Fact Checking Greg Peterson and Evan Sayet

I was asked to comment on a Facebook post by someone named Greg Peterson which includes what he calls “Trump’s 'lack of decorum, dignity, and statesmanship' By Marshall Kamena, Mayor of Livermore, CA.”. It is a long somewhat disjointed diatribe, but since I was asked, I’ll try to provide a thoughtful response. First of all, the former mayor to whom it is attributed hasn’t been the mayor of Livermore since 2011, and may or may not be a Democrat.  Livermore mayors are not asked their political affiliation when they run for that office.  It wasn't even written by John Marchand, the current mayor.  It was written and published on Townhall.com on July 23, 2017 by a fellow named Evan Sayet, who is identified as a “comedian and conservative speaker.”

Why would someone go to such lengths to make it appear it was written by a “liberal?” A quick look at Greg Peterson’s Facebook presence offers some evidence that he, too is “untethered to truth.”  Having read the document, I can only say that he tries to make it appear as if it was written by a liberal in an ill-planned attempt to give the document credibility, because by itself, it certainly is lacking anything creditable, or even verifiable.

Here are some parts of it in italics followed by my comments in normal font.

“George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency."
Bush’s presidency was ambushed by the attacks on 9/11. Granted, the left got somewhat carried away with their condemnation of Bush II, much of it brought on by certain media harping on the lack of nuclear weapons found in Iraq, but overlooking the large amounts of poison gas found by coalition troops and destroyed, before it could be used again as a weapon of mass destruction against minority groups as when Saddam Hussein’s forces killed as many as 50,000 civilians in gas attacks

"We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?
It is rather hard to understand why McCain was included in this document. Yes he ran for President, but unsuccessfully, and the right has continually condemned his failure to fall in line in Congress.

"I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party"
I’m no great fan of President Obama, but I thought he was fairly middle-of-the road with his take on Ferguson. He defended the decision not to charge the Ferguson police office with any crime in killing a teenage criminal, and went on to say the community was right in its concern that racial bias permeated the Ferguson police department. That is hardly “lying about what went down.”

“I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks.”
Lying about Benghazi has been a common thread in Conservative posts for several years, trying to lay blame on the Obama administration and Secretary of State Clinton. The facts tell that President Obama authorized military intervention in a timely fashion, but the military held off until it was too late.

“I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent.”
This refers to a scandal of Lilliputian dimensions despite the amount of press it garnered. The bottom line?  The Treasury Department Inspector General found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny, blunting claims that the issue had been an Obama-era partisan scandal.

“Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.””
It’s easy to find fault with someone who uses words he obviously does not understand to find fault with someone else. Let’s just say I’ll forgive his ignorance.

“The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s.”
He is probable right. The Left has been engaged in a war. They fought for civil rights for everyone, they fought for voting rights, and they fought for desegregation of schools. I’ve not always agreed with them, but I’ve always felt they had the right to see things differently.

“With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end.”

Let’s hope not. Just yesterday, I had a conversation with an American of Latin descent who said that in his daughter’s applications to colleges he plans on playing the “Latino Card” to help her in the admissions battle. They are a middle-class American family given an opportunity that would have been withheld when I applied to colleges in 1959. The “Latino Card” was designed to help make up for injustices of prior years, but more important, it gives colleges and universities the opportunity to add to the diversity of their student bodies.

I see the Trump administration fighting to do away with gains originally promulgated by the left. Within the last couple of weeks the SCOTUS ruled that certain business could discriminate against certain customers. I remember “Colored Only” waiting rooms and drinking fountains. I remember when a waitress named Judy at a drug store soda fountain lost her job because she served my friend Willie a drink in a booth. Had Willie wanted a drink to go, all would have been fine, but Willy was with us and we all sat in a booth. Our drinks were served, we drank them and then left to take Willie to the airport. Later that day, we went back to the drugstore (Judy was cute as were a couple of others who worked there) and noted Judy’s absence. We asked where she was and our waitress told us she’d been called in because Judy had been fired for serving a n_____. Apparently the current members of the Supreme Court of the United States agree with that sort of discrimination if you say it violates your religious freedoms.

“Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today.”
Obviously no student of American history, the author doesn’t seem to know that on July, 31, 1854, Grant resigned from the Army amid allegations of heavy drinking and warnings of disciplinary action. Yes, he came back when the South attacked Fort Sumter. He fought well, albeit not without losses, and earned victory at Shiloh, Vicksburg and Chattanooga before his march across Georgia that effectively ended the war,. There is no evidence of excessive drinking by Grant in his second phase of army life.

At this point, I give up. The rest of the document is just as disjointed, just as full of falsehoods and innuendo, and just as poorly written. It is just another hack job.