For the liberal media, any occasion is good if it can be used to bash Donald Trump. And so it was that on Thursday's Morning Joe, historian and occasional Biden speechwriter Jon Meacham used the occasion of December 7th, the 82nd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to draw a strained analogy to the challenge facing America in the face of Trump with call outs to threats to democracy and dictatorship.
Give Meacham credit: the liberal media's Trump = Hitler analogies have become so commonplace that we have largely become inured to them. So, Trump = Hirohito/Tojo might be seen as a refreshing change of villain!
Note that Meacham didn't even find it necessary to call out Trump by name as representing a threat, and a choice, for America analogous to that facing our country at the beginning of WWII. Meacham spoke of the America then being:
"Dragged into a fundamental conflict between democracy and dictatorship, between the Enlightenment and fascism."
And he said that, just as America ultimately made the right choice in waging war against Japan and Germany, so too did he have faith that:
"We, as fallen, frail, and fallible people, can get our own time right."
Regular viewers of Morning Joe know that "fascism" and "fascist" were Joe Scarborough's words of choice when describing Trump. Earlier in Thursday's show, Meacham said he agreed with Chris Christie when, during last night's GOP primary debate, he called on people to take the threat of Trump seriously when he speaks of being a "dictator."
And, of course, there's the liberal media's drumbeat that the election of Trump spells the end of democracy in America. Indeed, just last month we caught Meacham darkly warning that:
"If we lose this [i.e., if Trump wins] it's really hard to see how we get it back--the United States of America."
Note: We include in our video the show's segment-ending clip from FDR's legendary "Day of Infamy" speech. Roosevelt led America down a road toward socialism. But he deserves great credit for his leadership in the face of the Axis powers. Listen to his words, his accent, his cadence. They don't make them quite like that anymore.
Here's the transcript Click "expand" to read:
MSNBC's Morning Joe
12/7/23
6:18 am ETJOE SCARBOROUGH: Jon, there are, are days that forever change America. Of course, September 11th, 2001. November 22nd, 1963. You can draw a line straight through that date and, and write volumes of books about the America before and the America after Kennedy was assassinated.
And of course, December 7th, 1941, perhaps the most momentous date in the 20th century.
. . .
JON MEACHAM: The implications from this date elevated America to an unrivalled, unparalleled, position of power. Imagine four years later, we had the capacity in our hands to destroy human life. We had that much power because of the Manhattan Project.
You had this remarkable, rapid, rise to a dizzying pinnacle of power. But we were dragged into this. We were dragged into a fundamental conflict between democracy and dictatorship, between the Enlightenment and fascism.
We were dragged into it, not only by the Japanese attack today, but five days later, by Adolf Hitler's declaring war on the United States. We did not declare war on Nazi Germany until Nazi Germany declared war on us.
So as Churchill once said, you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, once we've exhausted every other possibility. And I think that that's an important thing for us to remember. Not to, therefore, lower our expectations of ourselves, but to remember that even the greatest generation, as our friend Tom Brokaw called it,
talking about your family, my grandfathers were in the war, even they were not early on this story. They weren't early converts to the defense of democratic values versus the horrors of dictatorship, particularly in Europe. But we got it right.And so what that tells us, seems to me, is that if they got it right—and they were fallen, frail, and fallible people. We, as fallen, frail, and fallible people, can get our own time right.
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.
