Saturday, August 27, 2016

The War on Christmas is back!

(TPM)

Imaginary concerns about imaginary problems seems to be all the Republican Party has these days, and that's abundantly clear when it comes to the Trump campaign. For example:
While listing the reasons why his father ran for president in an interview published Thursday, Eric Trump pointed to the tree on the White House lawn and claimed it was renamed the "Holiday tree."

However, in his attempt to explain his father's commitment to combating political correctness and the "War on Christmas," Eric Trump incorrectly accused the White House of renaming the Christmas tree.

"He opens up the paper each morning and sees our nation’s leaders giving a hundred billion dollars to Iran, or he opens the paper and some new school district has just eliminated the ability for its students to say the pledge of allegiance, or some fire department in some town is ordered by the mayor to no longer fly the American flag on the back of a fire truck," Eric Trump told The Stream's James Robinson. "Or, he sees the tree on the White House lawn has been renamed 'Holiday tree' instead of 'Christmas tree.' I could go on and on for hours. Those are the very things that made my father run, and those are the very things he cares about."

The tree that stands near the White House (on the Ellipse) each winter is still called the National Christmas Tree and has never been renamed, as Buzzfeed News noted. And the White House blog also referred to the tree kept inside the residence as a Christmas tree just last year.

PS. I hope I don't have to point out what bullshit the rest of that is. Obviously, we never gave Iran a hundred billion dollars. It was their own money, used to force them to negotiate (successfully, I might add).

Furthermore, we very wisely held back on returning the money until several hostages were freed - not as payment for the hostages (again, it was Iran's money, which had already forced them to do what we wanted them to do), but because it was still potential leverage.

Trump claims to be such a great negotiator. Why wouldn't he recognize effective negotiation when he sees it?

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