There were two comments yesterday that were both thoughtful, profound and remarkable. And what's fascinating is that they were both from guests on the Deadline: White House show with Nicolle Wallace.on MSNBC, and were on the same panel and came within five minutes of each other.
The first was the most moving of the day -- reporter Sam Stein was called on the talk next, and he somewhat jokingly asked for a pass, not wanting to come after that. It was from Eddie Glaude, a professor of African-American history at Princeton.
I haven't found a video that I can embed here for the other person, but I'll post a link to him. It was from former Republican congressman David Jolly, and came just five minutes after Glaude's words above. It was quite a panel. (The two in between were impressive, as well, the aforementioned Sam Stein and Paul Reyes of USA Today.) But it was Eddie Glaude and David Jolly who served as the high-end beacons. You figured that after Glaude's words, that would be the high-water mark -- even Stein didn't want to go next -- but if Jolly didn't top him, he was as impressive an eloquent and scathing bookend. was finished, host Nicolle Wallace's words to him were, "You take my breath away.
You can watch it here. A few thoughts related to all this -- The thought that hit me last night was that in times like these, the nation always looks to the president for comfort and solace – yet here, that president is one of the perpetrators. El Paso has even said they don’t want him there. And related to this was a thought while watching the 2-hour special MSNBC had last night. There was a statement Rachel Maddow made that may have been the most notable of everything I heard yesterday. When introducing Sen. Chris Murphy, she said that they invited 30 Republican senators to come on…and none of them accepted. None. It reinforced in my mind that whoever is the Democratic nominee should perhaps make this – the safety of America, and the abrogation by Trump and the GOP – one of their top issues. Same with every Democrat running in any national election. Republicans are completely freaked, almost paralyzed with how to respond to this, which is why Democrats should make this a major issue. Republicans don’t want to talk about it. And they can’t really talk about it. So, Democrats should hammer them on it. And if Republicans say out of desperation that “You’re making politics out of a tragedy,” then Democrats should answer, “Yes!! Because this is about politics. This is about you Republicans refusing to act on gun safety, and so we have gun massacre after gun massacre after gun massacre. And the only way this will be dealt with is POLITICS. So, folks, vote them out of office. We in the Democratic Party are not beholden to the NRA and Trump. You literally put us all at risk. And it's not because of an email. It's because of gun massacres and caving in to Russia.”
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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