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“Hate Night” TV will re-elect Trump
I am sick and tired of listening to late night “talk show hosts” crusading against President Trump with stupid and sick jokes. The partisanship is disgusting and the viciousness of the attacks are even worse. Trump isn’t the best President but today’s crop of late night talk show hosts are terrible, far from what we used to have with Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and Jay Leno
By Ray Hanania
Friday night I tried to relax with my wife in front of the TV set to try to find some entertainment to get away from all of the hassles in life. After all, isn’t that what Late Night television is supposed to do, especially on a Friday night at the end of a long week when we work so hard to deal with life’s challenges?
We turned on the TV and right-a-way, the whole idea of relaxing implodes. There’s Jimmy Kimmel going on and on hating on President Trump. Believe me, it’s not that Trump doesn’t deserve to get hammered once-in-awhile. But the hate just doesn’t stop. It’s nauseating. And it’s just not talent. Kimmel was going on and on attacking Trump, making all kinds of assertions for “jokes” that were just not funny.
We switched from ABC to CBS and there was Stephen Colbert, doing the exact same thing to the point where I look at my wife and asked, “Is this the Late Show with Stephen Colbert or the Hate Show with Stephen Colbert?”
We switched again. The humorless hate just didn’t stop. Every joke was about hating on Trump. Sure, the guy deserves criticism. Every President does. But where’s the balance that makes criticism constructive?
None of the late night talk show hosts, not one, even comes close to the quality of entertainment that we used to enjoy when Johnny Carson reigned. When Carson retired from the roost, it opened the door to Jay Leno, and David Lettermen. It also set the stage for morning talk show host Oprah Winfrey whose talent was unchallenged at helping people to understand issues to get through the day.
Today, we are so far from all that. The irony is that all this “hate night” television is going to have an impact, but not the impact that the no-talent Kimmel or Colbert intend with their monotonous boredom.
The truth is that this continued hate is going to ensure that Trump is re-elected as President in 2020.
I’ve covered politics long enough to know that most elections are won by relative comparison, and issues. The more the “Left” hates on Trump, the stronger he becomes. Why? Because voters never get a chance to focus on Trump’s actual performance. Instead, they are inundated with anti-Trump hate and focus instead intently and emotionally on that hate. The hate takes the focus away from Trump so much so that Trump never really gets judged. So, candidates on the Left like the fumbling Joe Biden, hypocrite Elizabeth Warren, extremist Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg “Who?” never get a chance to be the focus.
It’s called “martyrdom.” We saw it when Rich Daley ran against Mayor Jane Byrne. Byrne hated Daley so much she did everything she could to attack him. She was so obsessed with defeating Daley that her obsession became the focus, not the fact that Daley lacked experience, and a lifelong difficulty with the English language. Daley had only one redeeming quality at the time: he was the son of a political boss who ruled Chicago with an iron fist. Thanks to Byrne’s anger, Daley went on to win Cook County State’s Attorney in 1981 and he eventually became mayor after Byrne’s successor Mayor Harold Washington passed away in 1987.
In fact, the only good that came out of the Byrne-Daley rivalry was the election of Harold Washington who had a phenomenal personality. Despite the intensity of the battle with the “Vrdolyak 29” — Vrdolyak who? —Mayor Washington maintained a sense of humor that elevated him above the rest.
Had Byrne ignored Daley, she would have easily won re-election in 1983.
The point is, if the Trump haters would stop hating on Trump and start focusing instead on what they would do to make the world a better place, all voters might start looking at the real issues and challenges facing America.
The Democrats, the biased mainstream news media, and the viciousness of Late Night TV talk show hosts like Kimmel and Colbert are almost certainly guaranteeing that Trump will be re-elected in 2020 no matter who wins the Democratic primary to challenge him.
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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