Rep. Debbie Dingell got some comforting words from Fox host Neil Cavuto yesterday after Donald Trump smeared her recently-deceased husband during a rally in Michigan Wednesday night.
Dingell, who took over her husband’s Michigan Congressional seat, made at least two visits to Fox News yesterday after Trump “joked” that maybe her husband was “looking up” instead of looking down, i.e. in hell. it's not in the Fox clip, below, but underneath that, you can see that many in the rally crowd groaned and some even booed at the smear. Dingell was very popular in Michigan.
Noting that Trump could have apologized yesterday (but hadn’t), Cavuto told Mrs. Dingell, “Just as an American, regardless of politics, I thought that was beyond offensive, beyond cruel, beyond mean, certainly not in the character of our nation or the season, so I’m very sorry for what you and your family had to endure.”
“Thank you for saying that, Mrs. Dingell said. “Look, it’s the holidays. Thanksgiving was very hard, and this Christmas is very hard, and so those remarks made it harder because I miss John very much
Dingell said she’s “sort of hoping that something good comes out of this, and that people will take a deep breath and realize that words can hit people hard, words have consequences, and that the tone of rhetoric in this country should be bothering people, and maybe we can take a deep breath and remember we need to be kinder to each other.”
Cavuto suggested there may have been “extended bad blood” between John Dingell and Trump, noting that John Dingell had said about him, “pretending to work so hard must be truly exhausting” and “our president can’t spell, that concerns me.” Cavuto thought those comments probably got back to Trump and that he “never forgot it.”
“I know that John could have a tart tongue,” Mrs. Dingell acknowledged, “but he tried very hard to never hurt anybody. And I think that John was known for trying to bring people together, to try to work with people of all sides and all perspectives.”
Mrs. Dingell said that implying somebody’s in hell would be “disturbing on a good day.” But for a family still grieving, “we need to all watch what we say and be aware of how we’re saying it.”
“I, for one, don’t ever want to hurt somebody,” she continued. “I can be angry, but I try to be careful about - it doesn’t mean I’m perfect either, but that was a large crowd with consequential words.”
“I just think we need to put politics aside and try to take something from this,” Mrs. Dingell added. She did not want to comment on Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s claim that Trump’s attack on John Dingell could have cost him the state of Michigan in the 2020 election. “Let’s put politics aside,” Dingell replied. “The comments were hard for me because I’m having a hard holiday.”
As he closed, Cavuto praised John Dingell’s “great sense of humor” and relayed one of Dingell’s quips made at Cavuto’s expense.
Watch it below, from the December 19, 2019 Your World.
Trump laments that Debbie Dingell voted to impeach him despite the fact that he allowed the normal state funeral to proceed for her late husband, former Rep. John Dingell. Trump then suggests John Dingell is in hell -- to audible groans. pic.twitter.com/wsYfddNIA9
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 19, 2019
The Dingells are reportedly deeply beloved in Michigan and the margin by which Trump won there was tiny. The President’s gleeful joke-making (groan) may have given Michi-ganders a vote-changing wake-up call.
They call themselves Christians. And yet they thrive on petty meanness and cruelty.
The cruelty IS the point.