#Anti-Trump lies and other commentary

US Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
AP

Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s claim that President Trump “spent all his time talking about dead traitors” during his Mount Rushmore speech is “a flat-out lie,” fumes National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke. “I know this, because I can read.” As the transcript shows, “Trump’s two references to the Civil War came in passages praising Lincoln and condemning slavery.” Why Duckworth lied, alas, is obvious: The establishment media “said the same thing within seconds of the speech’s conclusion,” because they also hate Trump. “If the truth matters,” though, “it matters all the time, including when reporting on Donald Trump” — and the truth is that “Duckworth is lying, and the press is helping her do it.”

Conservative: Our Newest Religion — Wokeness

At The New York Times, Ross Douthat considers the rapid rise of ­social-justice obsessions as a bid to replace Mainline Protestantism as America’s central religion, settling such questions as: “Should society regulate sex, and how? Should society regulate alcohol consumption, and how? What values should be taught in schools and universities?” The Mainline’s cultural authority collapsed in the 1960s, replaced by the “naïve view” that “the important questions could be worked out through reasoned arguments that required . . . no authority higher than the Supreme Court or capital-S Science.” Now come what writer Joseph Bottum calls “the post-Protestants,” who are “an elect rather than an elite, defined more by their education and their moral sensibility than by their overt wealth or power,” and they have their own answers about regulating sex, etc. Will they “rapidly burn out” or achieve the same dominance as the Mainliners? “God knows.”

Culture watch: Trump Has Saved Statues

The establishment media’s “outright and outrageous lie” that President Trump’s Mount Rushmore address was “a racist appeal to disaffected white voters” has “a bright silver lining,” argues The Federalist’s David Marcus. After protesters’ call for “tearing down statues of the Founding Fathers” didn’t “play all that well, especially on 4th of July weekend,” Trump used his speech to defend the founders vigorously — and “won that argument completely.” That’s why the media falsely claimed Trump defended Confederates and why the Biden campaign is distancing itself from those would topple monuments to Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Trump should “just keep punching away”: “At least for now,” the president has saved statues of “America’s heroes and founders.”

Rove: Cut Out the Tweets for God’s Sake, Don!

Fox News contributor Karl Rove blasted President Trump for his online vituperation against NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, Mediaite reports. Asked Rove: “Did what the president tweeted on Monday advance the cause that he laid out” in his Mount Rushmore speech? “I think the answer is an unambiguous no.” The former George W. Bush consigliere added that Trump “could have advanced his cause on Monday by instead of tweeting about Bubba Wallace, tweeting about the names of these young black girls and boys who were killed in acts of needless violence in America’s major cities. That’s a much better point. That’s what America is concerned about. . . . They’re not concerned about the Confederate flag.”

Libertarian: Our ‘Oil Spill’ Politics

“Somehow, it became a sign of bedrock conservative principles to refuse to wear a face mask anytime, anyplace, in the middle of a pandemic” and “a marker of devout progressivism to shriek like banshees at anybody who fails to don a mask even for a stroll along a deserted path,” sighs Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. Blame polarization: Sociologist Daniel DellaPosta has found that political polarization is like “an oil spill” that gradually taints “previously ‘apolitical’ attitudes, opinions and preferences” — even “sports and beverage preferences.” People “come to associate a preference with a tribal choice,” then “adopt a host of new preferences as symbols of their tribal ­affiliation.” Rising polarization leaves little that “people of opposing views can mutually enjoy” — and puts the onus on Americans “still willing to break bread” with those who disagree to “serve as translators and peacemakers” for their compatriots.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board