Republicans Must Now Pledge Allegiance To Trump’s Seditious Insurrection Flag

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“When people show you who they are the first time believe them.” – Maya Angelou.

The Washington Post reports, Youngkin distances himself from controversial rally featuring Trump and Bannon:

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Republican Glenn Youngkin distanced himself from the most controversial elements of a rally for his Virginia gubernatorial campaign headlined Wednesday by former president Donald Trump and his onetime White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon.

The event, in a key suburban battleground outside Richmond, opened with the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag that emcee Martha Boneta said had been present “at the peaceful (sic) rally with Donald J. Trump on Jan. 6.”

If seditious insurrectionist and coup d’etat leader Donald Trump had been there in person:

Asked about the flag, Youngkin initially ducked the question but later issued a statement saying it was “weird and wrong” to pledge allegiance to it. But the fact that he was forced to answer questions about it highlighted his ongoing challenge in appealing to Trump’s base without alienating moderate voters.

Trump phoned in as a surprise guest at Wednesday’s gathering, which Bannon led in person. Youngkin did not attend the rally, saying he had a conflict, but publicly thanked organizer John Fredericks for planning it. His running mate, Winsome E. Sears, had been billed as a speaker and showed up, but she ducked out before the program began.

Speaker after speaker repeated Trump’s false claim that President Biden stole the 2020 election — including Trump himself, who incorporated it into his prediction that Youngkin will beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe on Nov. 2.

“We won in 2016. We won in 2020 — the most corrupt election in the history of our country, probably one of the most corrupt anywhere,” Trump said. “But we’re going to win it again.”
Bannon whipped up the crowd of several hundred by predicting Trump’s return — in 2024, if not before.

“We’re going to build the wall. We’re going to confront China,” Bannon said, to cheers. “We’re putting together a coalition that’s going to govern for 100 years.”

Why does this sound so familiar? Oh yeah: The third German Empire, Hitler’s vaunted “Thousand-Year Reich,” lasted only from 1933 to 1945. Apparently Steve Bannon is not as ambitious as his white supremacy hero, Adolph Hitler.

At a rally in Warrenton on Thursday, a reporter asked what Youngkin thought about pledging allegiance to a flag associated with the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Youngkin initially dodged the question.

“This is our American flag, and this is the flag that we should always pledge allegiance to,” he said, pointing to a banner on display at Eva Walker Park. He then said he had to step away to greet supporters.

“It wasn’t just any flag, sir,” WUSA’s Bruce Leshan pressed once Youngkin returned. “It was a flag that the organizers said specifically had flown over the Jan. 6 insurrection.”

“I wasn’t involved and so I don’t know,” Youngkin said. “But if that is the case, then we shouldn’t pledge allegiance to that flag.”

Early Thursday evening, Youngkin released a statement saying: “It is weird and wrong to pledge allegiance to a flag connected to January 6. As I have said before, the violence that occurred on January 6 was sickening and wrong.”

In a tweet after Wednesday’s rally, McAuliffe denounced the event.

Outgoing Gov. Ralph Northam (D) held a news conference Thursday, addressing Youngkin directly at times as he urged him to denounce the conspiracy theories he has flirted with during the campaign.

“This, Mr. Youngkin, is not a game,” Northam said. “When political candidates purposely reject facts and the truth and fan the flames of conspiracy, all in pursuit of power, they are taking very, very dangerous steps. If you want to lead this state, Mr. Youngkin, you need to make a choice. You can be part of our democratic institutions or you can use falsehoods to try to destroy them, but you can’t do both.”

A political newcomer and former private equity executive worth upward of $300 million, Youngkin launched his bid for the GOP nomination this year by warmly embracing Trump. He refused for months to acknowledge that Biden had legitimately won the White House and made “election integrity” the focus of his campaign.

“Election integrity,” when used by Republicans, is code for voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement.

Youngkin reached out to swing voters after securing the GOP nomination in May, briefly putting aside inflammatory themes in favor of kitchen-table issues such as schools.

NOT school funding or quality of education, mind you, Virginia is one of the best in the country. But rather GQP culture war issues, i.e., mask mandates and Covid safety protocols, and “critical race theory,” which is only taught in some law schools and graduate college courses. The Parent Trap: Republican see a winning issue in Virginia, while Democrats see a ruse. Republicans have recast this as “parental rights” (to negligently expose their kids, and everyone else, to Covid, and to celebrate their white privilege.)

Youngkin’s schools agenda, for instance, zeroed in on culture-war fare such as his opposition to critical race theory and to mask and coronavirus vaccine mandates. He recently renewed his call to audit voting machines — something the state already does — even though he has acknowledged Biden’s win and admitted in a debate that there was no significant fraud in past Virginia elections and that he doesn’t expect Democrats to cheat this fall.

Youngkin never fully pivoted from Trump, who remains popular with Virginia’s GOP base even after losing the state as a whole last year by 10 percentage points.

On Thursday, Youngkin sidestepped when asked if he’d like Trump to campaign for him in person.

For his part, though, Trump mused about campaigning with Youngkin.

“We’ll have to do one together, where we’re all live together,” he said during the call-in. “I sort of like that idea.”

Trump created a stir hours before the rally with a written statement that some Republicans feared could depress turnout in the Nov. 2 gubernatorial election:

Youngkin’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about Trump’s statement and whether it impacts the party’s effort to get Republicans to the polls in November.

[A]lthough Youngkin skipped the event, held at a suburban Richmond restaurant, Fredericks said Youngkin had thanked him “profusely” for arranging it and supplied him with campaign signs to hand out; Youngkin’s campaign spokesman declined to comment on the rally or Fredericks’s assertion.

In the home stretch of the Nov. 2 race against McAuliffe, the political newcomer and former private equity executive seems to be making more overt appeals to Trump fans — even as he distanced himself from the rally.

Youngkin made peace in recent days with former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka, who in late August had called Youngkin a “RINO,” meaning “Republican In Name Only,” for refusing to appear on his podcast. Youngkin came on the show last weekend and pledged to pursue a “Virginia First” agenda, echoing Trump’s “America First” rhetoric.

Youngkin also has begun campaigning alongside Virginia’s most prominent proponent of the false theory about the stolen 2020 election, state Sen. Amanda F. Chase (R-Chesterfield) — a pariah among fellow Senate Republicans, who joined Democrats in censuring her this year after she called the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 “patriots.”

Youngkin’s recent moves have surprised some political observers, who would have expected him to have nailed down the GOP base by now and moved on to wooing suburban moderates in the mode of other blue-state Republican governors, such as Larry Hogan of Maryland and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts.

Bannon’s appearance Wednesday in suburban territory where Trump has been toxic was a head-scratcher to some, particularly as a U.S. House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 seeks Bannon’s testimony. The committee subpoenaed him on Sept. 23 and on Thursday announced that it will move to hold him in criminal contempt for not complying with the subpoena.

“I’m not sure what Steve Bannon in Henrico gets [Youngkin] other than to remind Democrats why they don’t like Republicans,” said Bob Holsworth, a veteran Richmond political analyst. “He’s apparently in the process of defying a congressional subpoena — and proud of it. That’s sort of the curious part of this.”

UPDATE: The Pima County GQP is bringing this criminal Steve Bannon and his Insurrectionist Rally to Tucson, disingenuously billed as a “Lincoln Day Dinner.” I’m sorry, but after the MAGA/QAnon attempted coup d’etat on January 6, the Republican Party has forfeited any right to associate itself with Abraham Lincoln. The Party of Lincoln is dead and gone, and the Party of Trump has more in common with the white supremacists of the Confederacy. They should call it the Jefferson Davis – Robert E. Lee Dinner. It would at least be honest.

Will Steve Bannon bring a flag carried by MAGA/QAnon seditious insurrectionists at the attempted coup d’etat on January 6 and have Pima County Republicans pledge allegiance to the flag of seditious insurrection? Will Kelli Ward or Karen Fann lead the pledge?





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1 thought on “Republicans Must Now Pledge Allegiance To Trump’s Seditious Insurrection Flag”

  1. Politico reports, “McAuliffe: GOP rally’s pledge to Jan. 6 flag was ‘racist dog whistle'”, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/14/mcauliffe-jan-6-racist-dog-whistle-516000

    Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe called on opponent Glenn Youngkin to condemn the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, labeling the use of a flag from the deadly riot at a Republican rally in the state a “racist dog whistle.”

    “People have fought and died to protect the right to democracy and these thugs go here on Jan. 6 and destroy? People died. Law enforcement died,” McAuliffe told MSNBC on Thursday. “And they were pledging allegiance to a flag they wanted to use up there to destroy our democracy.”

    “He needs to come out today and say it was wrong to do Pledge of Allegiance to that flag, and I want him to come out and say [the] Jan. 6 insurrection was wrong,” McAuliffe added.

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