
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The response to President Trump’s activist agenda has been predictable. ; Democrats and their left-wing media allies (think MSNBC) have performed the seemingly impossible – twisting themselves in a knot while their hair is on fire.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">From their perspective, the first few days of the Trump administration have been like a thousand California wildfires igniting all at once. They have neither the time nor the resources to respond to even a fraction of the record number of actions taken by Trump. That was evident when CNN’s Dana Bash held up the pile of Trump’s Executive Orders and directives and posed the rhetorical question: “How do we respond to all this?” (Memo to Bash: You cannot –and that is the point).</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To understand the frustration &#8230; the desperation &#8230; and the depravity &#8230; of the chronic Trump-hating left, you need only to look at their idiotic claim that Elon Musk gave Nazi salutes while addressing Trump supporters at an inaugural event.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To recognize the absurdity of the claim, you have to understand what the gesture was. At the conclusion of his remarks, Musk gave the classic “I love you” gesture to the audience &#8212; placing his hand on his heart and then thrusting his arm upward to the audience. He did it twice toward different sections of the audience, and followed up with a verbal “My heart goes out to you.” Interestingly, the left-wing media edited the verbal love words out of their clips. There could be no honest misunderstanding of Musk’s heartfelt gesture and its meaning – and no legitimate excuse for the corrupt editing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Only a malignant partisan liar would mischaracterize the gesture with such a slanderous interpretation. ; What is even more disgusting is that the bogus narrative was picked up by numerous Democrats and left-wingers (repeating myself), including Connecticut Senator Chirs Murphy and Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker – and innumerable shameless left-wing media personalities. ; They all reported it as if it were a fact instead of a slander.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I found Pritzker to be particularly offensive. ; He even falsely verbalized the “Seig Heil” language to the alleged Nazi salute. ; Perhaps my heightened reaction was because I come from Illinois and have had many positive personal involvements with several members of the Pritzker family. ; I could not imagine one of them sinking so low. I find the fact that a prominent Jew would use the Nazi implication to debase a political adversary to be beyond obnoxious. ;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One might have expected the CNN anchor, Dana Bash, to push back on such a grossly false statement – especially considering that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a public statement saying that what Musk did was NOT a Nazi salute. ; It is telling that the very organization that calls out antisemitism found it necessary to push back against false accusations of antisemitism.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Musk hand gesture first came to my attention when it was reported with sinister implications by MSNBC’s Rachel Madow. But &#8230; she did not reference it at the time as a Nazi salute. She described it as (you just cannot make this stuff up) an ancient Roman army salute. How weird is that? Did she have the Philistines at the gate on her mind? Unlike the Nazi salute, Maddow’s allusion makes no sense at all – even has a vicious slander. But then &#8230; it IS Rachel Maddow.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The American left-wing media spread their slander across the globe – using carefully selected photos and claims that it was a Nazi salute. ; It resulted in many publications in Germany, Poland and elsewhere to re-report the slander verbatim.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Michael Friedman former chair of the Central Council of Jews in Germany claimed that Musk had “unambiguously” performed the “Nazi Heil Hitler” salute. ; Totally untrue.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">German Chancellor Olaf Scholz criticized Musk’s gesture, but said they have freedom of speech in Germany. ; Apparently, Berlin Judge Kai-Uwe Herbst does not agree. ; He told the Berlin <em>Zeitung </em>that an arm thrust like Musk’s is sufficient evidence on which to bring charges under German law.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Die Seit</em> carried an article headlined “A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute.” ; In the article, Lenz Jacobsen wrote, “Whoever on a political stage, making a political speech in front of a partly far-right audience, elongates his arm diagonally in the air both forcefully and repeatedly, is making a Hitler salute. There’s no such ‘probably’ or ‘similar to’ or ‘controversial’ about it. The gesture speaks for itself.”</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The slander knows no bounds of truth &#8230; accuracy &#8230; or decency.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Let us be perfectly clear. ; Outside of a very small band of self-named nutcases, there is no &#8230; as in zero &#8230; Nazi influence in the American political culture. ; If you want to compare extreme ideologies, I will argue that left-wing communism has more influence in the American political culture than Nazism.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If this is all Democrats have, one can understand why they lost so badly in 2024.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So, there ‘tis.</p>

Musk … Nazi salutes … and political slander
