Newsmax Makes Stupid Attack On Biden’s Dog Champ à la FDR’s Dog Fala

Some idiot no one has ever heard of at Newsmax, the far-right cable news channel that former President Donald Trump loves, dedicated part of a segment on Friday evening to attacking President Joe Biden’s 12-year-old German Shepherd, Champ. Newsmax Host Attacks Biden’s 12-Year Old Dog Champ: “Looks Like It’s From a Junkyard”:

Host Greg Kelly claimed he is a dog lover [doubtful], but he all but called Champ ugly in a bizarre segment that seemed designed to criticize what he had decided was the lack of care the aging dog was receiving at the White House. “Did you see the dog?” Kelly asked about Champ. “Doesn’t he look a little, uh, a little rough? I love dogs, but this dog needs a bath and a comb and all kinds of love and care. I’ve never seen a dog in the White House like this.”

Newsmax guest attacks Biden's dogs for being dirty and "unlike a presidential dog" pic.twitter.com/6yitOlM765

— aliciasadowski (@aliciasadowski6) February 20, 2021

Maybe he is just confused after four years of not seeing a dog, or a pet of any kind, in the dog hater Trump White House. Donald Trump reportedly called it “low-class” to  own pets.

Kelly seems to believe that Champ doesn’t measure up to Buddy, former President Bill Clinton’s dog or Millie, former President George H.W. Bush’s dog. He never mentioned former President Barack Obama’s dogs nor opine on what he thought of Biden’s other dog, Major, who is the first rescue dog to live in the White House. “I remember Buddy. I remember Millie. I remember lots of dogs but not a dog who seems—I don’t know. I don’t know how much love and care he is getting,” Kelly said. “This dog looks like, I’m sorry, from the junkyard.”

As could be expected, the segment garnered lots of backlash on social media and Brian Williams even brought it up on his MSNBC show. “Think of it this way: If Champ were to meet Greg Kelly, he would probably love Greg Kelly unconditionally,” Williams said. “That’s what dogs do. It’s probably also why there are no dogs anchoring Newsmax.”

Tonight's #LastThingBeforeWeGo? Why did Newsmax's Greg Kelly decide to go after the Bidens' dog?

Watch more: https://t.co/FXzovPPGT8#11thHour pic.twitter.com/KBVnqnlc8g

— 11th Hour (@11thHour) February 20, 2021

This is not going to end well for this idiot or for Newsmax. Here’s a lesson from history about FDR and his dog Fala. Defending Fala – A Lesson in Effective Campaigning (excerpt):

The Dewey campaign had been attacking the Roosevelt administration as corrupt and incompetent and had accused FDR of sending a U.S. Navy destroyer to pick up his Scottish Terrier Fala after he had been accidentally left behind during the President’s visit to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Roosevelt and his family had been attacked and criticized many times over the years, and he had been called everything from a communist to a dictator. But at this particular moment FDR decided it was one thing to attack him or his family, and quite another to attack his beloved Fala.

Fala was no ordinary White House pet. He was a national celebrity, the star of a MGM movie about the White House, was featured in a series of popular cartoons and was routinely covered by the national press.

The idea for turning the Republican attacks on Fala into a joke originally came from the famed film director Orson Wells, a strong Roosevelt supporter. Roosevelt’s speech was broadcast nationally on the radio, and it started out with his typical criticisms of his opponents in Congress and a defense of his administration’s accomplishments. Near the end of the speech he turned to the topic of Fala – and brought down the house.

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I’d left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him—at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars—his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself … But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog.”

His comments brought great laughter and applause, and as Conrad Black notes in his book Franklin Delano Roosevelt : Champion of Freedom

“It became an emotional meeting: the Democrats were inexpressibly relieved that their leader still had the magic. At his best, as on this night, he was an almost hypnotic speaker. “

Roosevelt’s performance changed the tone of the press coverage as well. Timemagazine reported that “The Champ had swung a full roundhouse blow. And it was plain to the newsmen on the Dewey Special that the challenger had been hit hard – as plain as when a boxer drops his gloves and his eyes glaze.”

President Roosevelt’s Fala speech has become one of his most famous campaign events. It presented the candidate Roosevelt at his best: funny, confident and in command. It also dispelled the image of him as sickly and weak. The public loved it and the Dewey campaign never really recovered. Six weeks later Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented fourth term.

 This idiot at Newsmax is sullying the reputation of a defenseless dog just to distract Americans from more pressing issues facing the country, i.e., a global Coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic crisis that President Biden is trying to address this week with his COVID-19 relief bill in Congress. Two crises made substantially worse than it had to be because of the criminal negligence of the Trump administration.

As Laurie Garret writes at Foreign Policy, Trump Is Guilty of Pandemicide (excerpt):

The COVID-19 epidemic in the United States has fallen below the numbers of daily new cases tallied on the eve of the presidential election, the point at which this viral nightmare soared. Using the New York Times’ coronavirus data tracker, on Nov. 1, 2020, there were 74,195 new cases counted in the country; by Feb. 16, new case reports came in at 64,376.

But in between those dates, a national horror unfolded, peaking on Jan. 8 with 300,619 new cases reported in just 24 hours. This staggering wave, one full year into the pandemic, was completely unnecessary for the world’s richest country. Achieving any sense of closure will require holding Donald Trump accountable for the failure.

There is vast evidence of Trump’s negligence during the pandemic’s third wave. Had I been a member of the House of Representatives during the body’s impeachment deliberations, I would have added to Trump’s indictment the crime of pandemicide, naming him as responsible for most of the COVID-19 deaths that transpired while he, the nation’s leader, was preoccupied with damning Joe Biden’s election victory. Trump’s failure to, as he vowed in his oath of office, “faithfully execute the office of president of the United States” promulgated a scale of lives lost exceeding anything experienced in the country since the Civil War, 160 years ago.

[T]he path of pandemicide was paved in pursuit of the president’s reelection and his relentless, all-consuming post-election campaign to refute his opponent’s victory, claiming election fraud and even theft.

* * *

According to a new Lancet Commission report compiled by an international team of august scientists and public health leaders, some 40 percent of America’s COVID-19 death toll during the Trump administration was needless, meaning it could have been averted with available nonmedical interventions.

* * *

So, I level the charge of pandemicide against Trump for his failure to say or do anything to halt the soaring burden of infection and death across the United States from Election Day to his departure from office. During a period when experts inside his government warned that holiday travel and interactions over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s could lead to massive spread of the virus, and states clamored for aid to disseminate vaccines, Trump was mum.

* * *

Between the election and the inauguration, the number of infected Americans more than doubled, skyrocketing from 9.4 million cases to 24 million—adding some 15 million cases, on Trump’s watch, when he was fixated on overturning Biden’s victory and AWOL on the pandemic front.

And in his absence from pandemic duty—his duty to protect the American people—172,000 Americans died, nearly doubling the mortality toll since Election Day.

Republicans have, of course, decided that Trump cannot be impeached now that he is a private citizen. As a matter of formality, then, my call is moot. But let history record that no sitting U.S. president—since April 30, 1789, when George Washington took the first oath on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City—has willfully allowed such preventable carnage to unfold on the American people.

Let history record that Donald Trump is guilty of the crime of pandemicide.

Take that, Greg Kelly, on behalf of “good dog” Champ.