Even when President Trump says the right thing, it’s wrong. Or at least, that’s what the left- reigned media continues to spin. CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote a Monday night article entitled “Donald Trump’s Afghanistan speech ended up being all about Charlottesville” in which he made the grasping claim that President Trump’s patriotic and otherwise Afghanistan-related speech was yet another failed attempt to wash over his supposed white-supremacist agenda.
The video heading the clip published on CNN.com was only a snippet of Trump’s speech which was otherwise completely related to his thoughts and plans about foreign policy and Afghanistan.
Cillizza based his claims about the entire 26-minute speech on a two minute clip, one that does not actually call upon the protests in Charlotte, but rather, offered a positive message about unity and respect among American citizens.
Cillizza decided that this speech is too little, too late. But my question to Mr. Cillizza is: what exactly are you expecting President Trump to do? He has already renounced the hateful acts done in Charlottesville, and now he’s offered a very strong message about the importance of standing together as one country. President Trump stated:
They are bound together by common purpose, mutual trust and selfless devotion to our nation and to each other. The soldier understands what we as a nation too often forget, that a wound inflicted upon on a single member of our community is a wound inflicted upon us all. When one part of America hurts, we all hurt.
And when one citizen suffers an injustice, we all suffer together. Loyalty to our nation demands loyalty to one another. Love for America requires love for all of its people. When we open our hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry and no tolerance for hate. The young men and women we send to fight our wars abroad deserve to return to a country that is not at war with itself at home. We cannot remain a force for peace in the world if we are not at peace with each other.
I could not imagine a more unifying message. However, Cillizza’s leap of an attempt at linking the Afghanistan speech and Charlottesville together is not simply a denial of Trump’s positive message, but it also shows a lack of attention to the other 24 minutes of the speech.
President Trump went on through the speech to make comments on military strategy such as the following:
We must stop the resurgence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten America, and we must prevent nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the hands of terrorists and being used against us or anywhere in the world, for that matter. But to prosecute this war, we will learn from history.
This acknowledgment and condemnation of terrorism was a strong and important stance for Trump to make. By focusing commentary solely on Trump’s past supposed failures, Cillizza and many other liberally twisted news sources have changed the whole meaning of an otherwise very significant speech. Now, rather than actually listening, the majority of news-readers (following CNN and MSNBC) will assume his speech was just another empty gesture.
Cillizza’s article was simply a ploy to flash the spotlight back on anti-Trump rhetoric. The President cannot even talk about the importance of patriotism and unity without being called a neo-Nazi. He simply cannot win. Here’s an another reminder: This speech, while also strongly condemning racism in the U.S., was about Afghanistan.
