Opinion

KLAVAN: Here’s To The Man On The Balcony

   DailyWire.com
U.S. President Donald Trump removes his protective mask while on the Truman Balcony of the White House after being discharged from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center with Covid-19 in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Oct. 5, 2020.
Ken Cedeno/Polaris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Perhaps the moment of the Trump presidency I will remember most fondly was the moment Trump stood on the White House balcony and stripped off his face mask.

You no doubt remember. He had fallen ill with the Chi-Com Flu. It was, one pollster told me, an electoral disaster for him. It seemed to confirm the narrative being sold by the media: the narrative that any gathering that was not specifically dedicated to destroying America with anarchic violence and racial animus was a super-spreader event that would strike us down in our millions. Trump rallies were especially dangerous. Their pure evil doubled COVID’s strength. We had to be afraid. We had to wear masks. Full-body leather outfits like the one in “American Horror Story” were preferable. Wear them loose so they don’t stop you from shivering in your shoes.

And now Trump, a walking co-morbidity whose enormous frame was mostly composed of old French Fries, had caught the death-dealing WuFlu just as they warned he would. In a tight campaign, his approval rating dropped several points in mere days.

Then he was fine. Good treatment worked. He shook off the Great Death like a dog shaking off water. He was back home in a couple of days, looking great.

“One thing’s for certain,” he told America. “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it.”

Then he walked out onto the balcony and tore off his mask like a boss.

Immediately, the media began shrieking like a party of 11-year-old girls after a mouse got loose.

“What does that mean, ‘Don’t be afraid of it?’” gasped CNN Medical Commentator Sanjay Gupta. “It’s a contagious disease that kills people!”

“Everyone should be afraid of COVID!” said Wolf Blitzer.

“It’s okay to be afraid of COVID,” said Jake Tapper. “And it’s okay that it’s dominating your life because it has dominated your life!”

The message couldn’t be clearer.

Trump: Don’t be afraid!

Media: Be afraid!

Now, as Thanksgiving arrives, the media wants to make sure that message of fear goes out again.

“Cancel your plans if you absolutely do not need to travel somewhere!”

“Keep it to your immediate household.”

“Eat all the mashed potatoes by yourself. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

And of course, petty tyrant governors chimed in, telling us to disinvite grandma, don’t dare sing and, my personal favorite, from Kate Brown, the fascist governor of Oregon, call the cops if your neighbors have Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, every year, the Wall Street Journal publishes a 1620 account of the Plymouth Colony by Governor William Bradford. It describes the situation of the original Pilgrims.

“Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts.”

As Heather Mac Donald points out in a piece in the Spectator: “Nearly half the 102 occupants of the Mayflower died in their first year of settlement at Plymouth, sometimes at a rate of three a day. Such a mortality rate was predictable. The earlier outpost at Jamestown, founded in 1607, lost 66 of its original 104 settlers in its first nine months. By 1609, following the also predictable loss at sea of a ship coming to resupply the colony, starvation at Jamestown had grown so dire that residents dug corpses from their graves to eat any remaining flesh…”

I wonder if the colonists wore masks while they were eating dead bodies to survive the winter — just, you know, to stay safe.

My point is simply this. For all his flaws and P.T. Barnum eccentricities, there is more of the spirit that made this country great in Donald Trump’s little finger than there is in the quivering bodies of Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer, and Kate Brown tarred together and covered with feathers, which is not a bad idea. For their puling fear-mongering, their womanish horror at the sight of brash courage, and their “expert” attempts to demolish every tradition and tie that keeps this country strong and makes life worth living, they should, every damn one of them, make like a turkey, and get stuffed.

With God’s help, we’ll make it through the coming years of government-by-swamp. But I’ll miss the man on the balcony.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends.

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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