"A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him." David Brinkley
March 16, 2016
By: Linda Case Gibbons
We are told: Don't shoot the messenger, never blame the victim. It's good advice.
What some may call a messenger's "inflammatory language," others may call "the truth."
Donald Trump could have lost his life on March 12. A protester rushed the stage at a rally in Dayton, Ohio. Who knows what he intended.
He could have been killed the day before, at a rally at the University of Illinois.
And not one person in his political party came to his defense.
The media did its usual dance, brutal, as usual, when it comes to Trump.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle and the president were happy to blame Trump for the violence they claimed always occurred at Trump's rallies.
But the public wasn't buying it.
Violent crowds had gathered in Chicago with one goal, and one goal only: To shut down the rally. To shut up Trump. To exercise what they called their First Amendment rights, while disregarding Trump's right to be heard.
It was carefully planned, it was professionally done, just as it was in Baltimore.
As it was in Ferguson.
And in Occupy Wall Street.
The protesters are hired guns, available to the highest bidder.
Their type is hired by people who want to get rid of someone who is inconvenient to them. It's not hard to figure out who hired these guns to neutralize Trump.
If this was a dodge ball game, everyone would have a ball, except Donald Trump, and the shots would all be aimed at him.
It was not a game, yet to some, like our friends at FOX, it was.
FOX and Friends photo shopped the attack, substituting lovable Bernie for the student who tried to harm Donald Trump, a presidential candidate, like it was another Saturday Night Live skit.
But it wasn't funny.
Hillary weighed in, so did Bernie and Republican candidates, Rubio, Cruz and Kasich, Democratic and Republican talking heads. They were accusatory, but only of the candidate, not the protesters.
They never said the frontrunner could have been hurt. There was no compassion for him. They were not indignant that the Constitution had been dishonored, that an opposing voice was silenced.
They were politicians all the way. And still they wondered why they didn't resonate with American voters, and Donald Trump did.
It only underscored the pitiful nature of each of their campaigns.
And no one was buying it. Even though they spent millions.
Now that was funny.
The hatred for Donald Trump is frightening, but it doesn't come from the protesters. They don't even have a dog in the race. It comes from the Republican Establishment, the media, and our president.
They know what they say about him isn't true, but they say it anyway.
When it came time for them to do the humane thing, putting politics aside, they chose to blame the victim. They were effectively saying, "He got what he deserved."
Some of these are people who want to be your president.
So look at them. This is how they react under pressure. This is how they treat threats to American citizens. This is how they interpret the Constitution.
Do you think they will be there in your corner when your country needs them? Do you trust them to tell you the truth, to be fair, to be balanced?
Trump is winning. They hate that.
He is the frontrunner by a mile. They hate that, too.
Is Donald Trump ready to be president? Sure looks that way.
He cancelled the University of Ohio rally to protect the supporters who were to attend. That looks like what a leader would do.
Seconds after a protester vaulted over a barricade in Ohio, Trump recovered and told the crowd, "Thank you for the warning. I was ready for him..."
That looked pretty brave, pretty presidential.
The road to the presidency is never an easy one. It has deliberately been made tougher for Donald Trump.
In some ways it's a good thing. It shows how tough and ready he is to be president.
And as they say, if they're shooting at you, you must be doing something right.
Hold the line, America.