An unlikely source
Melania Trump has returned to campaigning for her owner husband. She’s chosen a theme: bullying. She’s against it.
Melania Trump returned from political exile on Thursday by making a rather eyebrow-raising claim: as first lady, she would combat bullying. That anti-bullying campaign, however, likely wouldn’t extend to her husband.
“Our culture has gotten too mean and too violent,” the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a crowd here in the suburbs of Philadelphia. “It is never OK when a 12-year-old girl or boy is mocked, bullied or attacked. It is terrible when that happens on the playground and it is unacceptable when it’s done by someone with no name hiding on the internet.”
If she really thinks that, she made a very bad marital choice. She’s married to the worst public bully I’ve ever seen in action – the.very.worst.
She’s been away until now, Eliot Nelson notes.
Her absence made the peculiar focus of her address all the more perplexing. Her husband has become infamous for his bullying ― both online and in person ― of virtually anyone who appears to oppose him. In fact, the National Education Association recently began a campaign to raise awareness of a “Trump effect,” in which children feel emboldened by the candidate’s behavior to engage in bullying.
The link under infamous for bullying is to that NY Times collection of his bullying tweets. I’m sure you remember just how extensive it is.
“We’ve seen this already,” Melania Trump said Thursday. “As adults, many of us are able to handle mean words, even lies.” (This very week, a social media campaign, #ImWithTur, has sprung up as a defense of NBC News reporter Katy Tur, whom the Republican nominee singled out for mockery during a speech in Miami on Wednesday.)
Trump also bemoaned that children are often picked on for their “looks or intelligence” ― even though her husband frequently attacks people based on those characteristics.
She’d probably better stay away from him for a few days.
Standard diversionary tactics. Focus on these other bullies, over here, the ones hurting children. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
I think that someone should splice the footage of Trump making fun of the reporter with the disability affecting his arms with her speech against bullying.
I heard Katy Tur on NPR today. She said that the Trump people require that the MSNBC camera stay on Trump—this is the camera Trump is excoriating Tur for not training on the crowds at the rallies. “She won’t show how big my audiences are! She’s bad!”
I think she means people who are bullying and mean to Trump.
So is that an admission that Trump is immature and childish?
This is a known technique; take your weakness and project it onto your opponent. “I’m not a bully, YOU’RE a bully.”
This sort of through-the-looking-glass shit makes me grind my teeth.
Pity Leni Riefenstahl is not still around; she was pretty good at showing the size of crowds.