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Trump Nation (January 22, 2025)
By Omar Tyree
I responded to a post on Instagram this past weekend before President-Elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration on Monday, January 20th. Apparently, there were a lot of comments being made about Snoop Dogg and other Black music artists from our community being used to increase the Republican president’s ratings with event performances, particularly since Trump had such a miserable showing of performers during his first inauguration in January of 2017.
Some folks even went as far as to call the artists sell-outs while others brought up comments of opposition Snoop had made against Donald Trump in the past. I found it all to be interesting because it proved that Trump was thinking about us. So, I went ahead and said so in an Instagram response and left my name @Only1OmarTyree.
An hour later, someone responded to my comments with sarcasm by asking, “Donald Trump is THINKING about us? Really?”
So, I kept the banter going and said, “Of course he’s thinking about us if he’s going out of his way to have us to perform for him.” There was no mandate for the President-elect to have Black performers at his inauguration. He could have had four pop, two rock and three country artists all performing without a blink. But he didn’t do that because he had an agenda that included Black people for whatever reason. So, I went ahead and made an additional comment on Instagram that we all need to stay close to President Donald Trump to get whatever we need out of these next four years of his presidency, particularly since we KNOW that he’s thinking about us.
Well, that got me in even more trouble with the social media crowd. The next thing I knew, I was being called “delusional” for suggesting that Donald Trump having Black performers at his inauguration meant that he cared about Black people.
So, I had to go back in for a third time and clear things up, because I didn’t say that Donald Trump cared about us. I said he was thinking about us, and there is a huge difference. The point is, just because a lot of us didn’t vote for the man doesn’t mean that we can deliberately ignore him now, because he’s still the PRESIDENT of the United States of America. That means we have work to do to make sure he doesn’t turn back every law in the books that benefits Blacks, immigrants, powerless poor people or his political enemies.
So, I’ll say it again, since we KNOW that Donald Trump is thinking about us, we have to stay on this dude and remain close to him. That doesn’t mean we have to do so individually, but somebody has to do it. That’s the nature of politics. We may all not get along, but we still need to find ways to agree on the things that we’ll need to fight for to remain a part of our American Civil Liberties. And us walking around being mad at Trump for winning his second election instead of figuring out how we need stay on top of him would be useless and immature.
I mean, I didn’t vote for the man either, nor did I vote for my school principal in the third grade, or the superintendent by the time I made it into high school. But like it or not, we still had to deal with their authority, until we or they moved on. And Donald Trump only has four years. In fact, he has less than four because the clock is already running and it’s almost February.
It would be very foolish for us to walk around yelling, “F the president” everyday while he’s still in office changing every law that he can get his hands on. We need to have Black, White, Brown, Red, Yellow or whoever else we can entrust to stay around him every single day for the next four years to watch his every move and report them all back to us. And these informants can be singers, dancers, rappers, comedians, athletes or whatever, as long as we have somebody close to him who knows what times it is.
These passionate and opinionated social media people can argue with me all they want. At the end of the day, I’ve been voting ever since the late 1980s, not so much for me, but for the people. Because I always looked at politics like this: “No matter who the president is, I’m gonna make my money and do what I gotta do no regardless. Politics don’t and won’t control my life. But… for the people who need laws and policies to help them in any way, I’m voting for them.”
That way, I pull my personal feelings and emotions out the mix and vote for the common good of the people. I do the same thing when a new man—or woman—is in office. I ask myself, “What do we need to pay attention to? And what do we need to fight for?”
Us getting extra emotional about the loss of the election doesn’t change anything unless our emotions push us toward positive action. But if our emotions cause us to have a tantrum while standing on street corners smoking Bob Marleys with our middle fingers up to the president when we know we didn’t vote for anyone, that would be ridiculous and counterproductive.
No. What we need to do is keep our eyes WIDE OPEN and slide as many of our people close to Donald Trump as possible for the next four years. And instead of calling Snoop Dogg and Nelly sell-outs and Uncle Toms, we need to be saying, “Good job, Snoop, Nelly. Get in there and figure out what he’s doing. Go spook and sit by the door.”
Yes. During these next four years of Trump Nation, someone has to sit by the by door at ALL TIMES. It’s a hell of a job that needs a lot of discipline, maturity, and plenty of focus. Now how many of us are courageous enough to take that position?
Omar made a guest appearance on the Thought Brothers podcast to debate this topic. Watch and decide for yourself where you stand on this hot-button issue.
~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author with an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction, who graduated from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991.
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