Say What is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class.
Tim Donner: When President Trump delivered his first-ever nationally televised address from the Oval Office, the Democrats had their talking points all lined up — or manufactured — and compiled by Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
Various Democrat Politicians:
- I’ll state that this is a manufactured crisis and a crisis manufactured by the Trump administration.
- This is a manufactured crisis, Bill.
- How he manufactures crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge.
- What the president is doing is manufacturing a crisis.
- President Trump must stop holding American people hostage. Let’s stop manufacturing a crisis.
- This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis.
Tim: A manufactured crisis. We get it. Such a talking point is typical for a political party. But the remarkable thing is how the elite media parroted the exact same words.
Various establishment media voices on TV:
- Folks, the president has manufactured one heck of a political crisis for himself.
- Donald Trump is manufacturing a national security crisis.
- You will hear them say that this is a manufactured crisis. It’s not a national security crisis.
- From Nancy Pelosi down to Debbie Wasserman Schultz or anybody else who will give him a dime for this project … Because it’s manufactured.
- It’s a manufactured crisis for the president to get a political win.
- We have a president who will go on TV tonight and lie and lie and lie some more. This is a manufactured crisis.
Tim: Monkey see, monkey do. The establishment media in 100% lockstep with the Democrats’ talking points. But at this point, we should hardly be surprised. Likewise the attention-getting words of the most Trump-deranged so-called journalist of them all, CNN White House “reporter” Jim Acosta, talking to his buddy Chris Cuomo:
Jim Acosta
Jim Acosta: Well, Chris, I think that that address probably should have come with a surgeon general’s warning, it was hazardous to the truth.
Tim: Acosta again serving as a mouthpiece for the left and the Democratic Party. The dueling speeches of Trump and Pelosi/Schumer both were panned by the media: Trump not in his best forum absent and adoring crowd surrounding him, and the Democrat leaders, uncomfortably close at a podium meant for one person, looking like deer in the headlights or a Saturday Night Live skit. Even longtime Democratic strategist James Carville admitted that Trump as well as Chuck and Nancy hardly looked comfortable.
James Carville: I don’t think they wanted to do it. I don’t think they should have done it. The only good thing about it, it didn’t matter, they could have given a Gettysburg Address, and it wouldn’t have mattered. He didn’t want to be there. I’ve been more excited about colonoscopies than he was in giving this speech tonight.
Tim: So where do we go from here? Well, Trump was able to make his case before a national audience far larger than the one that watches politics on cable TV. And the man who may upstage Trump as the nation’s most colorful Republican, the ironically named Sen. John Kennedy from Louisiana, said the message to the American people and intransigent Democrats is hardly complicated.
John Kennedy: This is really very simple. Legal immigration is good. Illegal immigration is bad. One way to stop illegal immigration is a border wall. We know that because we have one in San Diego and Yuma and El Paso and on the West Bank in Israel and in Hungary and in Saudi Arabia and in Bulgaria. And I could keep going. Barriers work. Duh.
Tim: You know when Kennedy retires he’ll have quite a future in stand-up comedy. But as far as the stakes for Republicans in this continuing partial shutdown, with neither side budging an inch, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went on Fox News and issued a warning to his own party.
Lindsey Graham: To my Republican colleagues, the only way we lose is to give in. If we’ll stand firm, put deals on the table that makes sense, we will win this on behalf of the American people. But if we undercut the president, that’s the end of his presidency and the end of our party, and we deserve to be punished if we give in now.
Tim: A red line drawn by the Republican elder, who also admits the difficulty in dealing with radical open-border leftists.
Lindsey Graham: There’s 700 miles of fencing that’s been authorized since 2006. We just want to build what we’ve already agreed to do. But you’re dealing with a group of people who see their government as the problem. They see the Border Patrol agent as the problem, not the mob. They see the ICE agent as the problem, not the illegal immigrant they’re trying to go after.
Tim: So who’s got the high ground in this ongoing battle over illegal immigration? Matthew Continetti of The Washington Free Beacon said on Fox News that the Democrats seemed to have the advantage before the national address by the president. But that might well be changing.
Matthew Continetti
Matthew Continetti: President Trump and the Republicans continuing to talk about border security, Pelosi and Schumer though now shifting focus to the government workers because maybe they’re not on solid political ground if it is them being intransigent over a fence or wall that they have voted for in the past. And I also have to wonder, here’s Nancy Pelosi’s restoration as Speaker of the House and she’s going to spend, what, her first month dealing with this … and not all of that liberal wish list that she had wanted to pass legislation on. So I continue to believe the longer this drags on the more leverage President Trump has.
Tim: Pelosi proved the point about the Democrats trying to change the subject when she went on camera after meeting with Trump and played the violin for federal workers set to miss their first paycheck.
Nancy Pelosi: Many federal workers will not be receiving their paychecks, and what that means in their lives is tragic in terms of their credit rating, paying their mortgage, paying their rent, paying their car payment, paying their children’s tuition, and the rest. The president seems to be insensitive to that.
Tim: Pelosi may be trying to change the subject, but what is she to do when the far left of her own party continues to press the point that a wall is unnecessary and immoral? When you’ve got new upstart progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out there on MSNBC making statements like this:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The women and children on that border that are trying to seek refuge and seek opportunity in the United States of America with nothing but the shirt on their backs are acting more American than any person who seeks to keep them out ever well be.
Tim: Right. The people trying to enter the country illegally are more American than the people who want them to enter legally. Has Ocasio-Cortez become the face of the new radical Democratic Party? Meanwhile, the talks between the president and Chuck and Nancy have gone nowhere, with Schumer sounding like his and Pelosi’s meeting with Trump was little more than a playground fight.
Chuck Schumer: He asked Speaker Pelosi, “Will you agree to my wall?” She said no. And he just got up and said, “Then we have nothing to discuss.” And he just walked out. Again we saw a temper tantrum because he couldn’t get his way, and he just walked out of the meeting.
Tim: Both sides picking up their toys and going home.
