What might have been
that will never be again
For all the festive revelry and strained enthusiasm, what was probably the final appearance of deposed U.S. President Donald Trump in the lush semitropical city of Sarasota, Florida on Independence Day eve in the year 2021 took on the semblance of a raucous New Orleans funeral Saturday night.
But at least there had been no unexpected violence of the type that had queered the Jan. 6 White House fiasco that had left so many of his loyal supporters currently imprisoned in solitary confinement in Washington, D.C. jails awaiting punishment in political show trials yet to come, a political travesty that Trump mentioned only briefly.
Trumpets blared and people cheered, but in the end, an exhausted crowd drenched by rain and deafened by noise trundled home in the silent night knowing that nothing had changed, and that nothing would change as their formerly powerful and independent country continued its rapid slide into disintegration by forces so powerful and unchallengeable as to be impossible to comprehend, never mind thwarted.
Waving and blustering to an intrepid and enthusiastic crowd estimated at upwards of 30,000, sad Donald mustered admirable energy for a man in his mid-70s to blast his way through his standard stump speech, bemoaning the fixed election that evicted him from his White House tenancy and reiterating his promise to Make America Great Again.
Perhaps the high point of his sermonizing was to do something his illicitly elected successor could never do, namely, to accurately name and thank his political helpmates who had facilitated his political successes in years past.
But all the forced gaiety and loud hoopla could not conceal the tragic image of a man who had been cheated out of his presidency clamoring that his mission had not failed and that hope for America had not been lost. You could see it in his face, near tears, as he stood on the stage alone at the conclusion of his always dramatic remarks, while the patriotic music blared and the fireworks burst overhead, and he walked into the darkness unescorted to face an uncertain future.
The mainstream media suppression of the former president continued right before his appearance in Sarasota when YouTube suspended Right Side Broadcasting Network’s channel, but Rumble, a Canadian online video platform headquartered in Toronto and would-be rival to YouTube, stepped in to block the blockade.
You Tube also removed three videos that “had amassed millions of views, with the Wellington, Ohio speech alone breaking 3 million earlier this week,” RSBN tweeted Friday, along with screenshots of the notifications from YouTube of the suspension and a “strike” against them that will expire Sept. 30.
The predictable high points of Trump’s speech included pointing out the inadequacies of election oversight and the reversal of his border policies by his successor. Trump also once more boasted of how quickly he was able to bring COVID vaccines to market, without commenting on how problematic those vaccines had become.
What probably will be lost in the mainstream embargo on Trump news is the unprecedented nature of this second in a series of rallies, when an evicted president drew tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters while the existing president is hardly ever seen in public and Washington, D.C. is totally shut down, all government offices mostly closed and empty, and tourists, who usually clog the streets near the famous capital institutions, now nowhere to be seen.
The New York Times in its coverage tried to make a big deal about how Trump shouldn’t have scheduled a rally given the recent disaster of the condo collapse in South Florida. The so-called newspaper of record made no mention of how appropriate it might have been to speak about the faltering condition of the American republic on the Fourth of July, a topic to which the crowd responded warmly.
The Times also tried to make trouble by noting that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely regarded as a Trump protege, was not in attendance, nor was he mentioned by Trump in thanking his Republican supporters. It did mention, however, that Trump had previously told him not to come and attend to his duties at the condo collapse in Surfside, Fla.
DeSantis also declared states of emergency Saturday for counties on the lower Florida Gulf Coast, including Sarasota, anticipating the expected arrival of Hurricane Elsa on Monday or Tuesday.
John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, constantly trying to figure out why we are destroying ourselves, and pinpointing a corrupt belief system as the engine of our demise. Solely dependent on contributions from readers, please support his work by mail: 6871 Willow Creek Circle #103, North Port FL 34287 USA.
http://johnkaminski.org
http://johnkaminski.info/
http://www.rudemacedon.ca/kaminski/kam-index.html
http://user1252122.sites.myregisteredsite.com/id40.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20070217113216/http://www.johnkaminski.com:80/
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/kaminski01.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20040323232319/http://johnkaminski.com/