Never The (Shania) Twain Shall Meet

With the apologies to Rudyard Kipling, "Left is Left, and Right is Right, and never the twain shall meet."

This is certainly true in the case of Shania Twain.

The backlash which came over the weekend after the legendary country music singer told The Guardian she "would have" voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election was sufficient for her to write a four part tweet on Sunday apologizing "to anybody I have offended" and insisting she is "passionately against discrimination of any kind."

Given that Twain is Canadian and resides in Switzerland one can only imagine what the reaction might have been from The Left had she actually voted for Trump.

In the course of her apology, Twain claimed the question caught her off the guard. On the contrary, her words are very telling and is the most interesting thing about this entire row. Twain, who is planning to tour this summer for the first time in more than 15 years, stated, "I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest."

Of course, Trump is anything but honest. Trump lies about things both big and small. He lies about being offered Time Magazine's Person of the Year, about the President of the Boy Scouts telling him he delivered the greatest speech he ever heard, the size of his inauguration crowd, the size of his Electoral College win, about thousands of Muslims cheering the 9/11 attacks and, of course, his wealth. Yet he is a better liar than Hillary Clinton and a good enough liar for someone like Twain to believe he seems honest.

In fact, her comment reminded me of an incident I saw take place on Boston Common following a rally for the Libertarian ticket of Gary Johnson and William Weld. The former Massachusetts Governor was criticizing Trump's immigration proposals when a Hispanic male began heckling him. A reporter approached this man a few minutes later who revealed he was a Trump supporter because he liked his honesty. No doubt there were millions of American voters who thought Trump honest enough to cast a ballot for him.

As the old saying goes, perception is nine tenths reality. If The Left were smart they would have taken Twain's candor as an opportunity to persuade instead of to pillory. But as long as The Left is going to get angry at people who would have voted for Trump if they could then how are they going to persuade the people who actually did vote for Trump in 2016 to change their minds in 2020?

As Shania Twain might say, "That don't impress me much."