Make no mistake about Trump’s feigned ignorance concerning who he dined with on an evening this past Thanksgiving holiday week. Trump’s entire business model has always been predicated on the fact that he is building a dossier on those he comes in contact with for use at a later date.
Kanye West is obviously being used as a pawn - his mental illness is being exploited by Trump’s MAGA machinery - and it’s not the first time either.
Who can forget Kanye sending his publicist to deliver threats at the home of Georgia poll workers in the tinderbox times of post-election 2020.
Kanye is a fool and always has been. I worked with him many times on live events and to put it mildly, he was always extremely difficult and combative.
He seemed to me more of a media creation, chasing headlines and controversy, than someone genuinely concerned with the quality of their art and the impact they were having on their audience. I say this as someone who owes hip-hop a lot of gratitude, as it was the backbone of the entertainment industry that I toiled in for many years.
The fascist who also dined with Trump was well known to the Trump campaign and an organizer of ‘Stop the Steal’ rallies in the same incendiary timeline in which Kanye was activated by MAGA/GOP forces.
A time that ended in an attempted coup d’etat that resulted not only in death and destruction in our US Capitol but seems to have caused a permanent fracture in our American psyche.
The bone wasn’t set right in the aftermath of the madness and our beloved democracy seems to be walking with a bit of a limp as a result.
We need an honest x-ray for healing to truly begin. Hopefully that comes with the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith, and let us pray, the indictments that are surely to follow.
But the fact that someone like Nick Fuentes is dining with a former POTUS, no matter how disgraced and unserious a man, should raise red flags for all Americans.
White supremacy has become the defining issue of the GOP and it seems that Trump and Ron DeSantis both sensed early on that their footrace to fascism would be won by whomever was more extreme.
What used to be dog whistles in the GOP turned into outright overtures.
As I said on Twitter over the weekend: ‘Some ex-Presidents feed the needy and some feed Nazis’.
It’s beyond sobering to think of these guys sitting around the private club of a former POTUS who has shown time and time again his own interests and staying out of prison matter more to him than the future of our republic.
Trump would burn it all down if he was given half the chance, guys like Kanye and Nick Fuentes would be more than happy to help pour out the gasoline and hand him some matches.
Trump never really had any sane advisors, sure a few generals made overtures towards normalcy but Trump’s White House advisors mostly kept their mouths shut and went along with the grift and insanity as it fed their own designs on power.
His ears were always most open to the folks on the fringe and outright bad actors like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon.
Men he had to pardon to ensure their services and ‘sage advice’ would still be easily accessible. He will need their dirty tricks more than ever if he is going to stave off the budding authoritarian from Florida who is rapidly gaining ground on him.
Hence the enlistment of such a loathsome group of dinner guests.
Kanye alone has done more to purvey the endless and awful antisemitic tropes that should be in the dustbins of history but instead are seen on banners hung from overpasses on the 405 and repeated on the soundstage of SNL under the guise of ‘free speech’.
It’s not free speech, it’s hate speech and there’s a big difference.
We need to stop elected officials from teaching people to hate.
The GOP is actively demonizing our fellow Americans and it has resulted in an epidemic of violence.
They are weaponizing their followers and teaching them it is not only ok to hate and discriminate but also to murder. If you think this is hyperbole just tune into Daily Caller founder, Tucker Carlson’s primetime Fox News show on any given night.
Their reaction to both of last week’s mass shootings is an excellent case in point, where Trump’s lawyer Jenna Ellis proclaimed the victims of a mass slaughter of innocent people, as condemned to burn in eternity because they were not ‘real Christians’.
This is awful stuff and beyond the pale and it seems to have gone mainstream in the Republican ecosphere.
These mass shootings are an epidemic and they are targeting not only LGBTQ communities but immigrants as well.
The shooting in El Paso in 2019 was perpetrated by a shooter who had been weaponized by Trump and the GOP’s rhetoric towards the Latino population.
The shooting this past week in Colorado Springs at Club Q was directed at the transgender community who were targeted ad nauseam in the mid-term election cycle by Republican candidates.
Colorado’s own gun-loving Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, only narrowly won her reelection.
Her opponent Adam Frisch conceded the race after he had lost by less than 600 votes, a lesson for those who think their votes don’t count.
Fresh off her victory Lauren Boebert used the occasion to invite a teenage mass shooter to Capitol Hill to be feted by Republicans and so he himself could tease out his own congressional run when he becomes eligible by age requirement to run in five years.
Kyle Rittenhouse is famous only for murdering people, and for killing people that GOP teaches their followers to hate.
Black Lives Matter supporting protestors voicing their opposition to the awful scourge of police brutality that is celebrated on the right.
A teenager who hasn’t yet been to college is seen as viable candidate in the GOP simply because of his proximity to violence.
The thing that struck me most about the horrible hate crime at Club Q was how the patrons stuck together and used their empathy and heroism to restrain the attacker.
Richard Fierro a retired Army Major and combat veteran was the first to charge and take down the shooter.
Relying on combat training in a visceral rush to protect his family and community.
“These kids want to live that way, want to have a good time, have at it. I’m happy about it because that is what I fought for, so they can do whatever the hell they want” were his exact words to the New York Times describing his feelings toward Club Q and the diversity they represented in his town.
That is the America I know and love and something I am most thankful for this holiday season.
That a man who outwardly seemed to posses the demographic trappings that the GOP tends to court in lockstep. Yet he was there in the club that night with his family to support his daughter’s childhood friend who was performing in the show.
He wasn’t afraid of the demonized and slandered ‘drag performance’ which GOP wrongly accuses of ‘grooming’ youth.
Nothing could be further from the truth and Richard Fierro wasn’t buying the BS and the lies.
He was there to celebrate inclusivity and have a night out with his family.
We are all family.
I was raised around gay men and women and have been exposed to what the GOP demonizes my entire life and have never witnessed anything other than loving acceptance and true courage.
Nothing is braver in my eyes than living one’s own truth.
Being the child of a lesbian mother myself the thing I try to express most to people is the banality of what some would term as ‘alternative lifestyles’.
Life is life and love is love.
There is never any reason to make it more complicated than that.
Tragically, Richard Fierro’s daughter lost her boyfriend that night and four other young beautiful people didn’t make it to Thanksgiving.
Hate and rhetoric from the GOP and the insanity of the NRA led to their deaths, and we need to stop it before we are soon mourning countless others.
We need to act quickly to pass an assault weapons ban and reject the ‘chaos hearings’ that the Republicans have planned for the coming congress if we want to once again be a great nation worth celebrating.
You cannot achieve greatness without inclusivity.
Diversity is what turns a gifted student into a true scholar.
If you want a master’s degree in life you have to be willing to learn from a wide variety of teachers.
The GOP does not want students of humanity, willing to watch others dance and smile. Beauty and love and equanimity threaten them and the fear they foment in an ignorant base.
Listening to another’s song, even when the melody may sound foreign to your ear, will enrich you and help your heart come alive in ways that lead to wonderment and heroism and defending the good in all of us.
If I have any wish for the coming season it is that we all find a way to celebrate the joy in all communities and walks of life.
It’s the only gift that really matters.
Ur gay boyfriend?
Thank you Noel. Just what I needed to start my day today. Your learned words have come to mean so much to me. Your interview w Brooklyn Dad was excellent. Bless.