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Fundraising gala for J6 defendants to be held at Trump golf club
Former president Donald Trump’s campaign says he will not attend a fundraising gala for January 6 defendants, which will be held at a Trump golf club.
Donald Trump is a master of the rhetorical rope-a-dope, a man who not only claims to practice the “art of the deal” but is an artist at escaping responsibility.
In the coming days, Trump’s gamesmanship will take on a new level of brazenness. His signature golf club in in the rolling hills of Bedminster, New Jersey, will play host to a fundraiser for the legion of criminals who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump’s campaign insists that the former president has no role in the so called “J6 Awards Gala,” set for Sept. 5 at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. But who are they kidding? Who is Trump kidding?
The gala’s digital invitation, from a nonprofit advocacy group called the Stand in the Gap Foundation, features two photographs of Trump — one stern; one smiling — with the dual message that he is an “attendee” but is only “invited” and not confirmed yet.
Confused? This is the Trump methodology. Fake one way, run another. Then fake again.
Adding to the confusion over Trump’s role is the location of this stellar event: — the former president’s most famous golf course, where he has a home and spends much of the summer to avoid the heat and humidity at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. If Trump is on the scene, does anyone expect him to stay in his house watching Fox News and sending out Truth Social missives claiming that Kamala Harris is a communist and not as good-looking as he is?
Welcome to Trump rope-a-dope. He’s on board for this gala, but not really. He’s not rejecting the request to hold this “fundraiser” at his New Jersey club. And he’s not telling anyone to remove his photographs from the invitation. He may be off-site. But his spirit will there. And if he’s on-site, who knows what might happen?
The problem here is that Trump once occupied the Oval Office — and wants to reoccupy that powerful space. As a former president who yearns for the title again, he’s not just another chump who happens to own a golf club that features a herd of goats that gives him a special farm tax status under New Jersey’s open-space laws.
Love him or hate him, Trump definitely knows how to play all the angles.
And now, Trump is playing all the angles with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Can we really forget the insurrection on Jan. 6?
Faced back then with the reality that he could not overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, Trump called on his supporters to gather in Washington. This rally took place on Jan. 6, 2021, the same day that Congress was required under the U.S. Constitution to certify the results of the presidential election.
After speaking to the crowd near the White House, Trump urged his followers to march up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol building, where Congress was meeting and planning to vote on its certification. In true rope-a-dope style, Trump told the crowd to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” then adding: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Keep in mind that some of the rally-goers were carrying guns. Trump also knew that members of two paramilitary groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, were in the crowd. Definitely a peaceful, Gandhi-like gathering, no? I’m guessing that some missed the message about behaving “peacefully” and felt an adrenaline surge with the command to “fight like hell.”
But Trump’s bob-and-weave, peace-and-fight dual messaging seems to have helped him to avoid responsibility — for a while, anyway.
The special federal counsel investigating Trump’s role in trying to overturn the 2020 election filed a new indictment this week that seeks to tie Trump to multiple conspiracies in connection to efforts to block Biden from assuming the presidency. If this latest set of charges survives scrutiny by the U.S. Supreme Court, Trump may end up holding a fundraiser for his own legal fees at his golf club.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
The problem with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is that most reasonable people understand exactly what happened. An angry loser — Trump — riled up a crowd of his most loyal supporters and told them to march on the Capitol building. Yeah, Trump said they should be peaceful. But he also urged them to fight. It’s akin to saying, “Let’s play 10 rounds of beer pong. But let’s not get drunk.”
Whether Trump felt that the crowd would trash the building doesn’t matter. We all know what happened. He set the table for the calamity. And in Trump’s case, it’s important to understand this indisputable fact: When the crowd attacked the Capitol building, he sat back and watched the chaos on TV — for hours. The so-called commander in chief who took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” did nothing when the centerpiece of American democracy came under siege.
Understanding that horrific set of events is one of the most difficult tasks for Trump’s followers. Their emails to me continually deny that Trump played any role.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Simply put: The attack on the U.S. Capitol would not have taken place if Trump had simply accepted his defeat in the days or even weeks after the election and promised a peaceful transition of power — just as every president before him did. His staff still calls him “Mr. President”– a sign that he believes he should still be living in the White House. Such behavior threatens the central core of American democracy: that we trust our elections. That’s no small thing.
Trump doesn’t seem to care. For four years, he has played a game of rope-a-dope, claiming falsely and without evidence that the election had been “stolen” and “rigged.” With such nonsense in the wind, from the great rope-a-dope windbag himself, is anyone shocked that Trump’s most violent supporters followed his command to “fight like hell” and ignored his paltry legal cover to remain “peaceful”?
So now we come to yet another crucial moment in America’s reckoning with the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
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Will Trump benefit from ‘gala’?
The fundraiser “gala” at Trump’s golf club will feature such confirmed speakers as former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who urged marchers on Jan. 6, 2021, to engage in “trial by combat” and who now faces a litany of financial and legal problems for his increasingly shocking history of false statements. Also on the speakers list is Peter Navarro, who can perhaps tell the crowd about his recent stint in prison. And finally there are a group of people described as “influencers.” Go figure.
For this, patrons can pay $1,500 for “general admission” or $2,500 for a “Gala VIP” ticket, which entitles them to a “pre-event reception with an open bar and hor d’oeuvres, premium seating for the main event, and exclusive photo opportunities with the speaker lineup, J6ers, and their families.” For those interested in bringing a group, it costs only $30,000 for a table for 12.
It’s not clear whether Trump is donating the services of his club for this event. So there is the strong possibility that the man who wrote the bestselling book “The Art of the Deal” has made a deal to make money on this gathering.
But it is clear how Trump feels about the 1,400 people who have been indicted in connection with their roles in storming the U.S. Capitol nearly four years ago. He has called them “hostages” and “political prisoners” and has kicked off some campaign events with a recording of some of the defendants singing the national anthem.
Perhaps most controversial of all, Trump promises that if he is reelected president he will pardon people charged in the Capitol attack, including those convicted of assaulting police officers.
Some 140 cops were injured in the attacks. One officer, Brian Sicknick, of South River, New Jersey, died after suffering two strokes in the aftermath of the attack and being sprayed with chemicals by attackers. Four more officers died by suicide in the weeks after the attack.
Four attackers also died, including Ashli Babbitt, 35, an Air Force veteran who was shot to death by police while trying to break through a door to a secure area and who has since become something of a martyr to Trump supporters.
And so the game of rope-a-dope continues. The people who attacked all those cops on Jan. 6, 2021, are really “hostages” who don’t belong in prison.
And the man at the center of this moral mess wants to be president.
Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com, part of the USA TODAY Network, as well as the author of three critically acclaimed nonfiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. A paperback edition with an updated epilogue of his 1995 book, “Color Lines,” which chronicles race relations in a small New Jersey town after a police shooting and was called “American journalism at its best” by the Washington Post, was released last year. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in the Northeast, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: [email protected]
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Publish date : 2024-08-28 22:26:00
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