During his recent Fox interview, Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s argument against removing Confederate statuary was definitely a page of out Trump’s upside-down Bible!

When Cardinal Timothy Dolan appears on Fox News, he happily preaches the gospel of Donald Trump, a man who, apparently, Dolan happily worships. On Fox, Dolan's mission seems to be securing the Catholic vote for the GOP. You may recall Dolan was also a close friend of the former Fox News head and accused sexual harasser, Roger Ailes.

While the country was roiled in racial strife, Dolan cleverly side-stepped that issue in order to push school-choice which is also a pet issue for Trump and his religious right pals.

And Dolan keeps on delivering. With the removal of racist statues a contentious issue for Trump, Dolan is still singing from Trump’s hymnal.

Last week, His Rotundity appeared on Bill Hemmer’s “news” show. Hemmer began by quoting from Dolan’s Wall Street Journal (also Murdoch owned) editorial in which Dolan says that “even the Bible is full of flawed characters” (Trump, as described by white Evangelicals) and  “the destruction of monuments only impoverishes our sense of history.”

In “making his case,” Dolan said that “it’s a no brainer” and spoke of how Catholics, “like our Jewish neighbors,” cherish “memory and tradition.” He called them a “vehicle of God’s revelation.” He asserted that “to do anything to chip away at that tradition is perilous to the human project.”

Dolan described himself as an "American historian who knows the old quote that those who are not familiar with the past are, guess what, bound to repeat the mistakes.” With nary a thought to those who were brutalized by those whom the statues “honor,” Dolan said that “one of the ways we remember the past and learn from it: statues, monuments, dedicated buildings, books - and all of these now are under the gun.” He continued with the lie that “we’re into book burning, we’re into a cultural revolution like Mao tried to do in China. We’re trying to cleanse and erase the past and that is very dangerous." 

He continued to rant about how “if we are going to have an enlightened society, we need a memory and we need dreams.” And, he added, we won’t have any dreams left “if we erase the memory.” Hemmer, a devout Catholic, said that Dolan’s points were very interesting and, after Dolan's anecdote about parish naming, gushed over Dolan’s cleverness.

Hemmer provided more material from the WSJ in which Dolan quipped about how, given its depiction of prejudice, the Bible could end up being banned and that if we honor only perfect people, we’d be left with only the cross which, he claims, some people want to ban.

Dolan spoke about the need to “acknowledge with realism and honesty and, yeah, sometimes contrition.” He told another anecdote about how, when he was walking in Central Park, he has observed teachers, at the Columbus monument (“a great man” per Dolan), talking about the good and bad things done by Columbus. Without having referenced any specific statues, Dolan expressed the hope that we can use them to teach us about both greatness and flaws.

Hemmer continued to gush over Dolan and that was that.

Pretty slick. Without saying why certain statues are considered offensive, the portly prelate was able to convey and frame a very simple Fox News message that destroying statues is bad. At no time was Trump’s name mentioned, but the message was obviously in sync with Trump’s opposition to statue/name removal.

Clearly, the removal of statues symbolizing oppression is, in no way, comparable to the Cultural Revolution, but Dolan cleverly worked that message into his homily. Contrary to Dolan's lie, nobody is trying to erase the past or burn books. The statue removal has become a starting point for discussion about real history - the history that Trump, Dolan, and Fox News want to bury under happy platitudes.

Never mind a burnt offering, Cardinal Dolan is serving up a heaping plateful of char-broiled Trump propaganda in the Fox News Trump temple!

Watch it below, from the June 30, 2020 Bill Hemmer Reports.