Civility has not proven to be a strong suit for members of the Democratic Party or their friends in the left wing media. From CNN’s Don Lemon comparing President Trump to Hitler to the relentless racial smears on the President and his supporters, the press are the last people who should be lecturing the rest of the country on being cordial.
NBC host Seth Meyers, who has provided rigidly partisan coverage when it comes to the 2020 presidential election, conducted an interview on Monday night’s Late Night with Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker, in which he praised Booker’s use of civility on the campaign trail:
You talk about, in all seriousness, insofar as we talk about politeness, which will be an interesting thing in this campaign going forward. You talk about civic grace and you talk about courageous empathy. Can you speak a little bit to what you mean by those ideas and also the difficulty in expressing those and practicing those at a time where the opponent will likely not be using those.
In response to Meyer’s inquiry of how to maintain a congenial relationship with an opponent in a Presidential Race, Booker’s answer seemed to contradict his “civic grace” strategy:
…..And you know, this- Donald Trump is a guy who, you understand he hurts you and my testosterone sometimes, makes me want to feel like punching him which would be bad for this elderly, out of shape man that he is if I did that. This physically weak specimen. A physically weak specimen but, you see what I'm talking there?
Rather than speaking to the irony of requesting a peaceful, civil campaign while calling the President a “weak specimen” who needs to be beaten, Meyers let Booker lecture uninterrupted.
To close out the interview, Meyers could not resist taking a swipe at the “Grim Reaper” (as he is known to the left), Mitch McConnell.
It does seem like — obviously, it's going to be a difficult undertaking for whoever the nominee is to take back the White House. It might even be more statistically difficult for the Democratic Party to take back the Senate. So let's say your're in the White House, but Mitch McConnell is still running the Senate. Where does — where can you find any optimism to think that you can get something done as long as Mitch McConnell, who has been incredibly effective, no matter what you think about him, effective in sort of having this Republican platform that has been a wall that's been impossible to break through.
A message to the left wing media in regards to their insinuation that President Trump is uncivil; people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Transcript below:
Late Night With Seth Meyers
7/22/19
1:01:31 AM
SETH MEYERS: You talk about, in all seriousness, insofar as we talk about politeness, which will be an interesting thing in this campaign going forward. You talk about civic grace and you talk about courageous empathy. Can you speak a little bit to what you mean by those ideas and also the difficulty in expressing those and practicing those at a time where the opponent will likely not be using those.
CORY BOOKER: Yeah, I mean, look, I was running on an Iowa stage, and we were so psyched. Hundreds of people there. I'm about to jump up and this guy sees me, a former tight end from Stanford University, he's a big guy. He puts his arm around me and he goes "Dude, I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face." And I stop in my tracks and I go "Dude, that's a felony, man." And you know, this- Donald Trump is a guy who, you understand he hurts you and my testosterone sometimes, makes me want to feel like punching him which would be bad for this elderly, out of shape man that he is if I did that. This physically weak specimen. A physically weak specimen but, you see what I'm talking there? Even- that's his tactics and you don't beat a bully like him fighting him on his tactics, on his term, using his turf. He's the body shamer, he's the guy that shows- tries to drag people in the gutter and I — this is a moral moment in America. And to me, what we need from our next leader especially after the time of moral vandalism that we're in now, is we need a leader that is not going to call us to the worst of who we are but call us to the best of who we are.
And we need to be as a party in this moral moment, we need not to talk about what we are necessarily against, but what we're for. And the best way of looking at this is just our history. The gardens of our democracy have never been free of the weeds of bigotry, hatred, demagoguery. Every generation has had them. I literally had one of — an elder friend of mine text me saying, listening to Donald Trump's rally last week, that he was talking- the words he was using reminded him of a George Wallace rally that he watched in black and white. And now it's in living color but how did we beat them before? First of all, don't mistake strength for- to be strong, you need to be mean. We beat Bull Connor, for example, in Birmingham not by bringing bigger dogs and fire hoses and matching his demagoguery with more. But these were incredible artists of activism that called to the moral imagination of a country. That called us to a greater — a revival of that civic grace that pulled black folks and white folks and more folks together that relegated that demagogue to the ash heap of history. We will not beat Donald Trump by trying to be more like him but by showing that we are not like him. We are not weak morally. We are not weak mentally. We're a strong nation and we're a nation that unites.
MEYERS: It does seem like — obviously, it's going to be a difficult undertaking for whoever the nominee is to take back the White House. It might even be more statistically difficult for the Democratic Party to take back the Senate. So let's say your're in the White House, but Mitch McConnell is still running the Senate. Where does — where can you find any optimism to think that you can get something done as long as Mitch McConnell, who has been incredibly effective, no matter what you think about him, effective in sort of having this Republican platform that has been a wall that's been impossible to break through.
