EASIEST PREDICTION I EVER MADE

On April 22, The Washington Post reported:

The Pentagon is planning a multicity tour of the U.S. military’s top flight demonstration teams to “champion national unity” amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to senior U.S. officials and a memo obtained by The Washington Post.

The Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds, the demonstration squadrons for the Navy and Air Force, will fly over some cities together and others separately, according to the memo. The flyovers will take place in the next several weeks “to thank first responders, essential personnel, and military service members as we collectively battle the spread of COVID-19.”

Apart from the fact that our president is an overgrown eleven-year-old boy, why was this being done? The day the Post story appeared, I told you why:

My favorite part of this story:

The appearances will not feature air-show stunts, and the teams will avoid flying over areas where people can congregate, [a] senior [military] official said....

They're not planning to do this where large numbers of people can see them? Really? Then what the hell is the point? Why would you have flyovers where people can't see them?

Oh, I get it: The whole point of this is to provide footage for Trump campaign ads.

This morning, Mediaite reports on a new Trump ad:

The Trump Campaign has released a new 60-second political ad that paints President Donald Trump as a competent leader who is successfully navigating the country he ostensibly leads through the coronavirus pandemic which has led to nearly 70,000 American deaths, and perhaps dozens more to come.

The ad features the line “This November the greatest comeback story is written” and features “attacks” from the media followed praise from Democratic governors Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom. There is also no shortage of political imagery from the past few months: Blue Angels flyovers ordered as a tribute to Health Care workers but now featured in a political ad, as well as Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up Trump’s State of the Union speech and with ice cream.

(Emphasis added.)

Some parts of the ad might be effective, while others -- Pelosi showing off the ice cream in her lockdown fridge -- are of interest only to people who, like the president, spend all their waking hours consuming right-wing media, and who were already 100% certain to vote for Trump.

But the Blue Angels are literally the centerpiece of the ad, coming in at 0:26:



The day the story broke, Democratic officeholders and officials should have said exactly what I said: If you're not going to conduct these flyovers in areas where crowds can congregate, then they're obviously happening, at taxpayer expense, so Trump can put them in ads.

The campaign would have denied it. But the charge would at least have been part of the initial stories, and the campaign might have been forced to back down on this obvious plan to use the footage.

Come on, folks. I'm not much of a prophet, and I saw this coming. You could have foreseen it, too.