John McCain created Trump through Sarah Palin. I was there.
Posted on: August 27, 2018. Post written by: Tim Russo - Tags:
Donald Trump,
john mccain,
sarah palin
Fate is a funny thing. I did not catch my quarry with this video. I took my camera to the Sarah Palin rally in Strongsville, Ohio on October 8, 2008, to capture Sarah Palin saying a specific thing – not every single other person who talked to my camera saying that exact same thing. Palin
said this about Barack Obama four days earlier;
“This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,” Palin concluded, in the hardest shot of the statement.
The “Pal around with terrorists” line was
Steve Schmidt’s, now a chrome domed MSNBC Max Headroom. Nicolle Wallace, now an MSNBC daytime diva kvetching on air with good ol’ Steve daily, even crafted statements at the time for McCain spokespeople to
hammer it home herself. So I wanted this on video. I was sure she’d say it again. Turns out, she didn’t have to. Once would do.
I knew Palin wouldn’t repeat “pal around with terrorists” when I saw Browns players Joe Thomas and Brady Quinn (ha) on the stage with Palin. So instead of standing through her whole speech for nothing, I went out to the parking lot to get more content from the crowd. I already had a tape full of people declaring they believed Barack Obama a “terrorist”, so I might as well get more. I thought the resulting video was a dud.
Viral my video went! It was all over MSNBC, CNN, the internet, even Fox, for days. Politico even named
The McCain Palin Mobthe #7 Most Viral Video of 2008. It still gets views today, currently at 2.1 million.
It was overnight.
That’s how fast American politics went from racism on the low simmer to blasting out the pot full boil when John McCain created Sarah Palin.There is not a straighter line connecting two dots in American politics than Sarah Palin. Of all the billions of acts large and small done by the Republican Party purposely for decades to create Donald Trump, McCain choosing Palin stands out on the very top. Not just for its magnitude and instantaneous effect, which I documented in real time, but now for its disappearance.
I guess this should be expected. Good thing I was there with a camera.