If timing is everything, billionaire far-left environmental alarmist Tom Steyer may have been snookered by Fox TV.
Before Sunday night's World Series Game 5 broadcast in at least some TV markets, Fox carried Steyer's unhinged ad demanding President Trump's impeachment. It was soon followed by country music artist Clay Walker's stirring rendition of the National Anthem — and from all appearances, there wasn't a kneeler or a raised fist anywhere in sight on the field at Houston's Minute Maid Park.
The contrast between Steyer's ad the Anthem atmosphere in Houston could not possibly have been more striking, and one would think that it was not helpful for Steyer's cause. Here is Steyer's ad:
Transcript:
He's brought us to the brink of nuclear war, obstructed justice at the FBI, and in direct violation of the Constitution, he's taken money from foreign governments and threatened to shut down news organizations that report the truth.
If that isn't a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous President, then what has our government become?
I'm Tom Steyer, and like you I'm a citizen who knows that it's up to us to do something.
It's why I'm funding this effort to bring our voices together, and demand that elected officials take a stand on impeachment.
A Republican Congress once impeached a President for far less. Yet today, people in Congress and his own administration know that this President is a clear and present danger, mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. And they do nothing.
Join us. Tell your member of Congress that they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what's political, and start doing what's right. Our country depends on it.
There are no "fact checkers" combing Steyer's ad and its claims of Trump has "taken money from foreign governments" (Clinton Foundation, hello?) or that Trump "threatened to shut down news organizations that report the truth." (Let's assume those are the tweets about questioning the FCC license at NBC.)
Here is Walker singing the anthem, beginning just a few words into the song:
The contrast between the virtual depression and near-panic displayed by Steyer and the positive, patriotic atmosphere in Houston is so stark that one would expect that many otherwise politically disinterested viewers will note it. If that timing is what Steyer wanted, it looks to have been a colossal mistake.
Steyer's video appeared elsewhere during the latter part of the past week, and he has "also spent more than $90 million supporting Democrats in the 2016 elections." It's impossible not to notice how the left and the press, after years of complaining about campaign financing and "buying elections," has been nearly silent on the matter for over two years. Of course, that's because its members thought Hillary Clinton's money would put her over the top against Trump. Oops. The left spent oceans of money trying to flip House seats in special elections this year, to little or no avail.
As would be expected, President Trump has reacted sharply to Steyer's ad: "Wacky & totally unhinged Tom Steyer, who has been fighting me and my Make America Great Again agenda from beginning, never wins elections."
The advantage almost certainly goes to the anthem — and indirectly, to Trump, especially given the difference between the conduct of tonight's baseball players and that seem at many National Football League games since Colin Kaepernick started the sitting-kneeling-raised first trend during the 2016 preseason.
Exit question: What are the chances that an ad similar to Steyer's advocating President Barack Obama's impeachment would have been accepted and run by Fox during any World Series game it carried during his administration?
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
