Patterico's Pontifications

11/16/2019

Salem Radio Host Fired Mid-Show After Criticizing Trump

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:06 pm



All the Trumpists who denied that I and others were fired from RedState for criticizing Trump can go [expletive deleted] themselves. This is a clear pattern:

Craig Silverman, a former chief deputy district attorney in Denver and talk-show host on the conservative 710 KNUS radio station, said he was fired mid-show Saturday after criticizing President Donald Trump.

Silverman was in the middle of a segment about Roy Cohn, Trump’s former personal attorney, when he suddenly was interrupted by network news, he told The Denver Post.

Silverman’s producer threw his hands up in the air, indicating it wasn’t him.

Instead, program director Kelly Michaels came through the door.

“You’re done,” Silverman recounted Michaels as saying.

. . . .

Silverman’s last segment of the hour, before he was taken off the air, was to “observe how toxic Trump is in Colorado,” he said in a text. “And to continue my show theme today that Democrats are making a strong case at the House impeachment hearing.”

KNUS is a Salem station, just like RedState was (and still is) a Salem property.

Here’s Silverman on Twitter after the firing:

Good for Silverman. [Expletive deleted] Salem.

P.S. I do not think for a moment that government should have any say in decisions like this. But I note the irony that Trumpists who whine like stuck pigs about supposed censorship on Twitter and Facebook will applaud this. Almost like they have no actual principles other than supporting the biggest con man in American history.

Almost!

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

Is Kamala Harris Proof That *Democrats* Aren’t Ready For A Woman Of Color As President?

Filed under: General — Dana @ 10:39 am



[guest post by Dana]

Fixed this for you, ABC News:

Maybe Democrats really aren’t ready for a woman of color to lead. I don’t know, I’m not a Democrat, but I’m not impressed with Harris in the exact same way I’m not impressed with any of the other 312 Democratic candidates running for office: their policies suck.

With that, however, it’s not really difficult to understand that Democratic voters may not favor Kamala Harris because her policy positions don’t fully reflect their own, or maybe her past history as a public official hasn’t inspired trust in her, or perhaps it’s because her continual pandering doesn’t convey any real sense of leadership. The lazy, default assumption by ABC News – that it must be an issue of gender/color keeping Harris from the top-tier – not only insults American voters but it also insults the candidate as well. And by assigning Harris victim status, ABC News is essentially claiming that Democrats are judging Harris on the color of her skin and her gender, and not on the content of her character, the quality of her work, the principles upon which she stands, nor the policies that she is promoting. Reducing Harris’s poor showing to designations beyond her control does not reflect any valuation of her as a determined American who is undertaking a massively difficult task, and instead reflects a blatant stereotyping that should be beneath any serious news organization. If Democrats don’t want Kamala Harris as their nominee, and judging from the polling data they don’t, then why assume it’s because she’s a woman of color? Why not give Democratic voters more credit than that, and why not give a woman of color more credit than that as well? Enough with the projection. After all, if another Democratic candidate, who also happens to be a woman of color, is willing to judge Harris strictly on her merits, how much more so should an allegedly serious and impartial news outlet:

In the July debate, fellow 2020 contender Rep. Tulsi Gabbard took aim at Harris’ record as attorney general of California. Gabbard, the only other woman of color in the race, said Harris “put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so.” The moment helped elevate Gabbard in the polls, and by fall she was outpolling Harris in some battleground states.

P.S. It must come as a shock to ABC News to learn that Democratic voters – including women of color – actually prioritize other things over gender and skin color when making their decisions about which candidate to support:

At the Essence Festival, one of the largest African American events in the country, Harris would double down on her pitch to black voters. But not all black women were on board with Harris. Alicia Jones, a Howard University alumna, told ABC News at the time, “I think that what she did was dirty. And I think she’s way beyond and way above what she did.”

“I felt like it was politicizing,” Jones, an African American, added. “And so at that point, that took the smart person who I thought she was and took it down a couple of notches.”

Jones, who hasn’t finalized her choice for the Democratic primary, told ABC News that race doesn’t play a factor in how she chooses to vote.

“Don’t think that I’m a vote for you just because you’re black,” she said. “I didn’t vote for Barack Obama just because he was black. I voted for him because he was smart. I voted for him because he had a record that showed me the things that he did. It didn’t matter that he was only a senator for five minutes.”

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:40 am



[guest post by Dana]

While this weekend’s open thread is, directly or indirectly, all about Trump (because that seems to be what readers want to talk about), feel free to talk about anything you think is newsworthy or might interest readers.

I’ll start.

First news item: President Trump issues pardons in war crime cases, despite Pentagon’s opposition:

President Trump intervened in three military justice cases involving war-crimes accusations Friday, issuing at least two full pardons that will prevent the Pentagon from pursuing future charges against the individuals involved, according to two of their lawyers and a U.S. official.

The service members involved were notified by Trump over the phone late Friday afternoon, said the lawyers, who represent Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn and former Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL. Golsteyn faced a murder trial scheduled for next year, while Gallagher recently was acquitted of murder and convicted of posing with the corpse of an Islamic State fighter in Iraq.

The third service member involved, former 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, was expected to be released from the U.S. Military Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas as soon as Friday night. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013, and sentenced to 19 years in prison for ordering his soldiers to open fire on three men in Afghanistan.

[…]

The calls were made at the tail end of a day dominated by impeachment hearings against Trump, and after days of efforts by some senior Pentagon officials to change his mind, according to three U.S. officials. The officials, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that some commanders have raised concerns that Trump’s move will undermine the military justice system.

Second news item: The U.S. is calling on Japan to pay way, way more than they already do to keep U.S. troops stationed there:

The Trump administration is demanding Japan pay four times its annual fee to keep U.S. troops stationed there, according to a new report by Foreign Policy. The new agreement, which would take effect in March 2021 would require Japan to pay $8 billion a year to keep 54,000 U.S. troops stationed to help protect that country. John Bolton reportedly made the demand during a state visit last summer when he was Trump’s national security adviser, but Japan only recently confirmed the request, calling it “unrealistic.” Negotiations for the new agreement will begin in early 2020, according to a U.S. State Dept. spokesperson, who told Foreign Policy, “The President has made clear that allies and partners should contribute more to their shared defense,” adding that the U.S. commitment to Japan’s defense was, however, “unwavering.”

Third news item: Kevin D. Williamson on American politics and the impeachment hearings:

The contradiction at the center of American politics in Anno Domini 2019 is this: The ruling class does not rule.

The impeachment dog-and-pony show in Washington this week is not about how Donald Trump has comported himself as president (grotesquely) any more than early convulsions were about refreshed Democratic interest in the Emoluments Clause or the Hatch Act. President Trump is a throbbing irritation to the sensitivities prevailing in ZIP code 94957, but even the impeachment fight is only a skirmish in the tribal proxy war that goes back to the founding of our republic.

[…]

The cultural tug-o’-war over the presidency is the great American tribal competition in its most concentrated form. The metropolitan elites see the opposite tribe as backward, uneducated, superstitious, addled by religion and race hatred; the rustics and conservatives see the metropolitan elites as meretricious, decadent, and somehow less than authentically American. The question that has occasioned the impeachment of Donald Trump is not whether the president is legitimate but whether his tribe is legitimate. When the rival tribe is understood as being fundamentally illegitimate, then no government arising from that tribe can be understood as legitimate, either, and neither can the political processes that empower that tribe over its rivals.

Fourth news item: President Trump this morning:

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

Have a great weekend.

–Dana


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0665 secs.