Closing with ‘values,’ Trump and Harris stand in contrast

The candidates for president of the United States and their surrogates are talking a lot about values, and demonstrating their very different interpretations of what exactly that word means.

It was a setting that recalled a horror many Americans have tried to forget, the place where former president Donald Trump incited a crowd that morphed into a mob to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In her closing argument in Washington on Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris, flanked by the Stars and Stripes, instead ended her speech talking about the values instilled in her by “family by blood and family by love,” the values of “community, compassion and faith.”

The Democratic nominee repeated her belief that “the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Looking at the gulf that is the partisan divide in America, that may indeed take a leap of faith. However, it is a lot sunnier than the vision Trump, the Republican nominee, conjured up at his weekend Madison Square Garden rally in New York City.

When Trump said early in his first campaign for the presidency that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” it turns out he was right. It was appropriate those remarks were made at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, a Christian college, since Trump’s most loyal constituency has been white evangelicals, who’ve stuck with him since then, no matter what.

“Compassionate conservatism” is so George W. Bush, a former president effectively banished from Trump’s GOP and replaced with a new brand of retribution and revenge.

It’s just proof that having religion does not necessarily equate to caring about your fellow man.

The nightmarish lineup at Trump’s New York rally offered insults toward Puerto Ricans, Jews, Musli

How a battle for locker-room access was about so much more

Sports and politics don’t mix. In truth, that has never been the case. Sports, in fact, reflect every issue, every conflict in society from civil rights to equal justice.

Melissa Ludtke knows this from experience. In the 1970s, when she was trying to cover Major League Baseball for Sports Illustrated, her path to doing the job — which required equal access to the players — was blocked by a powerful and inflexible commissioner. The battle mirrored America’s burgeoning women’s movement, and ultimately ended up in federal court, presided over by a judge with her own civil rights experience. Ludtke tells the story in “Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside,” and on this episode of Equal Time.

An election that’s bigger than one country

During trips to Europe when Barack Obama was president of the United States, I felt like a rock star because, well, he was one, and some of that sheen couldn’t help but rub off on any random American. It was a point his Republican antagonists used to attack him, as though possessing celebrity-style charisma was a bad thing. (If only members of the GOP could have predicted the future, when their own candidate was best known for listing the TV show “The Apprentice” on his thin political resume.)

I fondly remember those trips, when I got a few free drinks and lots of conversation. Those Europeans admired that America, a country with a history of racial segregation and racist violence, could progress enough to elect an African American as its president. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Obama was a man with extraordinary political and personal gifts, and had a picture-perfect family to match.

While neither I nor any Black American I knew bought into the fantasy of a post-racial America — our own experiences and U.S. history taught us better — I felt very protective and proud of my country. I knew their own countries could not claim a parallel achievement and didn’t hesitate to tell them so, even

Stoking division may be a winning campaign strategy, but it comes at a cost

One Republican president, George W. Bush, honored Dikembe Mutombo at his 2007 State of the Union address at the Capitol, saying, “Dikembe became a star in the NBA and a citizen of the United States, but he never forgot the land of his birth, or his duty to share his blessings with others.”

It wasn’t just the sports world that mourned the death of Mutombo this week at the age of 58. Mutombo, who had become a U.S. citizen the year before Bush’s public praise, was known for both his unique basketball skills and his humanitarian and philanthropic efforts in this country, and especially in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo. Through the efforts of the NBA’s first global ambassador, a hospital and school were built there.

His obituary in The New York Times recounted that moment when a president recognized the sports star. Mutombo was awarded an academic scholarship to Georgetown, where he double majored in linguistics and diplomacy instead of his original pre-med dream; he spoke French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and five African languages.

What a full life, in just 58 years.

I wonder, though, if another former Republican president gave that stellar American’s death a second thought.

Instead, the current GOP nominee for the office was using Mutombo’s birthplace and the people who hail from that African country as villains at campaign stops on the Donald Trump hate tour. I doubt Trump knows much about any country in Africa, but he’s canny enough to realize conjuring up lurid images he seems to have gleaned from a Tarzan movie would scare up a few votes by stoking fear of the other, particularly if that other consists of nameless hordes of Black people, invading a white, suburban haven.

“They come from, from the Congo in Africa,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Wisconsin this week, repeating what has become a familiar refrain. “Many people from the Congo. I don’t know what that is.” It’s always Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Denmark that draw his admiration, while he heaps insults on the Middle East, Asia, Central and South America and Africa.

Equal Time: Has grift hijacked American conservatism?

In the middle of a contentious election season, it might be the perfect time to look back and try to figure out how we got here. In “The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism,” best-selling author and Equal Time guest Joe Conason investigates how lofty rhetoric can sometimes hide moneymaking motives. Who benefits, who is left to pay the bill and how does anyone get away with it?

In battleground North Carolina, a Kamala Harris crowd overflowing with joy — and urgency

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — One rule for politicians and politically inclined citizens: Stay away from Hitler references. They have a “boy who cried wolf” quality and usually end up backfiring, making you appear more extreme than the opponent you’re trying to label.

However, as everyone knows, every rule has an exception. And 93-year-old Ruth Hecht has more than earned hers.

Looking to the future, with a nod to history at the DNC

It is fitting that President Joe Biden was the opening night star at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He is the party’s past and present; and the policies he touted in his presidency, the appointments he has made, have shaped the future of the country.

The man from Delaware got his moment in the sun after offering a path to his vice president, Kamala Harris, putting his stamp on the 2024 ticket after outsmarting pundits and poohbahs. Those fantasizing about mini-primaries and an open convention while publicly and not so gently nudging Biden’s exit, stage right, got it wrong, underestimating Scranton Joe and not for the first time.

The president got his chance to place front and center the accomplishments of his administration, which are plenty. He must have smiled when Republican nominee Donald Trump recently tried to steal the spotlight by taking credit for a Biden administration cap on insulin prices. So, he set his record straight.

Equal Time: A history of the gay right

When it comes to the politics of LGBTQ+ rights in America, the narrative that one party is pro and the other con has taken hold. But the truth is more nuanced — and interesting.

“Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right” takes readers from the 1950s to the present day, offering comprehensive and enlightening information. It introduces characters and organizations that stayed true to conservative values while championing same-sex marriage and helping to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

When the issue of gay rights is as relevant as ever, historian, commentator and Equal Time guest Neil J. Young offers insights into why so many gay conservatives continue to align with a party whose election-year rhetoric sees them as an enemy of American values.

Respect for difference is more important than an appeal for nonexistent unity

Stop. Reflect. Promise to do better, as individuals and as a country.

That would be a thoughtful reaction to an attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally for former president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump. And that was the immediate reaction from many leaders.

But in a place where the 2012 murders of children in a Connecticut elementary school became fodder for warped conspiracies that linger, painfully, especially for grieving parents, and the 2022 beating of the then-82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer inspired jokes from the same politicians now calling for civility, America could be too far gone for common sense and compassion — at least for more than a few hours.

The never-ending fight for civil rights

It was a milestone that came and went with minimal political fanfare, the 60th anniversary of the day President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964.

Though the political world has had a lot on its mind, it’s important to remember just how revolutionary this sweeping legislation was, and how the rights conferred in it to Americans left behind must be constantly and fiercely protected.

Just as those resistant to American progress managed to replace Reconstruction with Jim Crow, violence and neglect for many decades until citizens nonviolently fought back during the civil rights movement, the powers behind Project 2025 and similar manifestos are architects of modern-day movements that would turn the clock back, and restore basic rights to the few.