Saying Something Nice

How hard should it be to say something nice about another person at Christmastime?

A New York Times article was titled “President Trump Makes Surprise Visit to American Troops in Iraq,” but the article spoke mostly about pulling troops from Syria, the border wall, and the shutdown. To me this seemed like an example of “bait and switch,” but then I guess that the liberal NYT finds it difficult, even at Christmas, to say anything nice about our President.

On 12/26 NBCNews criticized the President because he had not gone to see the troops at Christmas. When it turned out that they were wrong, they changed the headline to read “Trump becomes first president since 2002 not to visit troops on or before Christmas.”  A lame attempt at an apology. I guess that the liberal NBCNews finds it difficult, even at Christmas, to say anything nice about our President.

But compared to CNN both the NYT and NBCNews at least made an attempt to be close to civil. CNN’s Don Lemon on the other hand doubled down on incivility when he called our President “The Grinch” for visiting the troops, and a CNN news analyst said that Donald Trump “stole Christmas!”(by visiting the troops in a dangerous area??!!). I guess that CNN finds it difficult to say anything nice about Donald Trump, and instead seemingly goes out of it’s way to say nasty things about our President . . . Christmas be damned!

Did President and Mrs. Trump have a merry Christmas? What did President Trump and Melania do over the Christmas holiday? I had a difficult time finding out this info, although I admit that I did not watch CNN or NBCNews! However, I was able to scrape up a few details about how they spent Christmas.

On Christmas Eve both the President and Mrs. Trump spoke to children on the phone in conjunction with the traditional NORAD tracking of Santa. They both talked to children, and asked them questions about Santa. Melania called it one of her favorite things to do, and I call it a nice thing for both of them to do. The next morning they both attended a Christmas service at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. During the day President Trump made a series of separate video calls from the Oval Office. He tele-conferenced with troops in Guam, Bahrain, Qater, and Juneau, Alaska. He thanked the troops for their service, success, and sacrifice before wishing them all a Merry Christmas. A nice thing for the President to do, especially on Christmas Day.

Then at around midnight on Christmas night he and Melania made history when they flew together into a war zone. They flew secretly into the combat zone to visit the military men and women in the dining hall at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. The troops chanted, “USA! USA! USA!…” when President Trump and Melania Trump took the stage to a standing ovation. After thanking them all for what they do, he wished them a Merry Christmas, signed at least one Make America Great Again hat, and was in a number of selfies taken by the individual airmen and airwomen. One soldier told the Commander in Chief, “I came back into the military because of you.” President Trump responded, “And I am here because of you.”An extremely dangerous and very nice thing to do.

After taking off from Iraq, and before returning home, he and Melania stopped at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. There he again thanked the troops for their service and wished them a Merry Christmas. This was an unnecessary, but thoughtful stop, en route to arriving safely back to the U.S.A. the next day. A nice thing to do.

To me that all sounds like President Trump and Melania had an extremely full and patriotic Christmas with a large part of his day devoted to the military. Yes, the past two presidents visited some of our troops at Christmastime . . . in Hawaii and in Washington D.C. As best I can tell none of the liberal media commented that this president, in contra-distinction to the past two, made a Christmas visit to troops that were in a place that was actually a war zone. It is difficult, if not impossible, for them to say anything nice about this president. As opposed to the NYT, NBCNews, and CNN, however, I have no trouble saying nice things about our President’s use of his time at Christmas, and I echo “USA! USA! USA!”