Tonight someone forwarded me an MSNBC story about George W. Bush’s joke about 9/11. The story is by David Neiwert, who the page says is “a Seattle-based free-lance journalist. His reportage on domestic terrorism for MSNBC.com won a 2000 National Press Club award for distinguished online journalism.”
Here is how the story apparently goes… now remember, this is the man who lost the popular vote and might have lost the Electoral vote if we had ever gotten an accurate count. As every pundit said after he was awarded the presidency, there was no “mandate” no rallying point. Now anyone with a few working brain cells has realized that Dubya has made a good political case out of the national, and perhaps one could rightly even say world tragedy.
Here is what he is now telling people behind closed doors, to get laughs:
You know, when I was running for president, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending? I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream we’d get the trifecta.
The trifecta, for those who don’t know, is something that you would want to win. It means, actually, that you won three times. So Bush’s joke (if you can call something that atrocious a joke) indicates that the war, the recession, and a national emergency are political gains for Bush.
Gee, isn’t it nice that our President has come up with a cute little saying about the deaths of 3,000 people to see how it fits into his political agenda? That’s just awful.
What is even worse is that the story is a lie, according to the article. No one can find any reference to him saying anything like that until well after he was running for president. Read the article, it’s astonishing. Here are some more quotes, all from the same source (I have saved the article locally in case it is later inaccessible):
If you aren’t outraged by this story, maybe you can explain to me how that is possible. I haven’t had that much respect for him to begin with, although his handling of the situation after 9/11 was admirable in some ways… he has now sunken even lower.
4 Responses to “9/11: Bush’s Trifecta?”
on 31 Aug 2002 at 12:51 pm # Big John
-Here is how the story apparently goes… now remember, this is the man who lost the popular vote and might have lost the Electoral vote if we had ever gotten an accurate count.-
Uh Tim, Al Gore stated just before the election that if a candidate should win in this manner, his victory must be respected as lawful. Of course he meant himself, not Dubya…
-As every pundit said after he was awarded the presidency, there was no ÒmandateÓ no rallying point.-
Not ‘every’ pundit, Tim. And remember, Gore was a sitting VP and LOST his home state, as well as the election. In political terms it was a landslide for Dubya. He might even have won the popular vote, both in florida and the nation, if the Democrat controled mass media hadn’t proclamed the Democrat the ‘winner’ well in advance of the ‘fact’. (again)
But it’s Gore’s sickening behavior AFTER the election that chapped my hide. Compare it with how Nixon behaved in a similar situation. (1960) Unlike Gore, Nixon showed he knew that the nation was MORE important than the candidate, not less, and so decided not to contest that very close and alledgedly partially fixed election, sparing the nation what happened this last time.
-Now anyone with a few working brain cells has realized that Dubya has made a good political case out of the national, and perhaps one could rightly even say world tragedy.-
If you mean he has shown himself to be a consummate CIC, I agree.
-Here is what he is now telling people behind closed doors, to (alledgedly) get laughs:
“You know, when I was running for president, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending? I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream weÕd get the trifecta.”
The trifecta, for those who donÕt know, is something that you would want to win. It means, actually, that you won three times. So BushÕs joke (if you can call something that atrocious a joke) indicates that the war, the recession, and a national emergency are political gains for Bush.-
Assuming it’s true, and not a political knifing, it reads like ‘gallows humor’ to me. Wasn’t it Clinton that whined about no such ‘defining national emergency’ occuring during HIS presidency? That man was actually PRESIDENT for eight years! I shudder to think of a Gore prexy.
Guess that kills the fan club, eh? ;-) Big John
on 31 Aug 2002 at 1:03 pm # TjL
Quick responses: I didn’t like Clinton any more than Bush, and frankly I don’t think Gore would have been a prize either. However I haven’t heard anyone say that this trifecta story wasn’t true.
Hardly. Personally I find CSS much more interesting and much more directly important to my daily life than politics ;-)
ps — backstory: Big John is a CSS guru and we regularly chat together on css-Discuss and I mentioned the other day that I was going to start a fan club for him since he helps me (and a whole host of others) on the list on a daily basis.
on 17 Sep 2002 at 8:26 am # John
Sounds like Bush doesn’t know what trifecta means, to me.
on 08 Jan 2003 at 9:20 am # M Girard
Yep he said that on several occassions if there is any doubt here is an example on the official whitehouse.gov website. It’s a long speech but once you get to the page just use your browser to search out the word trifecta and you’ll find where he said it quite easily.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/04/20020416-8.html