When you get a chance to meet a person of some notoriety throughout the course of your life, people with sense will often times throw away the thoughts of political talk and just stand there happy to be in the presence of that person.
There are people that aren’t necessarily die hard Trump supporters that will go to rallies because how often do you really get the chance to hear the President of the United States talk in person?
When it comes to this issue of people effectively refusing to go see the President for whatever reason I always think back to a story my mother told me that took place around the time that Gerald Ford was President.
There was some kind of parade that was taking place near where they lived and Ford was doing the whole sit in a car and wave thing.
My mother remembers quite clearly my grandfather looking down at her and saying, “That’s the President of the United States” with a level of awe like she had never heard out of him.
He never lived long enough for me to get into discussions about politics with him but I can tell you one thing if he saw the way that people were talking about President Trump’s recent visit with the troops even if he wouldn’t have been a Trump supporter it would have made him sick.
Not only did President Donald Trump visit with troops abroad during “Christmastime,” despite media claims to the contrary, but the troops were happy to see him.
Some service members even had MAGA hats and asked the president to sign them.
Trump signing MAGA hats for the troops in Iraq pic.twitter.com/bDUIk94jpR
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) December 26, 2018
That did not go over well with the left.
Almost immediately, claims of troops being in violation of military rules were tossed around. They were wrong, but that didn’t seem to matter.
“But troops’ requests for the autographs could brush up against Department of Defense guidelines for political activities,” CNN admonished. “Those guidelines say that ‘active duty personnel may not engage in partisan political activities and all military personnel should avoid the inference that their political activities imply or appear to imply DoD sponsorship, approval, or endorsement of a political candidate, campaign, or cause.’”
Under the heading of “haters are gonna hate” is this insanity from @CNN – a blatant and near criminal misrepresentation of “The Hatch Act” – troops having and bringing out MAGA hats is completely legal (and kinda cool that they had them in Iraq BTW)
https://t.co/mTnu7QPz9J— Tony Shaffer (@T_S_P_O_O_K_Y) December 27, 2018
What CNN left out was the rest of the guidelines, which clearly state that “(a)ctive duty members may, however, express their personal opinions on political candidates and issues, make monetary contributions to a political campaign or organization, and attend political events as a spectator when not in uniform,” according to The Daily Wire.
Of course, CNN also made sure to throw some Trump-bashing in with their attack on the troops allegedly breaking the rules. The panel doing the smearing included White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who, perhaps surprisingly, somewhat came to Trump’s defense when it was implied that he might have provided the hats to the troops.