April 30, 2011: The Law of Unintended Consequences
April 30, 2011: The White House Correspondents' Dinner -- a.k.a. "Nerd Prom" -- is held. A good time was had by all -- except for one man. This led to unintended consequences -- terrible ones.
The White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner, begun in 1921, has become a Washington, D.C. tradition. Starting with Calvin Coolidge in 1924, every President had attended at least one of them. It is traditionally held on the evening of the last Saturday in April, at the Washington Hilton.
The event was canceled in 1930, due to the death of Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft; in 1942, due to America's recent entry into World War II; and in 1951, over what President Harry Truman called "the uncertainty of the world situation."
In 1962, at the urging of UPI reporter Helen Thomas, President John F. Kennedy announced that he refused to attend the dinner unless the ban on women attending was dropped. It was. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Hilton, and was still recovering at the time of the annual event, but attended in each of the other 7 years of his Presidency.
Since 1983, the featured speaker has usually been a comedian, with the dinner taking on the form of a comedy "roast" of the President and his Administration. On occasions, the comedians have been said to go too far, although none has ever been "canceled" as a result.
In 2011, President Barack Obama was preparing to run for re-election, and, despite having ended a recession and winding down the Iraq War, it was far from clear whether he would be able to win.
Real estate mogul Donald Trump, host of the NBC "reality show" The Apprentice, had been demanding to see Obama's birth certificate, because a person born outside the United States is ineligible to serve as President. The reason Trump wanted to see it is because Obama is black, and Trump hates black people.
Now, here was a black man as the most respected person in America, something Trump -- or, as his 1st wife, Ivana Trump, called him, "The Donald" -- wanted to be, but could never become, because the image he had projected of being a smart, super-rich, tough businessman was all a lie: He is an idiot, deep in debt, and a very weak man, physically and morally.
And he couldn't handle the fact that the American people had chosen a black man to lead them. So, in Trump's twisted mind, somehow, Obama had to be illegitimate. Since it was known that his father, also named Barack Obama, had been born in the African nation of Kenya, and that his mother, Ann Dunham, had remarried to a man from Indonesia, Lolo Soetoro, that perhaps the President had been born in either of those countries, making him ineligible to be the President.
Obama had finally released a copy of the certificate, proving that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. The State of Hawaii, with Governor Linda Lingle, a Republican, approving the move, released its own copy. So, from that point forward, anyone who said Obama was born in any country other than the U.S. was a proven liar.
Seth Meyers, a comedian and a former castmember of NBC's Saturday Night Live, was the host. But nobody remembers what he said. They remember what Obama said. He began his speech by lampooning the controversy: He claimed he'd found video of his birth. It was a parody of the Disney cartoon The Lion King. It got a lot of laughs.
He threw a few light jabs at potential competitors in the next year's election: Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a religious nut; former Governor and Representative Tim Pawlenty, also of Minnesota; former Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah, whom Obama had appointed U.S. Ambassador to China as a gesture "across the aisle"; and the man who ended up being nominated by the Republicans, former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.
Then, Obama noted that Trump was in the audience. His remarks about Trump made everybody laugh:
Donald Trump is here tonight! Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the Moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?
But, all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience.
For example -- no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of "Celebrity Apprentice" -- at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so, ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meat Loaf. You fired Gary Busey.
And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well handled.
Did I say everybody laughed? One person didn't: Trump. He sat there, staring at Obama, glaring at him. Trump had called the bluff of the President of the United States, and found out that the President wasn't bluffing: He had the winning hand. And Trump looked like an absolute fool. A very, very angry fool. He was beaten, badly beaten, by someone whose talent he couldn't overcome, and certainly couldn't handle.
It wasn't all fun and games. Obama saluted the American armed forces, the people affected by recent storms in the South, and the journalists who covered everything from those storms to the current "Arab Spring" revolutions in the Middle East.
About 24 hours later, Obama announced that U.S. Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden, finally getting justice for the 9/11 attacks, nearly 10 years later. All in all, a pretty good weekend for him.
But what some people call "The Law of Unintended Consequences" reared its head. Trump had been so badly, and so publicly, humiliated. And doing it was not just the President of the United States, but a black man.
And Trump couldn't handle that. It has been suggested that, right there and then, he had decided to run for President. He didn't run in 2012: Even he wasn't stupid enough to run against an incumbent President who'd saved the economy, ended the Iraq War, and killed bin Laden. But in 2015, thinking there was enough combined resentment in the country against the black President, Obama, and the female heir apparent, Hillary Clinton, he announced his campaign, which turned out to be the most bigoted campaign in American history, a record even he couldn't break while running for re-election in 2020.
Trump wanted to do everything the opposite of how Obama did it, right down to, as it turned out, throwing out the pandemic "playbook" the Obama Administration had compiled, in case of an emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic that happened on Trump's watch. If Trump had kept that playbook, and followed it, there would still have been thousands of deaths, but he would have been seen as actively trying to stop it, instead of denying it as a "hoax," and there wouldn't have been over 1 million deaths.
If Trump could have reversed Obama's greatest accomplishment, and brought Osama bin Laden back to life, to use to scare Americans, like he did with ISIS, MS-13 and black, Hispanic and Muslim "criminals," he would have. But Trump was no Dr. Frankenstein.
Trump did not attend the 2017, 2018 or 2019 Dinners, because he didn't want to hear people making fun of him. The event was canceled in 2020 and 2021, due to the restrictions connected with the COVID-19 epidemic. Joseph R. Biden Jr. beat Trump in 2020, and attended the 2022 Dinner, because, while he takes the Presidency seriously, he knows enough to not take Joe Biden too seriously.
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April 30, 2011 was a Saturday. These Major League Baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 5-4 at the new Yankee Stadium. Derek Jeter went 0-for-3, but had an RBI on a sacrifice fly. A.J. Burnett was the winning pitcher.
* The New York Mets lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1 at Citizens Bank Park. Roy Halladay outpitched Jon Niese. John Mayberry Jr. hit a home run.
* The San Francisco Giants beat the Washington Nationals, 2-1 at Nationals Park in Washington.
* The Seattle Mariners beat the Boston Red Sox, 2-0 at Fenway Park in Boston. How many Mariner pitchers does it take to pitch a 7-hit shutout? This time, 3: Doug Fister (5 2/3rds innings, winning pitcher), Aaron Laffey (2 1/3rd) and Brandon League (1). David Ortiz went 0-for-4.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Atlanta Braves, 3-2 at Turner Field (now Center Parc Stadium) in Atlanta.
* The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Los Angeles Angels, 2-1 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. Matt Joyce scored on a wild pitch by Fernando Rodney in the bottom of the 10th inning.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the Detroit Tigers, 3-2 at Progressive Field in Cleveland. Orlando Cabrera singled Michael Brantley home with the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Florida Marlins, 4-3 at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. Édgar RenterÃa singled Jonny Gomes home with the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-2 at U.S. Cellular Field (now Guaranteed Rate Field) in Chicago.
* The Kansas City Royals beat the Minnesota Twins, 11-2 at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.
* The Houston Astros beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 2-1 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston.
* The Colorado Rockies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-1 at Coors Field in Denver.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 5-3 at Chase Field in Phoenix.
* The San Diego Padres beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
* And the Texas Rangers beat the Oakland Athletics, 11-2 at the Oakland Coliseum.
The NBA Playoffs were between rounds. There were 2 games played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Boston Bruins beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 7-3 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. The Nashville Predators beat the Vancouver Canucks, 2-1 at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver. Matthew Halischuk scored the winning goal at 14:51 of the 2nd overtime.
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