There was a brief flap at a Donald Trump rally in Kissimmee, Florida on Thursday when a Trump supporter displayed a huge Confederate battle flag near the speaker’s platform. Similar flags, emblazoned conspicuously with “TRUMP 2016,” were for sale in the parking lot outside Kissimmee’s Silver Spurs arena, but Trump campaign officials evidently blanched at it being hung almost within spitting distance of the stage.
The flag’s owner, a twenty-seven-year-old Trump supporter from Deland, Florida, grudgingly agreed to remove the flag but refused to believe that Trump himself would have objected to it. The real culprit was the media, which is evidently controlled by Yankees.
The New York Times reported the owner as being upset but exonerating the Republican candidate:
It kind of upsets me a little bit, but because of the dishonest media, which he [Trump] talks about, because of that, it forces them and ties their hands to do certain things so that the media doesn’t take something and spin it and turns it into something that it’s not.
Erring on the side of caution, in other words, the Trump staffers decided to remove the rebel flag lest the media try to sensationalize the incident and turn the flag into some sort of controversial symbol. How dishonest!
In case you’re interested, I’ve written at considerable length about the historical arguments both for and against the Confederate battle flag. You can find them here, here, here, here, and here.
