By DEXTER DUGGAN
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Four conservative national commentators looked at how the U.S. has changed under pressure from extreme leftists, and what to expect for the 2020 presidential campaign, as they spoke at “The War for America’s Soul” forum sponsored by Phoenix talk-radio station KKNT (960 AM).
The Virginia T. Piper Theater at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts was full as the four gave their perspectives that lasted just over two hours on the evening of September 26. The center’s website says the theater has a capacity of 853 people. They cheered and applauded comments by pundits Michelle Malkin, Sebastian Gorka, Larry Elder, and Mike Gallagher.
Gallagher acted as moderator, to pose questions to the others.
The four spoke the same day that frenzied Democrats in Washington ramped up their assaults to try to oust Republican Donald Trump from the presidency.
Gorka, who served briefly as a White House strategist for Trump, hosts the daily “America First” program on the Salem Radio Network. Salem’s biographical information says that “with parents who had lived as children under fascism and then escaped Communist Hungary, Sebastian was raised to love freedom.”
However, commenting on how the U.S. has changed, the 6-foot-4 Gorka told the Scottsdale audience about the time a young female student whose weight he estimated at 90 pounds walked up to verify his identity. When he affirmed who he was, Gorka said, the student replied, “F*** you, you Nazi.”
As someone whose immediate family in Europe had suffered under both Nazis and Communists, Gorka told the Scottsdale audience how wrong that insult was, but he asked them to ponder how it could even be possible to dare say it.
“Look in the mirror. We let it happen” when Americans let the left take over the schools, Gorka said, citing the example of Bill Ayers becoming a tenured professor.
Ayers had been a member of the violent leftist Weather Underground in the 1970s who went on to serve at the University of Illinois at Chicago and advise future leftist Democrat president Barack Obama.
Malkin, the U.S.-born daughter of legal Filipino immigrants, told the Scottsdale audience that she grew up in a small town in southern New Jersey then attended left-wing Oberlin College, in Ohio. “There’s nothing worse than liberal racism, the condescension of the elite,” she said, adding, “This radical politics that has consumed the Democratic Party is going to fail.”
Earlier, Malkin told listeners, “I’m proud to be a member of your squad, the freedom squad” — the opposite of the cadre of socialist Democrats led by freshman Cong. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Referring to current aggressions by congressional Democrats, Malkin said, “This week has just been jaw-dropping, but we’ve seen it before.”
She hailed Trump’s appearance earlier in the week at the United Nations, including his defense of national borders.
Talk-host Elder said that in California there’s probably only one person more disliked than Trump, and that’s Charles Manson — the late leader of the “Manson Family” murder cult of 1969.
However, Elder said, in a Golden State airport the morning of his Scottsdale appearance, no one was even bothering to watch television news of the day’s Democrat anti-Trump hearing in the nation’s capital.
The 2020 campaign could be tougher for Trump than 2016, Elder said, because now the Democrats have money, “they hate his guts, and this time they’re not going to underestimate him.”
Gorka said, “Conflict is his (Trump’s) fuel. . . . His motto is, ‘Bring it, and I will crush you’.”
Democrats’ role is to “put logjams” in front of Trump fighting for the American people, Gorka said. “2020 is going to be about one thing, my friends, mobilization, and we know the other side is going to be trucking voters to the polls.”
Noting the specter that Democrats are making themselves into, talk-host Gallagher said, “Normal people are afraid of people who are unhinged.”
Malkin, observing that there’s an escalation of feeling against people who aren’t even public figures, said one reason she moved away from the Beltway was that her children couldn’t even eat their pancakes at IHOP without being yelled at.
She could have cited various instances of conservatives being harangued and assaulted by leftist radicals merely for daring to eat out in restaurants.
Hollywood celebrities wanted to put the Covington boys into a shredder, Malkin said.
She referred to an incident last January. With no more at hand than a misleading video snippet, various prominent figures quickly called for stern reprisal against some Kentucky Catholic school students, some of them wearing red MAGA hats, who allegedly did no more than show disrespect to an elder Native American.
One can only wonder what sore punishment would have been advocated if the students allegedly went further and slapped him.
A Disney film producer quickly posted an image of a woodchipper spewing blood onto the snow. He captioned it, “#MAGAkids go screaming, hats first, into the woodchipper.” The producer apologized when he learned how badly he was misled by the propaganda video. But if he’d actually had the power to cut the young Catholics to pieces, his rash judgment couldn’t undo their deaths.
This Stuff Is Nuts
Later in the program, Malkin said that if Americans keep funding “propagandists” to run the schools, “then it’s on us” to take the blame. She commended homeschooling as an alternative.
“How many of your kids learned history from (radical leftist) Howard Zinn” or used reading lists from the National Education Association, she asked. If people don’t start fixing the situation until college, “it’s way too late,” Malkin said, adding, “Fixing that starts in our own neighborhoods, in our own school districts, in our own homes.”
Given the seriousness of current challenges, Gallagher said, “We’ve got to retain our cheerful countenance” and optimistic view.
Malkin said that the far left wants “to take our guns away because it might save one life,” but what about all the innocent lives taken by illegal aliens who receive protection here?
Earlier in the evening Malkin said that for 25 years, immigration enforcement and sovereignty have been among her key themes.
Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and rancher Bob Krentz were among the victims killed by illegal aliens in Arizona, she said, asking how dare that Democrats in Congress say the border crisis is just “manufactured.”
Families of those killed by illegal aliens need their stories shared across social media, Malkin said, because journalists don’t care about their fate at all.
Open-borders journalist Jorge Ramos was allowed to pose questions at a Democratic presidential debate, Malkin said, but she was not.
On the conservative side, Gorka said that only four organizations in the U.S. matter for clout, the National Rifle Association, the Heritage Foundation as it’s being revitalized by its president, Kay Coles James, Judicial Watch, and the young people’s Turning Point USA.
The far left has committed an unforced error by reaching the extremes of political correctness, Gorka said, and young people are reacting by saying, “This stuff is nuts.”
The evening’s presentation concluded with singing God Bless America.
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