This Week’s Misguided Jew Award – Babs Streisand

Just when I thought that prominent Hollywood Jews had learned to keep their semi-rational, stream-of-consciousness political ramblings to themselves, along comes Barbra Streisand trying her best to outdo Natalie Portman and Richard Dreyfuss.  This will come as a shock to people who’ve been living as cloistered nuns for the past three years, but it seems that Ms. Streisand is one more Hollywood resident who is not a big fan of Donald Trump.

In an interview with ‘Variety’ (the go-to place for in-depth political analysis), Barbara said that:

“America was great – before you were elected …. since 2016, we’ve been dragged down into the mud of Trump’s swamp. He has demolished our standing in the world with his laughable boasts and breathtaking ignorance. He has put the security of this country, and our planet, in a precarious position by abandoning the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal. He’s a one-man weapon of mass destruction … so reckless that he almost started a war.”

Donald Trump has “demolished our standing in the world”?  You mean the world where Barack Obama pulled the rug out from under the feet of allies, where he essentially allowed America’s foes to act without fear of any meaningful American response, where he bowed at the feet of tyrants and miscreants?  America’s allies now know that the U.S. president will stand with them even if he does expect them to fund their own defense, and America’s enemies know this is not a president who will roll over like an obedient lapdog, hoping that problems can be pawned off on the next administration.

And abandoning the Paris climate accord puts the planet at risk?  Is that the agreement that would eviscerate the American economy while the world’s major polluters, namely China and India, have no interest in meeting the wildly ambitious and unrealistic Paris carbon-reduction goals?  Is that the accord which basically condemns developing countries to a bleak future, denying them the tools they need to improve the lives of their citizens?  And is that the agreement that cherry-picks science to paint the direst possible scenario, damn the consequences?

Then there’s the question of Iran.  Barack Obama advocated an agreement with Iran that allowed them to develop nuclear weapons, albeit at a microscopically slower pace than would have been the case without the treaty, and he also facilitated the transfer billions of dollars to the world’s leading terrorist-sponsoring state.  Barack Obama is personally culpable for allowing Iran to pose an existential threat to the Jewish state, but I’m sure Israel doesn’t appear on Ms. Streisand’s Top Ten List of concerns so she’s probably not losing much sleep over this.

Iran is a rogue nation that continually threatens its neighbors and the West and it is Donald Trump who has acted forcefully and strategically to contain the very serious dangers a nuclear-armed Iran would pose for the entire planet.  If only western Europe would have had the same fortitude as Trump and not worked so diligently to circumvent the U.S. sanctions, Iran would probably have been completely neutered by now.

But being semi-informed about geo-politics and eco-science is not enough for Babs.  She went on to say this about Trump’s response to the Covid-18 threat :

“Now we’re facing another kind of war, against the coronavirus. Trump got rid of our pandemic specialist two years ago and has defunded the Centers for Disease Control because he continues to ignore science”

Neither of these contentions is true.  Trump did not get rid of any pandemic specialists and funding for the CDC has actually increased over the past two years.  The American response to a potential Covid-18 pandemic has been science-based and robust, but I suppose if you restrict your sources of information to MSNBC and your fellow Hollywoodites, it’s easy to get the facts a bit jumbled up.

Lastly, Barbara makes a plea to voters to “bring back dignity and grace” in the upcoming election.  I don’t disagree, but if she’s suggesting that Democrats somehow have a monopoly on those two attributes, then she hasn’t been watching the news for the past three years. Inviting their supporters to harass administration officials at their homes, comparing Trump supporters to Nazis, obsessing over unfounded accusations of collusion with the Russians,  presidential candidates screaming at each other and making promises they know they can’t deliver, arguing for legalizing infanticide, threatening Supreme Court justices; the list of Democrats’ violations of decency and decorum is legion.

Come November, I believe a majority of Americans will vote for the person who they believe best serves their economic interests and protects them against enemies, domestic and foreign.  I just hope that when Mr. Trump wins re-election, that Babs and the rest of her tinsel town cabal do most Americans a favor and move somewhere that values dignity and decorum.  Antarctica, anyone?