Laura Ingraham and guest Frank Luntz claimed that the loud booing of Donald Trump at the World Series on Sunday was a plus for him. Ingraham thought it so marvelous, she called for it to be in a campaign commercial.
The discussion began with Ingraham, Luntz and Byron York suggesting that Trump is about to cruise toward re-election. Ingraham even echoed Trump’s claim that he will win New Mexico in 2020.
“My friends in New Mexico, Byron, said he’s going to win New Mexico,” Ingraham said. “The illegal immigration issue, which has been under-covered by the press in New Mexico, is huge for Hispanics, legal American voters. They think it’s huge.”
FACT CHECK: According to Morning Consult, Trump is under water in New Mexico by -16 points as of September. His approval rating has decreased by 32 points since taking office.
At least Ingraham, et al. acknowledged the boos. Fox & Friends thoughtfully kept them out of its audio, despite having reached almost 100 decibels.
I know some people have interpreted Luntz’ comments that the booing fans should be held “accountable” as a suggestion that they should be punished in some way. But I’m going to give Luntz a small pass. He was responding to a clip of CNN historian Tim Naftali suggesting that Trump had reaped what he had sown. I believe Luntz meant that Naftalie and/or CNN should have held them accountable as opposed to condoning the booing.
LUNTZ: They should hold those fans accountable. You don’t boo the president. You may disagree with him. You may think that he’s not what you wanted but you don’t boo him. You show respect to him. And I’ll tell you something – I think this event is going to have an impact.
Ingraham could barely contain her enthusiasm.
INGRAHAM: It’s huge. That’s a campaign commercial for Trump. It’s a great moment to be booed in Washington D.C. I’m sorry, he’s still an outsider three years later, I love it!
York cited statistics about how Democratic Washington, D.C. and the surrounding areas are, thus suggesting that Trump had bravely stepped into a lion's den. While he was at it, York claimed the location is why Barack Obama’s inaugural crowd was so much larger than Trump's. People at Trump’s inauguration flew in from across the country, York said. Memo to York: People came in from across the country for Obama’s inauguration, too.
Ingraham was still euphoric.
INGRAHAM: This is the swamp! This IS the swamp! Consultants, pollsters, lawyers, big corporate lobbyists. God bless ‘em, they had $2,000 tickets. Regular folks aren’t going to the World Series, for the most part. I mean, this is big money at the World Series. Big money.
Then, when York added that the resistance has “a desire that no one associated with Trump can have any peace in Washington,” Ingraham sounded enraptured. “He defied that last night. Excellent point and he defied that. Keep doing it, Mr. President!”
Nobody noted the chants of “Lock him up!” I wonder if Ingraham thought they'd make a great campaign commercial, too.
Watch it below, from the October 28, 2019 The Ingraham Angle.
And nice try coloring the booing as “Trump is an outsider in Washington.” If the reality TV star was an outsider in the beginning, he has more than made up for that by being the swampiest, most corrupt President ever.
The constant chyron of “The Swamp Boos America” is just silly. The reality was that most of the American citizens in the stands for the baseball game were not fans of the Pence White House and they made that known loudly. When President Obama was booed by conservatives, flacks like Ingraham would regularly cheer it on. It’s only when Pence’s childish spokesman gets a catcall that somehow everyone must immediately clutch their pearls.
Luntz rattled off a list of baldfaced lies about the Dems supposedly not doing anything in the House – when in fact, they have passed dozens of bills and sent them to Mitch McConnell, who has promised to kill them and has refused to allow any to be voted upon. (Kind of the reverse of what was happening with the angry Right Wingers in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate 8 years ago…)
Ingraham seems to be in a bubble of happy news about the Pence White House, and seems to be in complete denial about how the viciousness of this bunch has been received by the rest of the country.
Luntz also blatantly lied about what Hillary Clinton said about the Trump voter base. She did NOT say that “half of America are deplorables”. She said that Trump’s base included, among his supporters a “basket of deplorables” – because that was and is true. And if we’ve learned anything since 2016, it’s that more and more Republicans have inadvertently revealed themselves to be deplorables – by acting in openly bigoted and racist ways.
Interesting to hear York fumbling to come up with a brand new justification for why Trump’s inaugural crowd was so sparse and why President Obama’s was so much larger – except that the Right Wing scream about that for the past 2 1/2 years has been to insist that Trump’s was somehow larger anyway, or the time of the photos wasn’t comparable, or whatever. Someone should get York on the same page as the rest of the Right Wing, one things.
And York’s final comment was another vicious lie – the point of having principled citizens confront the deplorables and the supporters of bigotry isn’t about “harassing anyone who supports Trump”. It’s about making it clear that it is not okay for the bigots to behave the way they have, and it’s not okay to attack the rest of America, and it’s not okay to lie about what’s going on an try to bully the rest of the country while doing so.
The bulk of this segment is Laura Ingraham trumpeting a 50 state strategy for Trump as if she is the genius who originally came up with the idea. Normally this would be a standard reelection strategy… except Donald Trump.
Take the recent example of Trump traveling to Chicago. Is this an example of how Trump would handle a 50 state strategy? Visit some area that didn’t vote for him and the clinical narcissist gets even with a nasty speech trashing everyone in sight?
So sending Trump to blue states probably won’t work but head-up-Trump’s-ass Ingraham clearly isn’t getting it. Likewise showing blue states booing and chanting “lock him up” will only rile up the base in red states and confirm in blue states what they think of Trump. But go ahead GOP, waste money reinforcing these partisan trends.