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Scalia, Ginsburg and the American Way

October 4th, 2017 1:54 am

"A kite flies against the wind, not with it." Winston Churchill

 

October 4, 2017

 

By: Linda Case Gibbons

 

          If you didn't know better, you'd think it was a plot out of a James Bond movie. A villain, a Leftist Liberal, maybe Hillary, sitting underground on a bleak desert island, concocting a plot to control the world's weather. To mess with Trump.

          Back-to-back-to-back hurricanes in the space of a month? Puerto Rico hit twice? This couldn't happen. Could it?

          But it did, and when it did, it gave Liberals and their resident news team the opening they were waiting for. The Trump Gotcha Moment.

          Trump did fine with the catastrophes in Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico and Las Vegas. He handled it all, readying, anticipating, sending, flying hither, thither and yon, supporting. He juggled it all with style and grace. So did the First Lady.

           And Liberals hated it.

           Then the chance they were waiting for. Puerto Rico.

           No sooner did his feet hit the ground there, then, for some reason, he contracted Foot in Mouth Disease.

           It wasn't his finest hour, but after weeks of unremitting criticism, he was on the defensive. It was understandable, but the "optics" weren't great.

           He had been accused of "negligence" in his handling of Puerto Rico's hurricane relief, by Chicago's mayor and New York's governor, as if they didn't have enough messes of their own to clean up. And the media accused him of treating "white" Americans differently with hurricane relief than the citizens of Puerto Rico.

           It wasn't their finest hour, either.

           Trump made the mistake of praising the rescue efforts by FEMA and others, instead of just talking with the people. That's what they needed, and that's what he's good at.

           He mistakenly, maybe jokingly, told the people that Puerto Rico was "throwing our budget out of whack," and congratulated officials on the low death toll, contrasting it with a "real catastrophe like Katrina."

          This while most of the people there were without water or electricity. It was a winceable moment.

          It wasn't good. But it was a mistake. He'd been set up. And he was off balance.

          The Left was happy. Trump Gotcha Moments are pure gold to them.

          Yet, while Americans in Houston and Florida were reaching out helping hands to their neighbors; while strangers risked their lives to save the lives of others in Las Vegas, Cuomo and Emanuel, Hillary and Schumer, were playing politics.

          And San Juan's Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz? She was continuing to lambast the president. Instead of reaching out to her own citizens, she was busy giving a TV interview, wearing a "Nasty" t-shirt. We never heard the words, "Thank you for the aid. We are financially desolate and we are grateful." Instead she called the president's budget comments "an insult to Puerto Rican people."

          She's the one, if you recall, the president called an "ingrate." I wonder why... 

          The media never reported that pre-positioning relief equipment was different -- on an island.

          Or that Puerto Rico was different from Houston and Florida. It was an island, which ended up with no roads, no cellphone towers, an electric grid that had been shamefully neglected for a very long time, and was already teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, making the disaster harder to handle.

          Liberals didn't want to hear it. "Tsk, tsk," they shouted. "You don't mention the finances of a suffering people. That's just plain cruel."

          As they always do. With no solutions. They'll leave that to Trump. Throw in a question on gun control, which they did, and the usual Liberal picture was complete.

          But what about compassion?

          This week Justice Scalia's son, Christopher, spoke about the release of a book he co-edited, a collection of his father speeches, "Scalia Speaks." And he talked about his father. We heard about the friendship between a Constitutional Originalist and a staunch Liberal, Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

          An unusual pair.

          "We were best buddies," Justice Ginsburg said after Scalia's death in 2016. They had been friends for 22 years. She said conversations with him made her better.

          "I consider myself a good friend of every one of my colleagues, both past and present," Justice Scalia told Laura Ingraham in an interview. "Some more than others. My best friend on the Court is and has been for many years, Ruth Ginsburg. Her basic approach is not mine, but she's a lovely person and a good, loyal friend."

          "I never heard them talk about anything political or ideological, because there would be no point," Ginsburg's grandson, Paul Spera told the authors of "Notorious RBG -- The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

           Yes. It's the way things should be. Actually, it's why we have the First Amendment.

           Trump's approach may not be the approach of his opponents, but he is a good and loyal friend to America. And if a Scalia/Ginsburg friendship can exist, there may be hope for us yet.

          Hold the line, America.

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