15 April 2017

THINK 3 VIDEO NEWS: 'Show us your taxes, you big orange Cheeto!'

April 15 is the traditional tax deadline day and so seemed an appropriate time for another wave of anti-Trump protests. The idea this time was that the President should feel fresh pressure to make his tax returns public. In Albany, at least, that idea didn't draw anything like the crowd that thronged West Capitol Park back in January, immediately after Trump's inauguration. My own eyeball estimate was that there was no more than a tenth of that mob out today, several hundred instead of several thousand. It's possible that there was some confusion over the nature of today's demonstrations. Hearing about "tax day" protests, some people may have thought that marchers would be protesting against taxes, which would make them the wrong type of crowd. In any event, this was the scene as I arrived at approximately 3:30 p.m. After some preliminaries, the demonstrators were hitting the sidewalk to march around the capitol block. As you'll see, the vanguard went in the wrong direction and had to be herded the other way. Ironically, they turned right when they should have gone left.


Once everyone was headed in the right (I mean left) direction, I crossed the park to catch the crowd as it came back to the park, and to watch them as they marched past the historic capitol steps. A wedding party picked this day to take their picture on the steps; despite the interruption they happy couple and friends got into the spirit of the occasion, joining in some of the chants.



Here's one of those chants.


And here's the battle cry that gives this post its title.


Here's an excerpt from a speech by one of the organizers, representing a new political entity called Bethlehem Indivisible.


While much of the talk today was relevantly progressive, a lot of the poster art seemed obsolete in light of recent events, still accusing Trump of being a Russian stooge in some way or another. Nothing short of a shooting war will get that taint off him as far as some people are concerned. Despite their fears, the President seems headed toward the center on many fronts, for good or ill, in a way that has alienated some of his base supporters while possibly calming the anxiety many opponents have felt since the election. I'm not sure we'll see the kind of numbers anymore that turned out against Trump in January -- unless there is a shooting war, that is. Then a lot of these same people may wish we were friendlier toward Russia. But for what it's worth, we probably should see those tax returns, or else we should hear a more convincing case from the President's lawyers for why we can't see them yet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think tRump should demand that all these people publicize their own tax forms if they're going to insist that he do so. As there is no law declaring a President MUST make his tax records public, then the public has no right - or reason - to demand such. This ludicrous hatred of tRump is doing far more damage to the American public and the world's view of us than tRump himself is doing. These people either need to get a grip or they need a hard dose of reality straight to the face.