Mediaboss Marketing

It was, by far, Donald Trumps best, most optimistic, State of the Union speechthe kind of speech we can expect to see clips of in his re-election adsthe kind of speech that would be considered good even without the qualifier for Donald Trump at the end.

Of course everyone didnt think soa number of Democrats walked out, and Nancy Pelosi pointedly tore it up for the cameras to see after he finished. But even with all that, if the goal were to reset the narrative and take advantage of the debacle in Iowa and the end of impeachment (without explicitly saying so), Trump was successful. He had a lot to work with, stressing a strong economy and low unemployment rateand the killing of some prominent, high-value terrorists.

But he also also touted accomplishments on issues with broad, bipartisan appeal, such as criminal justice reform, paid family leave, and opportunity zones. These are feel-good issues that Trump (due to his penchant for distracting us with insane tweets) doesnt get enough credit for.

Conspicuously, there was lots of outreach to African-Americans, both in terms of rhetoric regarding policy goals and achievements, and via special guests sitting in the gallery.

Coming on the heels of his Super Bowl ad, this was clearly not an accident. As The New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat put it in a mid-speech tweet, Theme of the speech so far: Somebody at the White House thinks Trump can win more African-American votes in 2020.

Whether Trumps numbers crunchers really believe he can peel off African-Americans, or whether the real goal is to make suburban whites more comfortable with voting for Trump, we are witnessing what seems to be a significant moment: Trump is actually in the business of addition.

Think of it. For three years now, his strategy has been entirely based on energizing his base. For the first time, it seems, we are seeing a campaign that is attempting to add to the Trump coalition.

Not only was the speech an opportunity for Trump to do some outreach (as well as recount the usual laundry list of successes and promises), but it was a trap for Democrats, who had to choose between applauding the president they just impeached versus refusing to applaud talk about a good economy. This was basically a no-win scenario for them.

During one moment, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema was shown delivering a standing ovation to good news about unemployment, while Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand sat on their hands. Another example was when representatives including Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar reportedly did not stand to honor a former Tuskegee airman.

Thats not to say that Trump didnt occasionally play some of his greatest hits. One gets the sense that Stephen Miller got to ad a few lines, toward the end. This created some contradictions. Trumps talk about building an inclusive society was considerably undermined by his reversion to harsh rhetoric about walls and illegal aliens.

Though there was much less fan service than we are used to hearing from Trump, there was something for everybody, including fans of Rush Limbaugh, who was recognized and given a Congressional Medal of Honor in the gallery. This probably struck many as an intensely partisan move (imagine Obama having Michelle pin a Medal of Freedom on Al Sharpton), but the fact that Limbaugh was just diagnosed with advanced lung cancer made it more palatable.

For the first time, it seems, we are seeing a campaign that is attempting to add to the Trump coalition.

Trump also appeared to take a veiled swipe at Bernie Sanders. During a section of the speech that included welcoming the true and legitimate President of Venezuela, Juan Guaid, Trump declared that Socialism destroys nations. But always remember, freedom unifies the soul.

One had the sense that this wasnt just an attack on socialists from Venezuela, but also, a reminder that we have our very own from Vermont.

Still, putting aside that clever swipe at Bernie, and although he apparently snubbed Speaker Nancy Pelosis attempt to shake hands, Trump somehow stuck to the script, resisting what must have been an almost irresistible urge to ad-lib about impeachment, his approval numbers, or the Dems Iowa disaster.

At one point early in the night, Republicans in the chamber broke out with cheers of, Four more years! It was something that I have never witnessed in all my years of watching State of the Union addresses.

Yes, it was a sign of our partisan times. But If Trump can continue to stick to the script for the rest of this campaign (a very tall order), it will also be prophetic.

Continue reading here:
Whoa, Donald Trump Just Gave a Genuinely Good Speech - The Daily Beast

Author and columnist Mark Steyn toldTucker Carlson TonightThursday that the ironic fact lost in the firestorm surroundingSen. Mitt Romneys vote to convictPresident Trump of abuse of power this weekis that Romneyis the reason Trump is in the White House.

Steyn told host Tucker Carlson that Romney never punched back when attacked by the media or Democrats during his failed 2012 bid for the presidency.

When voters took note of that habit, they wanted a candidate who would do the exact opposite and not bow to the opposition when attacked. Those voters, Steyn said, gravitated toward Trump when he appeared on the scene.

TRUMPS POST-ACQUITTAL SPEECH BASHED BY MAINSTREAM MEDIA: THIS IS REALLY CRAZY

In 2015, theRepublican base decided thatthe essential quality theywere looking for was someonewho didnt let himself getslapped around by [CNNs] CandyCrowley as Mitt did in that [second 2012] debate, Steyn said. If Mitt doesnt like Trump,Mitt, look in the mirror,you are the reason forTrump.

Steyn and host Tucker Carlson listed several instances whenRomney wasnowhere near the good graces of the left, where he currently finds himself.

Pundits like Donny Deutsch, Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton slammed Romney during the 2012 campaign. Additionally, then-Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., claimed Romney didnt pay his taxes, and was nonchalant about the claim when it was revealed to be a false accusation.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Mitt was calledeverything that Trump iscalled:Racist, sexist, binders fullof women,doesnt pay his taxes, [is a] vampire capitalist who fliesin your window and gives youcancer, Steyn added before remarking thatRomneys vote appeared to give Matthews leg tingles he hasnt had since Obama.

The MSNBC host memorably claimed then-Sen. Obama gave him a thrill going up [his] leg as he and then-anchor Keith Olbermann were discussing the Illinois Democrats primary victories in early 2008.

Read the original post:
Mark Steyn to Mitt Romney: 'Look in the mirror, you are the reason for Trump' - Home - WSFX

Featured photo by Ciara Kelley

You ask yourself whether there is authenticity in the voice of the person you are listening to, said Danny Glover at the Greensboro Coliseum Special Events Center on Saturday, Feb. 1. The actor and activist toldYES! Weeklythat he recognized that quality the first time, he spoke to Bernie Sanders, which is why Glover campaigned as a surrogate for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 and is doing so again in 2020.

Presidential surrogates, meaning celebrities or public figures speaking for candidates on the campaign trail, date back at least to 1860, when the Hutchinson Family, the eras most popular American singing group, stumped for Abraham Lincoln with speeches as well as songs about abolition and preserving the union. In the 19th century, it was considered unseemly for a candidate for the nations highest office to campaign for himself.

Despite the Hutchinsons, most surrogates were politicians rather than celebritiesat least until 1916, when Babe Ruth campaigned for Woodrow Wilson. Of course, the taboo against presidential candidates campaigning for themselves vanished many decades before the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who has since spent almost as much time rallying the faithful as playing golf. Despite this, surrogates are more common than ever.

Glover toldYES! Weeklythat he began campaigning with Sanders in late 2015, and spent most of the winter and spring of 2016 as Sanderss surrogate, concentrating on North and South Carolina.

When I started, Bernie was not yet a household name, at least not then, when the news cycle was dominated by the image of Mrs. Clinton, and before, her, Obama, but I knew about him well before then.

Glover may be best known as Roger Murtaugh, Mel Gibsons long-suffering partner in theLethal Weaponaction film franchise, but has won acclaim for performances inThe Color Purple,To Sleep With Anger,Witness, Places in the Heart,andThe Royal Tenenbaums, as well as the T.V. mini-seriesLonesome DoveandMandela, receiving an Emmy nomination for his title role in the latter.

But he was a city administrator and community developer before he became an actor, and the son of postal workers active in the NAACP and the Civil Rights Movement, which led to his own activism, both as a student and afterward. While attending San Francisco State University, he took part in the five-month walk-out that was the longest student strike in American university history, and which helped to create not only the first Department of Black Studies but the first School of Ethnic Studies in the United States.

Im a product of movements, Glover toldYES! Weekly, both as a beneficiary of the civil rights struggle, and as someone who was a student activist in the late-60s. And as someone who has long been involved in such struggles, whether anti-colonialism or the end of Apartheid or opposition to other ways of subjugation, I recognized something in listening to Bernie.

Glover said that what he recognized was a voice that was reshaping and elevating the narrative that I and so many others were looking for, which we had not heard in the voices of Obama and Hillary Clinton.

He acknowledged that Obama and the Clintons fought for affordable health care. But the struggle for universal health care is a very old one, going back to Eleanor Roosevelt, and in its early 21st-century incarnation, it was compromised to death.

The question now, he continued (ignoring the hand signals of the person motioning to him to end the interview), is where do we now take this movement and moment, because what has always happened is that the demand for change always outweighs the accepted notions of change. The demand is so strong, but there are so often compromises within the demand, and when youve got someone in a place who is able to talk about what we need, as opposed to what we can get, theres a different kind of framework. Youve elevated peoples expectations, but at the same time, you put what I call wholesome pressure on the system, pressure to make the requisite changes that are necessary. And I saw that Bernie was that wholesome pressure.

The person gesturing to Glover shifted from winding-down to cut-off motions, but Glover kept speaking. If were going to carry these, were going to have to be right here talking; whether were young, whether weve been disenchanted with the processes in the Democratic Party, wherever we are, were going to talk about those issues and have great expectations not only of Bernie but of ourselves.

Glover was in Greensboro, attending the International Civil Rights Center and Museum Gala honoring the 60-year anniversary of the Greensboro Sit-In, where he was to be presented with the Trailblazer Award. Other awardees included Al Sharpton (Lifetime Achievement), Clayola Brown (Unsung Hero), and Rev. Dr. Cardes H. Brown, Jr. (Lifetime Community Service).

When the Bernie Sanders campaign reached out to the press and offered individual interviews with Glover, it was requested that questions be confined to the Sanders campaign and the award ceremony. Due to Glover being called to that ceremony earlier than expected,YES! Weeklywas not able to ask him about the award or the Sit-In, but he did stay long enough to answer a difficult question, despite the insistence that he was needed elsewhere: Had Sanderss position on racial inequality evolved since 2016? Some criticized the candidates seeming belief that class issues trumped racial ones, particularly after Sanderss former chief of staff Hank Guttman told NPR that, Bernies central concern has always been with the condition of what he calls working-class families and has never been war or civil rights or gay rights or womens rights.

Im not so familiar with that, Glover said, but I know if Bernie said those words directly, he would have since modified that position. He certainly has in his current campaign, where he has talked about the issues of race and his relationship with race and everything that surrounds that. I think that whats important is that race is pivotal to the issue right here. You cant construct an idea around change without entering in the factor of this countrys racial injustice. Its virtually impossible. If thats what some people thought he said, thats a whole other thing, but certainly, the whole issue is about race as well as class.

Ian McDowell is the author of two published novels, numerous anthologized short stories, and a whole lot of nonfiction and journalism, some of which hes proud of and none of which hes ashamed of.

Read the rest here:
Danny Glover on the authenticity of Bernie Sanders - Yes! Weekly

Mr. Tusk, who now runs a political consulting firm, Tusk Strategies, believes that Mr. Donovan would have a hard time winning the coming race.

He has no name ID, Mr. Tusk said. Its hard to see how marshaling institutional support would really make a difference.

Is he a top-tier candidate? Mr. Tusk said. No. Is there a clear viable path? Not really. Would he be good at the job, yeah. (Mr. Tusk said that one of his associates was informally advising Mr. Johnson.)

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil-rights leader whose support many of the Democrats running for mayor are seeking, said that Mr. Donovan had called him on Sunday to inform him of his plans.

The Obama thing is going to work for him, but the Bloomberg thing is going to be questioned, Mr. Sharpton said.

By the time Mr. Bloomberg left office after 12 years, the issue of income inequality had become weighty enough to help pave the way for the election of Mr. de Blasio, Mr. Bloombergs ideological opposite. (Bill Hyers, who managed Mr. de Blasios first mayoral run, is now a senior adviser to Mr. Donovan; Rick Fromberg, who managed Mr. de Blasios re-election campaign, is also working with him.)

Im proud that when given a chance to serve the city, I stepped up to do that, Mr. Donovan said.

Mike and I didnt agree on everything, he added, while saying, I think my alignment with President Obama, whether its criminal justice or a range of other areas, is very, very strong.

Read the rest here:
He Worked for Obama and Bloomberg. Could He Be N.Y.C.s Next Mayor? - The New York Times

Come on, guys, we all know that Mayor Pete doesnt come out on top, no matter what the internet says. The dwarf from South Bend is already claiming victory in the disastrous Iowa caucus debacle, but there is absolutely no way Mayor Pete is a viable candidate for the Democratic party for one glaring reason: blacks.

Mayor Pete doesnt even register on polls among black Democrats. Thats 0 percent support. In order to show how down with the struggle Mayor Pete is, hes posed for the cameras with fried chicken and Al Sharpton, drank malt liquor from a brown paper bag on the streets of Inwood, attended black churches in the Carolinas, and sent out surveys to his staff about microaggressions. White people were prohibited from filling out the survey. But black people still arent buying what Mayor Pete is selling.

His offensive and egregious pandering, which only shows how truly out-of-touch he is with the actual realities and struggles of the black community, reached its zenith last night. He staged a scene at campaign HQ stacking the entire front row of the crowd with the only five black people he could find, putting a woman wearing some sort of African-inspired, flowy garb and a headscarf standing the Pete 2020 podium. Back of the bus for you, whites.

It doesnt get more racist and grislier than Mayor Petes push for black votes. He thinks black people are stupid. He thinks he can con them with actors and photo ops. If he was in touch with blacks at all, hed be able to talk about his record in South Bend, which has a large and decimated black community and where nothing improved under his watch. It would have been remarkable if Pete turned around black decay as mayor. Hed be the only Democrat in history to have done so, and it would make him worthy of a White House bid, or at least some national attention. Instead, his sex life is the only reason we know his name. And blacks still arent buying it.

The reason is probably one that Democrats might find distressing. According to one Georgia State University researcher, somewhere between 60 and 75 percent of blacks think homosexuality is wrong. By comparison, only 59 percent of Republicans think the same: Im one of them and Im gay.

The black population of Iowa is 3.4 percent. Its one of the whitest places in the country. And even white Iowa Democrats arent so onboard with Petes lifestyle choice. In a viral video from caucus night, one Iowan who cast her ballot for Pete had no clue he was homosexual. She then asked for her vote back.

Hes married to a man? the incredulous, ruddy ol gal says in the video. Then I dont want anybody like that in the White House.

That a Democrat could be so homophobic left the internet scratching its head, but, hey, thats Iowa. Its not necessarily that blacks tend to be vastly more homophobic than whites (I dont think theres anything wrong with that, really). It could be that Mayor Pete is about as lily-white as any man in America. Hes whiter than Obama. I predicted that Mayor Pete would do well in Iowa, but nowhere else. Its the basic fact hes got white, Midwestern appeal, being from Indiana. Midwesterners tend to be awkward around outsiders, especially people from the coasts, like Warren, who has New England Yankee dripping from her pores after spending the second half of her life there. Biden, on the other hand, is a really good actor, like his former boss Obama, and masters the hometown, folksy thing and for that reason I thought hed also do well in Iowa. I was wrong there.

At least after this mess is over, well have a new verb: to Buttigieg. It means pulling off a bizarre victory under highly suspicious circumstances, then getting completely annihilated.

Read more:
Pete tops Iowa - The Spectator USA