GENE THERAPY
Politically speaking, Trump picked the wrong football game to attend Saturday.
Desperate to confront the whistleblower in a frantic search that’s lasted more than six weeks, Donald Trump finally tracked him down Saturday at the AlabamaLSU football game.
In fact, he found eight whistleblowers — the referee, the umpire, the back judge, the line judge, et al. And that doesn’t even count the drum majors.
They blew whistles for most of four hours in Tuscaloosa, Ala., which had to come as something of a relief to the Buffoonatic-in-Chief, because it’s been a long and perilous search for the person who fuel-injected his impeachment by blowing the whistle on one not-quite-perfect phone call with the president of Ukraine.
First there was Mr. Trump’s visit to the World Series, where he found that umpires don’t wear whistles and a crowd chanting “lock him up!” — an ironic remix of one of his greatest campaign hits.
Then there was the trip to New York for an evening of UFC mayhem at Madison Square Garden, where, again, not only was the referee without a whistle, but the crowd booed him lustily.
But Saturday figured to be very different. Who better than the person once legally designated Individual 1 to enjoy No. 1 vs. No. 2 on a fall day perfect for impeachment dodging?
Prior to the announcement this week that he’d be arriving in Tuscaloosa in time for kickoff, I thought Mr. Trump’s interest in intercollegiate athletics was pretty much consumed by that eternal rivalry Trump U. vs. Deep State, or as they say in the sports coverage, a coupla teams that don’t like each other.
Trump U. would still be around today — and he would still have the $25 million he had to come up with to settle claims it was more a scheme than a school — if he’d just designed it like a college football power. Certainly there’d have been no shortage of cheerleaders. Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh toting megaphones and throwing
Kellyanne Conway and Laura Ingraham up in the air is a visual that doesn’t exactly tax the imagination.
Perhaps hoping to avoid a third consecutive embarrassing sports outing for the president, Alabama’s Student Government Association warned students Tuesday not to be disruptive, issuing a directive that appeared to threaten their future seating arrangements, a misstep that triggered some hilarious tweets including my favorite:
“Strange that in all the games in which drunken bacchanalia has been tolerated, if not celebrated and encouraged, I’ve never once been warned to not be ‘disruptive’”
(As it happens, I’m pretty sure I saw Drunken Bacchanalia open for The Commonheart at Mr. Smalls).
One day later came a clarification for anyone who thought Alabama was censoring its home crowd for the Trump visit, or worse, lowering the volume in which LSU would have to operate.
“The SGA strongly affirms its belief in free speech and the rights of all students to express their opinions. Today’s report erroneously assigned a political context to a message meant only to remind students about heightened security and the consequences of altercations or other behaviors unbecoming of a University of Alabama student.”
Politically speaking, Mr. Trump was going to the wrong game Saturday anyway. He should have been at Penn State vs. Minnesota in Minneapolis. Just like in Tuscaloosa, both combatants were 8-0, and the stakes for the 2020 presidential race might have been larger still.
Unlike Alabama, where Mr. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by more than 500,000 votes, and Louisiana, where he won by 400,000, Pennsylvania’s presidential voting in 2016 was the closest around here since 1840. Mr. Trump won with 48.18 percent of the vote. Clinton got 47.46 percent. More ominously for Mr. Trump, Tuesday night’s local elections saw Philadelphia’s suburbs go Democrat in an unprecedented wave.
“The anti-Trump sentiment in the suburbs hasn’t dissipated at all,” Ryan Costello, a former Republican congressman from Chester County, told Politico. “Democrats have won counties they never, ever, ever won. The trend from red to blue has accelerated in the last few years, and there’s only one reason for that.”
In 2016, Mr. Trump lost Minnesota, and his attempts to flip it red in 2020 might have gotten a boost had the very stable genius turned up in a Golden Gophers crowd.
Bonus: Minneapolis had whistleblowers too.
In any event, AlabamaLSU somehow commanded Mr. Trump’s attention. Maybe the World Series and Madison Square Garden experiences reminded him that he’s more comfortable near his base.
“Well,” said Alabama coach Nick Saban, “it’s an honor that the president of the United States would be interested enough to come to the game.”
C’mon, coach. The man will tweet about “Dancing With The Stars.”