Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:29 pm
We saw yesterday how President Barack Obama handled a protester at a Clinton rally in North Carolina, reminding the crowd that the gentleman in question has First Amendment rights, among other things.
Donald Trump, however, speaking at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, “remembers” it differently, claiming Obama screamed at the protester and that it “was a disgrace.”
Here is what President Obama said:
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“First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech, second of all it looks like he may have served in our military, and we’ve got to respect that. Third of all, he was elderly, and we’ve got to respect our elders.”
Yet according to Trump, in defiance of the video evidence, this is how it went down:
“He was talking to the protester, screaming at him, really screaming at him. By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester, they would say, ‘He became unhinged!’ … And he spent so much time screaming at this protester and frankly, it was a disgrace.”
Here is how CBS News’ Sopan Deb captured the incident:
In Hershey, Trump went on a looooong riff on how Obama handled a protester: pic.twitter.com/49AaZY6IlR
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) November 5, 2016
This is remarkable, given Obama’s admonition to the crowd to “Don’t boo, vote.”
Nothing like this happened. None of it. In contrast to Trump, President Obama was reasoned and respectful in his interaction with the protester. There was no screaming involved. Far from screaming, Obama told the crowd to not even boo the man.
What Trump is saying, when the facts are taken into the account, is that President Obama’s defense of a Trump supporter was a disgrace. Which is pretty much how Trump has proven he views facts: as a disgrace.
Donald Trump lives in a reality of his own making, where facts are meaningless. He just invents things out of whole cloth to sell to his audience of rabid haters, who lap up every dishonest word.
Donald Trump just invented an episode for his audience, which has no more interest than their leader in actually learning anything. When Hillary Clinton referred to “deplorables,” this is exactly what she meant.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
