“Memorial Day 2020, a sacred day, especially where I’m from. I grew up at a time when Memorial Day was Memorial Day. There were no sales at Home Depots; there were no large-scale picnics. It was to honor the dead. I grew up in a Gold Star household. My uncle Gerry was killed at Midway, and like all of the people listed yesterday in the Times and all of the people who will be memorialized at cemeteries around this country today, my uncle Gerry, Second Lieutenant Gerald J. Barnicle, killed at Midway on June 4th, 1942, he never died. His memory lived, and he lives today through me—as will all those people who were listed in the Times yesterday. And that’s what Donald Trump fails to grasp,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski about President Donald Trump having spent his Memorial Day weekend golfing in Virginia and attacking his opponents via Twitter, juxtaposed with The New York Times honoring the lives lost to the novel coronavirus with a powerful tribute across the front page of the Sunday paper, filled with the names of the victims and portions of their obituaries.
May 25, 2020
