Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/06/colberts-hysterical-recap-of.html
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Will no one rid me of this turbulent…you fill in the blank.
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That writer deserves a raise!
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The cognitive dissonance it must require for conservatives to think Trump represents a “return to Christian values” never ceases to amaze me.
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Many of these same people think he’s some kind of super-masculine alpha male…who can’t walk 250 feet.
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They never believed in that middle eastern Jewish proto-anarchocommunist though. They have managed to surgically remove Christ from Christianity, just like Positive Christianity in 1930s Germany.
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Meh. I guess the motorcade to cross the street was demanded by security.
I could almost sympathize with him zoning out, the same happens to me in church services. How he succeeded to convince the christian fundies he was their man will forever be a mystery to me, nothing in his life before that had pointed to any interest in religion. When he just started out in his campaign I thought “he’s obviously crazy and a bad candidate, but at least he’ll probably be pro-gay marriage and diminish the evangelical bullshit in the US.”
Boy was I mistaken.
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He can’t even make the effort to fake being a Christian. Remember that Two Corinthians thing? Or the interview with Anderson Cooper, where he said “Why do I have to repent, if I’m not making mistakes?”
250 yards, not feet. Not that it’s any better.
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Trump richly deserves 99.999997% of the criticism he gets, but I’d be unsurprised to find out that the 250-yard motorcade was a Secret Service directive, either for safety or to minimize the disruption of traffic in a busy part of the city or both.
Blair House is close to the fairly busy intersection of 17th and Pennsylvania, and on the north side of the White House, where there’s a public park (Lafayette Square). Most times when the president is outside, he’s outside on the south side of the White House (where the Rose Garden and the colonnade leading to the West Wing are). The distance from the White House to any public space on the south side is much greater than it is on the north side. Although the Secret Service can (and often does) close off Lafayette and sometimes even the streets surrounding the White House, it is always annoying and snarls traffic. My guess is the motorcade meant they only had to shut down the park and maybe the intersection at 17th and Penn for a few minutes instead of doing a much more thorough and farther-reaching shutdown.
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Why you always gotta be so hard on Trump, what did he do?
Oh, right, all that horrible shit.
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Well, if he’s taking the limo, I’m sure its standard. But “going to Blair house” would seem to be a common practice by presidents. So, what has been done historically? Answer: Presidents walk.
The need for the motorcade, however, prompted questions, and a healthy dose of speculation, about why the Trumps were unable — or unwilling — to simply walk across the street.
“Presidents, including the last one, have made the walk before,” observed Edward Price, who served as National Security Council spokesman in the Obama administration.
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I very much doubt it - the secret service is perfectly capable of guarding a pedestrian crossing the street.
Here for example is an old publicity bumph video about president Obama walking from the white house to the department of the interior - about 3 km, a 40 or so minute walk with at least half a dozen street crossings.
(ETA - I wouldn’t be too suprised to learn that someone in the secret service claimed it was a vital security precaution that the president drive across the street, because it’s a lot more pleasant for the agents involved if they don’t have to listen to the man whine about getting his shoes dirty)
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From that article:
In her autobiography “Becoming,” former first lady Michelle Obama wrote that the Secret Service sometimes requested she or her husband “take the motorcade instead of walking in the fresh air” to Blair House for security reasons.
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There may be some truth to this, but I’m still skeptical. Remember the G7 in Sicily last year? Trump took a golf cart while the other G7 leaders walked through Taormina, Siciliy. Trump has also gone on record as not believing in exercise.
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I’m reluctant to do this, but I disagree with one of Colbert’s points when faulting Trump. Specifically, when the entire congregation was called to read the Apostles’ Creed. And Colbert brought attention to Trump’s not reading the Creed.
I don’t think Jewish people, for example, are required to read it “to be polite.” Not to mention, atheists.
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Pretty sure Presbyterians do in fact recite the Apostle’s Creed.
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Trump, though, is supposed to be a Presbyterian Christian.
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I also would not be shocked to learn that the Secret Service takes that into account when planning his routes.
In this case, it was pretty predictable that Trump would be visiting Bush in the Blair House at some point that evening. There are a significant number of tallish buildings around here with views of that stretch of Pennsylvania. Here, for example, is the view from an office down the hall from mine. White House upper right; Blair House middle left.
We don’t have metal detectors in this building or agents guarding the door. If I were a Secret Service agent, I would find it much less of a headache to put the principal in a car than to do all the additional security-related work I’d need to do to keep the principal safe for that walk. So until there’s good reason to think otherwise beyond my general desire to believe bad things about Trump (which, to be clear, is pretty strong), I’m gonna assume that the Secret Service mandated–or at least strongly suggested–this motorcade.
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There was slavery in ancient Rome, and Christians were valuable.
