Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

I Robot (1977). Forty years gone.

Here is George Neumayr's latest column. The greatest irony of all is that what the mainstream media consider losses for President Trump are actually great victories for him. I believe he is stronger today than he was on election day. Remember: His approval rating is far higher than that of any "journalist," so as long as "journalists" attack him, he wins.

President Donald Trump thinks the racists at Charlottesville, Va., and the “alt-left,” as he calls them, were equally to blame. Are you kidding me? Let’s just change it around a little bit and consider what would happen if nonwhites marched in the streets worshipping nonwhites who killed and slaughtered white people. What would happen if Muslims marched through the heart of Manhattan with banners praising Osama bin Laden? Do you think New Yorkers would be just a little ticked off and would protest against them? What if Japanese people marched down the streets of Washington, D.C., praising the leaders who launched the attack on Pearl Harbor or ordered the Bataan Death March? Do you think some people would be really mad?

Those instances would be equivalent to the march in Charlottesville by the white supremacists, Ku Klux Klansmen and Nazi sympathizers. Do you wonder why so many of us in this country absolutely know that Mr. Trump is an absolute buffoon?

SAL SABATUCCI

Beechview

Radical Islamic Terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary! The courts must give us back our protective rights. Have to be tough!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2017

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Republicans can turn things around by supporting, rather than opposing, the dismantling of Confederate statues. Simply point out that they were financed, erected, and maintained by Democrats.

Here.

Here.

Here is President Trump's tweet about General John J. Pershing:

Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017

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 Here is General Pershing:

 

 

 

 

Compare what the media are saying about Trump's tweet. This dishonesty by the media is exactly why we elected Trump.

Addendum: It took me 15 minutes to find (on Google Books) General Pershing's account of the Muslim burials. Do reporters, analysts, and commentators know how to do basic research?

Here is a perfect example of giving President Trump the detriment of the doubt rather than the benefit of the doubt. Trump's tweet, which is quoted by the author, gives no details about what General John Pershing did. Undaunted by the lack of detail, the author of the post interprets the tweet in such a way as to make Trump look dishonest or stupid. This isn't history; it's hatred.

Addendum: The following appeared in Time magazine on 24 February 2016:

In 1941, TIME ran a letter to the editor from a soldier named J. R. McKey who had served with Pershing in the Philippines decades before. In the letter, McKey describes using pigs in burials to deter Muslim insurgent activities, but does not ascribe the act to Pershing.

McKey wrote, "U.S. soldiers . . . had a pretty good cure for juramentado [Moro swordsmen] activities. Knowing the horror of the Mohammedan for any contact with swine, and particularly with its blood, these American roughnecks, when they had killed a juramentado, held for him a very public funeral. The body of the defunct bad man having been deposited in the grave, a pig was brought, stuck, its blood sprinkled freely over the D B M, the dead pig thrown in with him, and the burial completed."

Some reports do say that Pershing was engaged in burying Muslims with pigs or throwing pig's blood on them. According to the History News Network, a Chicago Daily Tribune article from 1927 describes Pershing sprinkling prisoners with pig's blood, then setting them free to warn others of being doused with the blood. "Those drops of porcine gore proved more powerful than bullets," the article wrote.

Christopher Capozzola, a history professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also cited an incident in which Pershing brought a pig's head to a ceasefire negotiation with a Muslim leader."So yes, there were deliberate efforts to offend Muslim Filipinos' religious sensibilities," Capozzola told TIME. "And yes, there was large-scale violence against their communities. But I know of no event like the one that Mr. Trump describes."

But of course Trump couldn't have been referring to these events in his tweet.