside bombings in Iraq — until Trump gave the order to eliminate Soleimani from Earth. So much drama. So much tearing up.
And the other one who tore up as the speech ended — Nancy Pelosi tore up the text of that magnificent bipartisan speech that described a booming American economy, lowest-ever unemployment numbers, unprecedented advances in the economy and marketplace for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, women, and the handicapped. Pelosi tore up the text that spoke of the girl who wanted an education, the Black great-grandfather Tuskegee Airman who had fought in three wars, the widows who had lost their husbands fighting for freedom, the permanent federal funding for historically Black colleges. Watching Pelosi meticulously tear up that speech, in several portions because she lacks the arm strength to tear up more than a few pages at a time, brought home how great this week is for President Trump. On Monday, the Democrats sabotage the integrity of the American presidential electoral process, even as Gallup reports highest-ever approval ratings for Trump. On Tuesday, the amazing “Wow!” SOTU speech. On Wednesday, the Senate acquits Trump, throws out the Pelosi Stillborn Impeachment, and perhaps even a Joe Manchin or a Doug Jones defies Schumer and votes with the Republicans. What a week!
Especially significantly, as Pelosi tore up that wonderful speech that tortured her for 90 minutes, she also permanently put the lie to the canard that Donald Trump is not “presidential enough.” What she did was caught on video and never can be escaped: the smallness and pettiness of a very hate-filled, very tired, very defeated San Francisco matron who cannot stand being beaten by someone she deems below her but who actually is many times smarter than she is, many times more likeable than she is — and who, for all his ridiculous nonsense sometimes, is many times more dignified and “presidential” than she ever was or ever can be. For all of America, it was a moment to see what happens when a fairly beaten politician is so consumed by hate that she can do no more than bristle, steam, and tear papers in a hissy fit. At least the speech’s white pages went with her outfit.
On a night of so much tearing up, that final Pelosi denouement was enough for Trump supporters to tear up with tears of joy.
