Photo © 2016 Paul L. Gleiser
Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 1/20/17
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Despite cries from the left that his victory is not legitimate, Donald Trump will take the oath of office at 11:00 a.m. Texas time Friday morning and in that moment become the 45th President of the United States. Five hundred eighty-four days ago, no one thought such a moment would ever come. It was June 16, 2015 when Donald Trump rode the escalator down into the lobby of his headquarters building in New York City and announced his candidacy.
Nearly every political expert, pundit, TV network, newspaper editorial board and political party insider dismissed the announcement as either complete farce or, at best, a brilliant publicity stunt. The most common reaction to Trump’s announcement was derisive amusement. Almost no one gave Trump a chance. (One notable exception was Ann Coulter, who three days after Trump’s announcement, nailed it.)
Election Day shocked nearly everyone. Hillary Clinton and her team, together with essentially every legacy TV network and cable news network reporter, went into the evening hours of November 8 convinced of a Clinton victory.
That’s when the vast heartland of the American continent found its voice.
Many in the lefty chattering class, still in shock, have been openly questioning the “legitimacy” of the election. They nearly always cite the fact that Hillary won the popular vote by some 2.8 million votes – a number that sounds meaningful until you look one level deeper.
Donald Trump’s victory was, in the only sense that matters when it comes to picking a president, massive.
Trump won the majority of the votes in 2,600 counties across the United States as compared to Hillary Clinton’s majorities in just 500. On a geographic basis, Trump was selected over Clinton in 84 percent of the country.
But for 88 of the 100 most populous counties out of more than 3,100 in the U.S., Donald Trump would have beaten Hillary Clinton by more than 11 million votes. (Did Russian ‘hacking’ really change the minds of 11 million voters?)
Hillary Clinton won by a huge margin in New York City. But she lost most of the rest of the State of New York. She won the area immediately surrounding Detroit. But she lost most of the rest of Michigan. The same can be said of Chicago vs. the rest of Illinois, Seattle vs. the rest of Washington and Portland vs. the rest of Oregon.
The only state in which Hillary Clinton won a significant number of counties not anchored by large urban metros is California.
If you look at a county-level electoral map of the United States, you see scattered lakes and rivers of blue, next to or surrounded by an ocean of red.
Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton because most of the people in most of the counties in most of the states in the union made it clear that they were fed up.
Donald Trump won a massive victory and it remains to be seen what he will do with it. But one thing is certain – Trump’s victory could not be more legitimate.
Never, in all my life, have I seen such childish behavior from grown people as with this democratic party.
There weren’t riots in the streets when obama stepped into the oval office, we didn’t like it, but we didn’t throw temper tantrums as these liberals have. Trump WON FAIR AND SQUARE. Hillary LOST. No one helped her lose, she lost this race herself and herself alone. Her CRIMINAL behavior from way back caused her defeat. That alone is hillary’s fault. No one made her be dishonest but hillary. I believe she knows what is right and what is wrong. It was HER choice to do wrong. Trump was saying what each one of us either had been saying or wanted to say. In my humble opinion, the way hillary clinton has been acting shows more than ever we made the right choice in TRUMP. The immature way of her actions shows she was not fit to run the whitehouse.
AGREED.
Donald Trump is indeed without question, the legitimately elected 45th President of The United States of America. “The People” have spoken, and according to “our voice” as guaranteed under our Constitution by our Founding Fathers, every person, every county, every state has made that fact known — there is no one who can dispute it.
This exceedingly meaningful information will NEVER be reported by the liberal east nor west coast media. Point well taken, Sir Paul.
Love your talks! Met you once at Keipersol with Pierre. What an amazing man, so sorry we lost him so terribly early.
Don’t stop now just because Trump won. We need to break the awful boycotts, protests, and lies that abound.
Somehow we need to join hands and work together to get the country truly back on its feet.
Keep up the good work!
Trump got elected alrighty.
Now it’s showtime.
And fellow Texan Dan Rather is among those taken-aback by debut weekend:
“These are not normal times. These are extraordinary times. And extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
When you have a spokesperson for the president of the United States wrap up a lie in the Orwellian phrase ‘alternative facts…’
When you have a press secretary in his first appearance before the White House reporters threaten, bully, lie, and then walk out of the briefing room without the cajones to answer a single question…
When you have a President stand before the stars of the fallen CIA agents and boast about the size of his crowds (lies) and how great his authoritarian inaugural speech was….
These are not normal times.
The press has never seen anything like this before. The public has never seen anything like this before. And the political leaders of both parties have never seen anything like this before.
What can we do? We can all step up and say simply and without equivocation. ‘A lie, is a lie, is a lie!’ And if someone won’t say it, those of us who know that there is such a thing as the truth must do whatever is in our power to diminish the liar’s malignant reach into our society.
There is one group of people who can do a lot – very quickly. And that is Republicans in Congress. Without their support, Donald Trump’s presidency will falter. So here is what I think everyone in the press must do. If you are interviewing a Paul Ryan, a Mitch McConnell, or any other GOP elected official, the first question must be ‘what will you do to combat the lying from the White House?’ If they dodge and weave, keep with the follow ups. And if they refuse to give a satisfactory answer, end the interview.
Facts and the truth are not partisan. They are the bedrock of our democracy. And you are either with them, with us, with our Constitution, our history, and the future of our nation, or you are against it. Everyone must answer that question.”
Hmmm, I have hard time trying to figure out if you are with us or against us.
Is this fellow Texan, Dan Rather, the same one who was fired for his “extraordinary journalism”? It would seem that the argument would be better supported by citing a more credible source. The size of the comparative crowds and enthusiasm for President-elect Obama and President-elect Trump is difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy, unless variables like the identical times of the two photos, weather forecast, and available space for crowd occupancy are considered. I would reserve the charge of lying to the false reporting that Mr. Trump removed the Rev. Martin Luther King bust sculpture from the oval office. In case anyone would like to recall, the American people were treated with some real doozies from EX-pres.Obama; does anyone remember the infamous: “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? How about the intrepid Hillary dodging sniper fire? I am reserving my opinion about the effectiveness of the Trump administration until he has had a chance to implement the policies that he outlined in his campaign; only a partisan hack would do otherwise. Most Americans are refreshed by the willingness of the representatives of this new administration to push back against the dishonesty and power of the entrenched political and media establishments. For too long, conservatives have attempted to gain favor from the media by allowing their prejudiced reporting to go unchallenged; this lack of “cajones” only made things worse, not better. The media and the American people definitely need to hold this president accountable, and if he does not perform in the best interest or our country, let us vote him out in 2020! I think that we can expect that the mainstream media will now begin to fill their constitutional role as watchdogs, and not the lapdogs that they have been for the last eight years.
Wonderful message Paul. Having taught American Government, various history courses, and economics on both the secondary and college level, it distresses me that people continue to be so ignorant of what is actually happening. All of this harping about popular vote vs. electoral college could be cleared up IF people would simply study the issue. But NO!! They would rather argue about points that they really know nothing about. It’s a sad commentary of where we are as a nation. Also, we must get back to teaching a full spectrum of the social studies. Much instructional time is now devoted to the state mandated test which is focused primarily upon math and English knowledge.
TELL TRUMP willya?
Again today Trump – the winner – contested election results, while GOP congressional voices say “Stop!”
LOVED hearing this on the radio today!!! Thank You!