I’m not easily flabbergasted, but the other day my flabber got good and gasted. I was riding my beach bike, the one with the 2-by-3-foot American flag flying off the back. I fly it because I … (a) love my country and (b) love my spine, and the flapping flag means fewer cars flatten me.
So I’m pedaling along the street and the Stars and Stripes are whipping behind me, and I hear a honk. That’s when a guy on the passenger side of a white 4x4 Ram truck leans out and yells, “Yeah! Go Trump!”
Go Trump? Me? He can’t be yelling that at me. I look around for somebody in a MAGA hat or a T-shirt with Trump’s mug shot, but there’s nobody. And that’s when it hits me.
This guy thinks I’m a Trumper.
Why else would I be flying an American flag?
Then, a week later, it happens again, only in reverse. I'm riding when a woman leans out of her green Subaru and hollers, “F--- Trump!” and flips me off. She’d seen the flag and figured the same thing as the guy in the truck.
This lady thinks I’m a Trumper.
Which brings me to a question for Friday — Flag Day: When did the American flag become another Trump property?
And if the former president doesn’t quite own it, he has definitely co-opted it. Nowadays, if you see a jacked-high pickup with four American flags, you either honk proudly or move three lanes away. There’s a house on my block with a giant Trump flag hanging from the roof. Do you ever see a Biden flag? Me neither, not once. Online, you can find dozens of American flags for sale with Donald Trump’s name or face on them. Good luck finding one with Biden’s.
Presidential candidates have always been glad to wrap themselves in the flag, of course. But with Trump, it has never looked more like a Hollywood prop. Trump doesn’t care about the flag any more than he cares about being a Republican. What he cares about is how he looks holding it.
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I was with Trump one time, 20 years ago, when he kept mis-introducing me as “the guy who runs Sports Illustrated” or “this guy owns SI!” I just worked at the place. When I asked him why he was lying to people, he said, “Sounds better.”
Trump loves the flag, like the Bible, because it looks better. The American flags flying at his properties are about the size of a Denny’s. He actually cuddled up to a flag at a conservative conference in 2020 and mouthed, “I love you, baby.”
He’s yuuuuge on the flag, but puny on what it stands for.
Serve your country in the military? Uh … no.
Obey the law? No, no, 34 times no.
Free speech? Big no. Trump says that if reelected he would retaliate against media “criminally or civilly.”
But what really makes me eat bees is that Trumpers aren’t just kidnapping the flag — they’re abusing it, too. MAGAs are flying the flag upside-down. Like the one that flew over the Alitos’ house. That used to be a seafaring sign that a ship is in distress. Now it’s a sign that the brain is.
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In video of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, an Arkansas trucker picked up an American flag on a pole and beat a cop with it. Bash the Blue.
There’s also a Jan. 6 video showing the invaders yanking down the Star-Spangled Banner and putting up a Trump one. And Colin Kaepernick taking a knee was treasonous?
For a lot of Americans, the flag has become a symbol of Trump misogyny, Trump bigotry and Trump wannabe president for life. Which means, for Democrats like me, flying an American flag on your house is akin to bringing your neighbors anthrax brownies. Flying a flag puts you in the pickup truck with an Oath Keeper. You can see why. During the 2020 election, a phalanx of trucks flying American flags and Trump flags tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road.
The Stars and Stripes were here 169 years before Trump was born, and they’ll be here long after he’s gone. I say it’s time to take the flag back. And so does the Biden campaign, judging by the Democratic National Committee’s recent ad for him — it’s just called “Flag.”
The American flag belongs to 336 million of us, not just the 46.9 percent of the electorate that went for Trump last time around. More than 81 million Americans voted for Biden in 2020. The more of us flying the flag from our porches and cars and, yeah, bikes, the less it seems as though Trump helped Betsy Ross sew it.
“Go Trump”? Great idea. Go, Trump, as far away as possible. But leave the flag.
