Requiem for a Chair Throw
Donald Trump is barnstorming Indiana with Bobby Knight.
Donald Trump is barnstorming Indiana with Bobby Knight.
Quote:BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
APR 29, 2016
Even at The Other Gig, I thought I was finally done thinking about Bob Knight, the undeniably successful college basketball coach and undeniably misanthropic human being.
But, given the fact that Indiana is relevant to the presidential nominating process for the first time since the campaign of Benjamin Harrison, I once again have to confront the fact that Bob Knight is one of the brightest know-nothings I've ever encountered in my travels.
He honestly believes that his gifts for bullying teenagers translate into a superior knowledge of just about everything. Now, Knight's barnstorming actual barns with He, Trump and visiting upon the land his own unique version of defense policy and military history.
(Warning: TBOTP link. Please walk single-file and stay together. )
http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primar...omb-222595
"We gotta talk about this presidential crap just for a moment here," Knight said. "I'll tell you who they said wasn't presidential. I don't even know what the hell presidential means, but they told him he wasn't presidential.
And that guy they told all these people that wanted to say, you're not presidential, that guy was Harry Truman…And Harry Truman, with what he did in dropping and having the guts to drop the bomb in 1944 saved, saved millions of American lives.
And that's what Harry Truman did. And he became one of the three great presidents of the United States. And here's a man who would do the same thing, because he's going to become one of the four great presidents of the United States."
Well, he's certainly talking presidential crap here.
People were nervous about Truman because very few people knew anything about him, and because FDR had been president forever and because he was now dead, and there still was a world war going on. His being "presidential" was the least of the country's concerns.
I like old Harry, too, but he's not one of the three great presidents of the United States. It didn't take "guts" to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, unless you thought it might not work.
Some physicists working on the Manhattan Project had justifiable qualms, but hardly anybody in the country knew what the atomic bomb was until we dropped one on Hiroshima, and even then, the government worked very hard to suppress the actual facts about the weapon's devastation.
There was no political risk in dropping the bomb at all. And Truman made the decision in 19-freaking-45.
But that's not relevant to the campaign, of course, because he's Bob Knight and this is Indiana, and He, Trump is back running from his wheelhouse again—mongering hate and white people's existential crises and riding the angry wave that refuses to break no matter what he says.
More from TBOTP:
"I don't want to rule out anything. I will be the last to use nuclear weapons," the Republican presidential front-runner told NBC's "Today" at the end of a telephone interview. "It's a horror to use nuclear weapons. The power of weaponry today is the single greatest problem that our world has.
It's not global warming, like our president said. It's the power of weapons, in particular nuclear." Trump continued, "I will be the last to use it. I will not be a happy trigger like some people might be." "I will be the last," he said. "But I will never, ever rule it out."
(Why are these idiots still allowing He, Trump to call in, rather than appearing in person to spoon out this stuff?)
What the hell does this even mean? Are there candidates out there somewhere who aren't "the last to use nuclear weapons"? Does He, Trump know their names and would he like to share them with the rest of the class? Isn't every president since Truman "the last to use nuclear weapons"?
Hasn't every national candidate since Truman—with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater and General Curtis LeMay, who ran with George Wallace in 1968—just allowed the American people to take this particular point for granted?
Isn't the fact that He, Trump felt in necessary to go on the record with this promise precisely the problem with him? C'mon, Bob. In your guts, you know what you know.
Of course, the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Make Believe over at Salon don't see it that way. I make it no worse than 6-5 that they endorse him in November.
1
