CNN Guest Shames ‘USA Chant’ During July 4 Celebration as ‘Symbolic’ of a Trump Rally

President Donald Trump delivered a patriotic and decidedly non-political speech during his “Salute to America” Independence Day celebration on Thursday at the National Mall in Washington D.C., the exact opposite of what countless elected Democrats and media pundits had snidely predicted would occur.

In the days and weeks leading up to the major Fourth of July event, many of Trump’s critics in Congress and the predominately liberal establishment media had negatively surmised that the president would turn the event into little more than a taxpayer-funded campaign rally, if not worse. Yet when that didn’t happen, some still launched ridiculous attacks against the president’s speech on that same track.

The Washington Examiner reported that CNN White House correspondent Kate Bennett told her fellow panelists and the network host that Trump’s speech felt a “little off” and noted that at least one portion of it reminded her of a typical Trump rally — the chants of “USA! USA!” from the patriotic crowd.

In reality, what was a “little off” here was not the president’s speech or the “USA!” chants from the crowd, but Bennett’s assumption that the expression of patriotism and love of country is somehow exclusive to Republicans and Trump supporters, which via extended logic, would also be a tacit admission that Democrats and Trump’s critics are not particularly patriotic and don’t really love America.

First, check out this brief portion of Trump’s speech in which he extolled the virtues of our nation and his words were met with patriotic chanting: 

“Americans love our freedom, and no one will ever take it away from us,” Trump said. An initial “USA!” chant began to rise from the cheering crowd but died down as the president continued to speak.

“That same American spirit that emboldened our founders has kept us strong throughout our history. To this day, that spirit runs through the veins of every American patriot. It lives on in each and every one of you here today. It is the spirit — daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love — that built this country into the most exceptional nation in the history of the world,” he continued.

“And our nation is stronger today than it ever was before. It is its strongest now,” Trump added as the crowd erupted in cheers and the chant of “USA!” echoed across the Mall.

Now fast-forward to the CNN analysis of the president’s patriotic ode to America, and senior political analyst Ryan Lizza — while crediting Trump for staying non-political and not going off on any “lunatic tangents” — nevertheless criticized the president’s speechwriters and the speech itself as being “basic” and little more than like reading a “Wikipedia page” or a “Schoolhouse Rock” version of American history. 

The host had suggested “rudimentary” as a good description during Lizza’s critique of the speech.

Then it is was Bennett’s turn to chime in with her unwitting self-own of the progressive left by linking the chants of “USA!” — which are routinely heard in non-political contexts like international sporting events — to a Trump rally.

“There was a ‘USA! USA!’ chant that was, you know, sort of symbolic of a rally,” Bennett insisted.

“But other than that — I think the nostalgia of the speech, as you were saying, that had to do with the history lesson we all just sat through, in that very rudimentary, as you said, way. And that made it feel, you know, like we were looking back and not forward. And that, that felt a little off there,” she added. 

In the eyes of liberal reporters like Bennett and Lizza, Trump can do nothing right, and even when he defies their antagonistic predictions of his behavior, they still dig wherever they can to find something to be critical about. In this case, Bennett dug herself a hole by all but openly admitting that Trump supporters love the country — as exemplified by the “USA!” chants — while those on the left do not.