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July 27, 2020

Stop teasing Paul Gallant, who went from dissing Trump to wanting a gun

By Andrea Widburg

Many people have been having fun because Paul Gallant, a Seattle sports reporter, put out a snarky tweet in June that Trump was overstating the extent of the Seattle protests, only to have the rioters get too close to him, prompting him to contemplate getting a gun.  Here's the deal, though: this guy is everyman, and we want him to be welcome on the freedom side of American politics.

We're not talking about a left-wing fanatic here.  Gallant is just someone who wants to do the right thing while living in a leftist world.  Rather than being shamed, he should be welcomed to the world of the Second Amendment and other constitutional rights.

Gallant, who's in his early 30s, works at 710 ESPN Seattle, a radio station focused on sports, especially Seattle sports.  In other words, he's a young man who lives one of the hardest left cities in America and works for ESPN.  ESPN, for those who haven't paid attention, is a sports-centered, Disney-owned business that's seen its ratings tumble as it got aggressively leftist in what ought to have been a straightforward sports broadcasting business.

With that background, Gallant ought to be a raving leftist lunatic.  Thankfully, he's not.  Mostly, he's a sports fanatic.

If you go to Gallant's Twitter feed, his Facebook page, or his blog, each is 99% devoted to sports.  He's certainly not above a little bit of Trump-bashing, but, compared to what the hard left is doing, it's minimal.  His heart isn't in it.

For example, immediately after Trump's election, Gallant said he didn't believe most Trump-supporters are racists:

When some big Trump news broke in February (presumably about the Russia hoax), Gallant boasted that he didn’t care:

A couple of years ago, he claimed to have had only "apolitical fun" with Trump audio.  Given his apparent apathy about anything that's not sports-related, that's probably true:

On the subject of greenhouse gases, Gallant has figured out that China is the problem, which puts him way ahead of the average leftist:

When it comes to Black Lives Matter, Gallant has felt obligated to speak up, something that makes sense for an ESPN employee in Seattle.  What he came up with was two things.

The first was a video of a Christian preacher who hadn't gotten the message that BLM is a Marxist front group.  The preacher embraces the fact that you can say "black lives matter" without having to add that "all lives matter."  Gallant felt that this was an adequate response to Ann Coulter's tweet that Floyd was hopped up on drugs, a notion Gallant believed discounted police responsibility for Floyd's death:

Gallant's second BLM publication was a bland think piece saying that he hadn't taken seriously enough the issues in black players' off-the-field lives.

In sum, Gallant is not a political fanatic.  He's a loosy-goosy Democrat trying to navigate his way without making waves in a hard left world.  His fundamentally laid-back approach (for a Democrat) to politics showed up again in his re-tweeting Trump's tweet in mid-June to say Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan was dangerously underestimating the CHAZ/CHOP phenomenon.  Gallant's response was a decidedly non-malevolent "Chill dawg."

Five weeks later, though, Gallant had a reality check, and it's this series of tweets that's getting him ratioed (that is, laughed at or punked) like crazy:

The snark needs to stop.  Irving Kristol famously said that someone newly converted to conservativism is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality."  Gallant wasn't quite mugged, but he felt that the violence had come close enough to him that his instinct was to respond in the old-fashioned American way: by exercising his Second Amendment right to buy a gun for self-defense.

It's a mistake to ridicule Gallant.  He should be congratulated for having had that realization.  And he should be encouraged to think about other core constitutional rights and values that the leftists who surround him want to undermine.

I'm not laughing at you, Mr. Gallant.  I think you've made an important discovery about America's inalienable rights versus the left's lust for power through violence.  I'd love to hear from you and talk more about important American values and how they will improve your world and your life.

Image: Twitter screen grab.

Many people have been having fun because Paul Gallant, a Seattle sports reporter, put out a snarky tweet in June that Trump was overstating the extent of the Seattle protests, only to have the rioters get too close to him, prompting him to contemplate getting a gun.  Here's the deal, though: this guy is everyman, and we want him to be welcome on the freedom side of American politics.

We're not talking about a left-wing fanatic here.  Gallant is just someone who wants to do the right thing while living in a leftist world.  Rather than being shamed, he should be welcomed to the world of the Second Amendment and other constitutional rights.

Gallant, who's in his early 30s, works at 710 ESPN Seattle, a radio station focused on sports, especially Seattle sports.  In other words, he's a young man who lives one of the hardest left cities in America and works for ESPN.  ESPN, for those who haven't paid attention, is a sports-centered, Disney-owned business that's seen its ratings tumble as it got aggressively leftist in what ought to have been a straightforward sports broadcasting business.

With that background, Gallant ought to be a raving leftist lunatic.  Thankfully, he's not.  Mostly, he's a sports fanatic.

If you go to Gallant's Twitter feed, his Facebook page, or his blog, each is 99% devoted to sports.  He's certainly not above a little bit of Trump-bashing, but, compared to what the hard left is doing, it's minimal.  His heart isn't in it.

For example, immediately after Trump's election, Gallant said he didn't believe most Trump-supporters are racists:

When some big Trump news broke in February (presumably about the Russia hoax), Gallant boasted that he didn’t care:

A couple of years ago, he claimed to have had only "apolitical fun" with Trump audio.  Given his apparent apathy about anything that's not sports-related, that's probably true:

On the subject of greenhouse gases, Gallant has figured out that China is the problem, which puts him way ahead of the average leftist:

When it comes to Black Lives Matter, Gallant has felt obligated to speak up, something that makes sense for an ESPN employee in Seattle.  What he came up with was two things.

The first was a video of a Christian preacher who hadn't gotten the message that BLM is a Marxist front group.  The preacher embraces the fact that you can say "black lives matter" without having to add that "all lives matter."  Gallant felt that this was an adequate response to Ann Coulter's tweet that Floyd was hopped up on drugs, a notion Gallant believed discounted police responsibility for Floyd's death:

Gallant's second BLM publication was a bland think piece saying that he hadn't taken seriously enough the issues in black players' off-the-field lives.

In sum, Gallant is not a political fanatic.  He's a loosy-goosy Democrat trying to navigate his way without making waves in a hard left world.  His fundamentally laid-back approach (for a Democrat) to politics showed up again in his re-tweeting Trump's tweet in mid-June to say Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan was dangerously underestimating the CHAZ/CHOP phenomenon.  Gallant's response was a decidedly non-malevolent "Chill dawg."

Five weeks later, though, Gallant had a reality check, and it's this series of tweets that's getting him ratioed (that is, laughed at or punked) like crazy:

The snark needs to stop.  Irving Kristol famously said that someone newly converted to conservativism is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality."  Gallant wasn't quite mugged, but he felt that the violence had come close enough to him that his instinct was to respond in the old-fashioned American way: by exercising his Second Amendment right to buy a gun for self-defense.

It's a mistake to ridicule Gallant.  He should be congratulated for having had that realization.  And he should be encouraged to think about other core constitutional rights and values that the leftists who surround him want to undermine.

I'm not laughing at you, Mr. Gallant.  I think you've made an important discovery about America's inalienable rights versus the left's lust for power through violence.  I'd love to hear from you and talk more about important American values and how they will improve your world and your life.

Image: Twitter screen grab.