Morning Glory: What the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics can teach the Trump campaign

The opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics shocked and appalled millions of viewers. Parents and grandparents rushed to change the channel as the weird sequence careened from headless Marie Antoinettes to the bizarre tableau that struck millions as a purposeful mockery of The Last Supper.

Not even the ubiquitous presence of Snoop Dogg on NBC’s broadcast could keep viewers hooked. What has traditionally been a high point of the Games—the opening march of teams of athletes from around the world to the cheers and applause of tens of thousands gathered in a new or refurbished stadium—became a damp and bedraggled display of a boat parade surrounded by excess and extremes.

We can only hope that Friday night was a low point from which these games can build and that the organizers of the Los Angeles Games four years hence hang on to the mantra: It’s supposed to be about the athletes and sports, not political agendas or idiosyncratic commitments to "art" of one sort or another. 

Organizers issued the classic non-apology apologies. ("My wish isn't to be subversive, nor to mock or to shock," David Jolly, the event’s director said. "Most of all, I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide." Sure.) 

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But the moment was missed and it comes around but once every four years. "KISS" —keep it simple stupid!—has long been advice to live by for organizers of anything from toddler birthday parties to weddings to extravaganzas of any sort. Whenever someone’s "vision" overwhelms common sense, disasters usually follow. Sometimes "tried and true" and "workmanlike" is not only good enough, it is what the great silent majority expects, wants, needs and understands. 

Perhaps the only good things to come out of the opening debacle will be reminders to not just the Los Angeles Organizing Committee but also to former President Trump and Senator Vance to keep their campaign simple and focused on the ideology of San Francisco’s own, Vice President Kamala Harris.

PARIS OLYMPICS IN FULL SWING AS ORGANIZERS NAVIGATE THROUGH FALLOUT OF OPENING CEREMONY UPROAR

There was no sense in the GOP trying to fight off last week’s wave of legacy media adulation for the previously risible Veep. Democrats (and that includes 95% of legacy media) went from being certain that they were going to lose to not being certain of getting wiped out. Of course they would be excited. Inevitable doom seemed less inevitable, if only for a bit. 

Their euphoria was thus predictable and swept almost all before it (not the polls, interestingly). Among the swamped: the common sense of the Vice President who decided against all logic and basic political judgment to conclude and then publicize that a meeting with a sorority was more important than her constitutional duty to preside along with House Speaker Mike Johnson over the Congress’ welcome of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "Bibi" delivered a memorable address about his nation’s struggle to hold off the variety of proxy killers that the fanatics of Iran keep sending against the Jewish State. (No readout on the meeting with the sorority has yet to be made available.)

Trump and Vance can’t count on the Vice President to make unforced errors on that level every week. Every voter who counts themself as a friend of Israel got the message of Harris’s blunt snub of Bibi. It wasn’t just about Netanyahu. It was about the Jewish State. And not just about Israel, but also about the alarming, skyrocketing rate of anti-Semitic violence in the United States. Harris doesn’t care. These things are not priorities with her. 

If they are with you, you should be voting for Trump. Voters who prioritize the defense of Israel or the protection of our own Jewish citizens, will be casting a ballot for Trump. It is that simple. Put Harris into the Oval Office and she will make new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer seem like Golda Meir. 

The United Kingdom swept the Tories out of power after a long spell of listless and confused governance. Starmer marched into Number 10 Downing Street and the turn against Israel followed quickly. First the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court got a signal that the U.K. would not stand in the way of the prosecution by the ICC of Israel’s leaders. Then word leaked that the supply of weaponry from Great Britain to Israel would be cut off. 

That turn against Israel had begun under the last of the many failed post-Brexit and post-COVID Conservative Governments, especially after Lord David Cameron returned to high office as Foreign Secretary in a spectacular display of tone deafness by former PM Rishi Sunak.  

Brits should not be surprised that the first fortnight of Labour rule has seen actions taken against Israel and not against Iran even as the latter nears nuclear breakout —and even though Iran is the sponsor of all the attacks against Israel, including Hezbollah’s murder of a dozen children playing soccer this weekend. No, Labour could not wait even a month to get some punches in on the Jewish State. The international left loathes Israel quite as much as the Islamist extremists do.

Harris is part of that international left, the genuine article: a "San Francisco Democrat." What you see unfolding in Great Britain is exactly what you will get with a President Harris, an acceleration of appeasement of Iran (and its big backer China) and an abandonment of Israel.

Of course Harris was going to visibly snub Netanyahu despite the political fallout in places like the key suburbs of Philly and Pittsburgh, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Harris’ anti-Israel instincts may even overwhelm the quite obvious case for making Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro her running mate. Pennsylvania is indeed the Keystone State for a Democratic win. But Shapiro is Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel. What would have been an automatic balancing of the ticket even four years ago has become a red line for the American left: Will Harris cross it?

Whether Harris agrees to sit for even a couple, much less a dozen or more serious interviews between now and the close of voting season is up in the air. Given her propensity to display astonishing levels of ignorance on subjects about which she is supposed to be expert —the border, crime, "equity" v. "equality"— her best campaign strategy is to hide in the Old Executive Office building between flights to meet and confer with various sororities or attend Zoom calls segregated by race and gender. Letting her near the press is like giving Jolly control over the Opening Ceremonies and then cloaking his "work" in secrecy and silence. 

Trump and Vance should begin and end every speech and interview with: "First, Harris is a San Francisco Democrat. She was also a San Francisco prosecutor; a San Francisco Attorney General, a San Francisco senator and a San Francisco border czar. She would be a San Francisco president. The country would never recover."

The key points about Harris are simple: "She will keep the border open. She will let criminals walk. She will attack traditional American values. And she will tax and tax and tax and spend and spend and spend—your money on her friends, like Randi Weingarten. She will cut the Pentagon's budget and keep our recruitment crisis worsening.  She will continue the weaponization of the FBI and the DOJ, and she will bring 3,000 San Francisco radicals along with her to staff the federal government and to populate the federal bench. She will try and wreck the Senate’s filibuster rule and with it the Supreme Court and the rule of law as we know it. Harris will count and allocate by race and gender. She will destroy the automobile industry, shutter fracking and indeed cripple all energy production no matter how clean or advanced the technology. She will be by, of and for the Left. The San Francisco Left." 

That’s it. That’s the message. It has, to borrow from the late Dr. Kissinger, the additional advantage of being true. 

Republicans can hope that Harris runs her campaign the way Jolly did the Opening Ceremonies: over a cliff. But former President Trump can’t count on that. All he and Senator Vance can control is their message and it ought to be a question: Do you want the country to look like San Francisco?

Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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