Trump Ad Praises POTUS for Non-Achievements
Every time I see a new piece of propaganda from the right, I’m astounded at just how detached from reality and deliberately delusional it is. This Christmas Turd from the beginning of the year is no exception. Here ya go:
Oooookay!
That’s a lot of ‘thank yous’ for a grand total of seven whole ‘accomplishments’ (okay, twelve ‘thank yous’ to be specific).
Fawning over Trump? Check.
Praising Trump? Check.
Thanking Trump? Check.
Fellating Trump like a prawn fisherman trying to hook ‘Moby Shrimp’ by reading Shel Silverstein to it? Jumbo Check.
Let’s unpack this putrid haul of half-rotten rhetoric coated in simple rosy prose.
The first quarter of the ad is a textbook Marketing 101 tactic for building a ‘positive message’. That message? “Thank you Trump!”.
That’s it. The purpose of this is obviously to prep the audience and make them receptive to the coming bullshit. That’s super-easy to do when you know your market. Now that the audience just can’t wait to know what wonderful things Trump has done, the bullshit may commence!
“Thank you for cutting my taxes!” Says the actor dressed as a regular working class guy. Yeah, that working class guy is going to get a cut of possibly 1.2%, which will hardly offset his costs when he needs Medicare, or his kids need student loans, should he ever become disabled, has children to begin with, or when his new tax schedule expires.
Let us also not forget the 1.5 TRILLION DOLLARS this tax bill will add to the deficit over the next ten years… that the middle class will ultimately pay for when they lose the tax breaks that the millionaires, billionaires, and corporations get to keep.
Yeah… giving a pittance to the middle class while the rich take the lion’s share of the loot is kind of like them throwing five bucks to the security guard to look the other way while they rob the bank.
And to further and quite literally illustrate the point:
Suckers.
The next piece of vacant praise is another actor playing a “working class” white guy who says, “Thank you for fixing our economy.”
First of all, no President can single-handedly ‘fix the economy’. What a President does is try to implement policies and ask for legislation that might, in theory, help the economy. This happened about nine years ago when Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Regardless of whether one agrees that this act was effective, it preceded a remarkable turnaround in the struggling economy from the year before. That Trump started taking credit for the continued economic growth from before he even took office, it’s evident that neither he, nor his supporters understand how the economy works.
So Trump spent a whole year taking credit for a rising market. Okay, he can own that. Then a funny thing happened: on Monday, February 5th, 2018, after a rough Friday the 3rd for the market, the DJIA took the sharpest point drop in history. It came down 1,175 points, or 4.6%.
What did trump have to say about that?
“Are you guys okay in there?”
Then, at 00:12, the actress and third-string Martha Stewart stunt double says : “Thank you for keeping my family safe”
How has Trump ‘kept our families safe? By preventing historically crime-free, non-violent refugees from entering the country? By arresting and deporting perfectly productive members and contributors to communities… with no criminal records? By installing anti-education, pro-pollution, and pro-incarceration swamp monsters throughout his administration? By giving himself and his cabinet massive tax breaks? Or was it by playing more golf in his first year than any President in history that we know of?
That’s like saying you ‘kept your family safe’ by burning all your books in the family room, turning away the fire department, kicking out your valedictorian kids, and binging on beer and Cheetos. Yes… it makes about that much sense.
So what has Trump done to ‘make our families safe’ that wasn’t extant when he took office?
Where’d the crickets go?
Then a senior black actor: “Thank you for putting America first.”
Okay, so Trump is the first president ever to take an oath that goes something like:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
No, not really. And let’s just forget for the moment that “America First” was an anti-semitic, pro-fascist US committee and just move on.
No. Every single one of Trump’s predecessors, regardless of whether people thought otherwise, ‘put America first’. Yes, nearly every President with few exceptions has fucked up and done something that ultimately worked against us. You know, like Vietnam, NAFTA, Iraq, The Patriot Act… it’s a long list and we could spend months nitpicking screw-ups. But the records of every President demonstrate that for the most part they intended to uphold their duty to the country.
But how did Trump ‘put America first’ in ways that his predecessors did not? Was it by picking a playground brawl with Kim Jong Un? Was it by snubbing our allies? Embarrassing himself in front of the world? Pulling out of the TPP? Well, at least on its face, that last one might not be a terrible thing.
Well… he knows how to put himself first, at least.
But aside from the abandonment of the TPP, how has Trump ‘put America first’?
By changing the GOP platform to leave The Ukraine more vulnerable to Russia?
By refusing to continue sanctions on Russia for its aggression in Crimea?
By letting Russian manipulation of our elections go unanswered?
By stopping a program to arm rebels against a Russian ally?
By leaking classified information to Russian spies in the Oval Office?
Hmmmm…..
“Россия первая!”
Okay then, speaking of ‘putting America first’…
“Thank you for supporting Israel.” Says the actress and part time daytime TV judge.
Umm… okay, Israel is a US ally and essential Middle Eastern strategic asset that all modern presidents more or less supported. Not too much to complain about there. Except for the part where Trump decided to unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel against all sound foreign policy and despite heavy contention over the city’s status as BOTH the capital of Israel and Palestine.
This ‘supports’ Israel the same way giving crack cocaine to two UFC fighters gives your favorite one of them an ‘advantage’. Declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel just set any chance at peace backwards.
“Good thinking, bruh.”
But here’s a winner: ”As veterans, thank you for reminding us to stand for our national anthem.”
Since when did anyone need ‘reminding’ to stand for the national anthem? The vast majority of people who grew up in the US did so standing for the anthem. Let’s take this at face value and say that Trump, while giving a speech, or in the SOTU, or while placing an order for 2 Quarter Pounders, a large fry, 3 apple pies and a diet Coke at the drive through said, “Remember to stand for the anthem.”
“Should I also not stick my dick in a light socket?”
We kinda know this already. Funny how the ad makes it sound like Trump is just trying to get Americans to show proper respect as though they somehow simply ‘forgot’ that’s what you do when The Star Spangled Banner plays. But we know what the ad is referring to. It’s referring to the football players who kneel in protest during the anthem due to the fact that in the US, people of color are far more likely to be harassed, incarcerated, or killed than white people for the exact same behaviors. Sure, you want to say, “Well, black people commit more crimes!” For those of us who are not racist, you basically just said that you didn’t understand the part about “for the exact same behaviors”… also; you just admitted that you’re racist, at least to yourself.
So what they’re really saying is, “Thank you President Trump for putting uppity negroes in their place.” It’s probably not an accident that the couple in that particular clip is just the right shade of suburban lily-white.
Yes, how DARE someone exercise their constitutionally protected right to protest a demonstrable injustice in the nation while being black.
But how embarrassing would it be to have to actually be reminded to show respect during the anthem?
So what do we have in this “Thank You Trump” video? A whole bunch of empty praise for things that Trump either didn’t do or were already there to begin with. There are examples of Trump being divisive over the Israel/Palestinian conflict and race here in the US… and being praised for it. And of course there’s a little bit of acclaim for Trump just barely doing his job. It’s the equivalent of thanking a fisherman for leaving the bones in the fish, or thanking one’s parents for raising them ‘safely’ in a closet without spraying insecticides into it, or even thanking a zoo keeper for using steel bars, taking care of the animals, and not feeding small children to the snow leopards.
“Whatwasthatyousaidaboutchildren?”
Is there anything that could possibly make this video more obsequious, trite, or facile?
.
.
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“Thank you President Trump for letting us say ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”
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