TRUE BLUE REPORT: Am I the only one whose skin crawled at the Carryn Owens BIRGing moment?

by TrueBlueMajority for Black Star Resistance

Community

(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday, Mar. 01, 2017 Wednesday, Mar. 01, 2017 at 8:59:36pm PST

Thankfully, no.

I spent most of the day thinking the whole world had gone mad over the moment in the speech to the joint session of Congress when DJT acknowledged Carryn Owens, the young widow of the Navy Seal who died in the first military operation of the Minority President’s regime.

Media types whom I hoped had better sense were treating it like some kind of epic moment in presidential speechmaking.

Van Jones lost his mind, and his over the top praise was immediately tweeted out by AC360 and breathlessly retweeted by Jake Tapper (and here I thought Jake Tapper was finally beginning to purchase a clue...).

Katy Tur sent out a bizarre and contradictory set of tweets but the first one set the wrong tone:

What the President did w Owen's widow was capital P Presidential. It was the single most extraordinary moment I've seen from Trump - by far.
Ã¢ÂÂ Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) March 1, 2017

What the actual F?

When I finally saw the clip my jaw was hanging open.

This poor woman’s grief was being milked for all it was worth.

The proof that DJT stood there BIRGing? He TIMED THE APPLAUSE. And then HAD to mention it!

We know perfectly well that he doesn’t give a good gawd damn about other people getting enthusiastic applause. He timed that applause because his BIRGing mind found a way to make the applause about HIM:

“Well, it was applause during my speech, and it set a record for most applause given a grieving widow at a joint session of Congress, and I was the one who invited her here, so in a way the applause was for me and my speech! Ryan got record applause because of me! Applause is good! Yay for the record!”

BIRG is short for “basking in reflected glory”, and when the Neediest Person In the World can’t get adulation in his own right he is happy to feast off the respect that someone else is getting.

Just when I thought the world turned upside down, I finally saw Pollwatcher’s diary with the Brandon Friedman tweet that reassured me I was not in fact losing my mind:

Media people in my feed (left) viewed Trump's Navy SEAL moment last night very differently from the veterans (right). A story in two images: pic.twitter.com/P2vlptE5B1
Ã¢ÂÂ Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) March 1, 2017

Someone in another diary asked why she would let herself be used in that manner, and I tried very hard to come up with some reasonable reasons why someone whose grief was understandably still very raw would allow her emotions to be milked so the Toddler-in-Chief could get an extra swig out of the bottle.

It has been suggested that she just wanted to draw attention to the sacrifices of military families, but she didn’t need to go to the speech in order to do that.

She didn’t need to allow the #worstpresidentever to exploit her tears in order to do that.

Any media outlet in the country would have given her an opportunity to do that. Every single major television network would have gladly given her the opportunity to do that.

And in her own words, not his.

Or if she is not a public speaking type, in the words of someone speaking for her who can speak more eloquently and honestly on the topic than DJT (which is, um, anybody else in the world).

Let’s remember this man was so unconcerned about her husband's life being at stake that he didn’t have the hour-long attention span to stay in the Situation Room during his very first time sending men into harm’s way as POTUS*.

Then he tried to blame the military, Barack Obama, and anyone else he could think of for why things went wrong.

Then he tried to claim nothing had gone wrong and the mission was a success that got lots of information.

Does anyone believe that?

She allowed herself to be used by him. I am trying to give her the benefit of the doubt and think of reasonable reasons why.

But wanting to call attention to the sacrifices of military families could have been accomplished in a dozen more honorable ways that would not involve DJT basking in her reflected glory and feeding off the applause for her grief.