Did CNN forget which side won at Gettysburg? Media flips out over possibility Trump may accept nomination at Civil War battle site

In a world where the mainstream media tells us that just about everything from math to Christmas is racist, the idea of a president giving a speech at the Gettysburg Civil War battle site could only be, well, racist.

Add to the equation that the president giving the speech would be Donald Trump – whose every utterance, sneeze and belch are impugned as being racist – and that he would be accepting the Republican nomination for his re-election, and it’s like a triple-word score on the R for Yahtzee players.

So, it’s little wonder, then, that CNN, which seems to see most everything through the lens of skin color, couldn’t resist falling back on its default argument when Trump said Monday that he’ll give his August 27 acceptance speech either at the White House or in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

CNN White House correspondent Jeremy Diamond was quick to strike the first race-baiting blow: “This is a president who has consistently positioned himself as a defender of Confederate symbols and monuments to Confederate generals.”

And as the media has told us, wanting to preserve Confederate history equals racism. Those dots always connect.

Others at CNN doubled and tripled down on the point, with anchor Erica Hill saying Tuesday that the idea “leaves you scratching your head” about a president who has done his best in recent weeks to “shore up the Confederacy.”

Historian and CNN contributor Douglas Brinkley concurred: “It’s all a bit nutty. Here’s Donald Trump refusing to strip the names of rogue traitors like Bragg from federal forts and now talking about speaking at Gettysburg.”

Apparently lost on CNN, including its historian, is that Gettysburg was not a happy memory for the Confederacy. The 1863 battle there was a resounding Union victory that marked a crucial turning point. It was the bloodiest fight of the Civil War, leaving about 50,000 troops dead. The Union victory ended General Robert E Lee’s invasion of the North and wiped out 37 percent of his Army of Northern Virginia.

Some of the media’s Trump watchers, such as Associated Press’s White House reporter Jonathan Lemire, also took issue with Gettysburg as a speech site, but at least saw irony in the Confederate connection. “Gettysburg would be quite the choice, given the president’s recent defense of generals from the side that lost the battle,” Lemire said on Twitter.

Others managed to find a different line of attack. The New York Times tried the same blunt instrument the media has used to fight Trump’s other proposed speech site, the White House, citing a law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities while at work. The Hatch Act doesn’t apply to Trump, as president, but the Times warns that park rangers and other employees involved in hosting the event could be at risk of prosecution.

So, tar Trump as a racist, as if that hasn’t been tried often enough. And arrest the park rangers if he doesn’t back down. And Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, warned that a large crowd for the speech would violate his Covid-19 social distancing order.

If this all sounds a little hyper-oppositional, and it does, even Trump’s earlier plan to hold the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Jacksonville was declared racist. The Daily Beast found that Trump’s speech would coincide with the 60th anniversary of an historic KKK-orchestrated attack on black anti-segregation protesters in the city. The left-wing media outlet couldn’t get the RNC to confirm that the site was chosen to celebrate the racist attack, but, then, the point had already been made. What else could it be?

Perhaps the media plan is to keep hammering away until Trump has nowhere left to give his speech. Maybe he’ll have to drive to a cheap motel (north of the Mason–Dixon line) and accept his renomination via Skype. But then, maybe his Secret Service crew would be deemed in violation of the Hatch Act.

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