Traditionally, Michael Moore has gone to Democratic conventions. In 2004, Jimmy Carter asked him to sit with him in the presidential box. He said to Moore — according to Moore — “There is no one I’d rather sit with.”
(On another occasion, Carter told students at Emory University that Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11 was his favorite movie of all time, along with Casablanca.)
This year, Moore should attend the Republican convention. And maybe speak? On an important issue — the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War — he and the Republican nominee are as one.
Here is Trump, speaking to Wolf Blitzer in 2008:
Blitzer: Nancy Pelosi, the speaker?
Trump: Well, you know, when she first got in and was named speaker, I met her. And I’m very impressed by her. I think she’s a very impressive person. I like her a lot. But I was surprised that she didn’t do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush. It was almost — it just seemed like she was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which, personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing.
Blitzer: Impeaching him?
Trump: Absolutely, for the war, for the war.
Blitzer: Because of the conduct of the war.
Trump: Well, he lied. He got us into the war with lies. And, I mean, look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant. And they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. [N.B. “They” did impeach him.] And yet, Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.
Blitzer: Their argument is, they weren’t lying, that that was the intelligence that he was presented, and it was not as if he was just lying about it.
Trump: I don’t believe that.
In a Republican-primary debate this year, Trump repeated himself: “I want to tell you, they lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none.”
He also said, twice during that debate, that the World Trade Center had come down during Bush’s “reign.” That’s a funny word for a presidential candidate to use, about the American presidency, but whatever …
My man Donald Rumsfeld has now endorsed Trump. Trump accuses him and others of just about the worst thing you can do: lying a country into war, getting people killed on the basis of lies. That is highest treason.
What a year, what a world — what a country (not in the Yakov Smirnoff sense).