You mean Canadians can’t donate to American elections?
It’s time for another visit with Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, the young man who can’t quite seem to grasp the meaning of that whole fifteen minutes of fame thing. Hogg is taking his show on the road, ditching his current agenda in the United States and heading up to Canada. He was there as the guest of none other than Michael Moore, who was at the Toronto Film Festival to plug his new anti-Trump movie. After the film was played, Moore invited Hogg and some of his fellow students up on the stage to say a few words. That’s when things took a turn for the awkward. (American Mirror)
As Hogg ranted about what he saw as an injustice, someone yelled, “Shame!”
“Turn that shame into your vote,” he responded, adding, “if you’re not Canadian.”
“Um,” he continued, turning to Moore, “I think Canadians can donate to political campaigns in the United States.”
Moore shook his head in disagreement.
“They can’t?” Hogg asked.
“Well, uh, vote here,” he said, causing the audience to laugh at his best attempt at covering his ignorance.
Here’s the short segment of the video for your entertainment, since seeing is truly believing.
As you can see, the entire speech and the interaction with the crowd make for a surreal experience. The audience sounds just about as unenthusiastic as one could imagine. Could this be due to the fact that Hogg was asking who was ready to “save America” when speaking to a primarily Canadian audience? I sounds as if Hogg is blissfully unaware that the crowd appears to be laughing at him, rather than with him, albeit in a good-natured way.
More to the point, after realizing that most of the people there wouldn’t be able to legally vote in the American midterms in November, he was obviously thinking of some other way they could help out. He wouldn’t have asked Michael Moore if they could donate to American candidates if he wasn’t about to make a pitch for contributions. As the linked article points out, the Federal Election Campaign Act forbids campaign contributions from foreign nationals. Further, it’s not only illegal for campaigns to accept such contributions, but you can’t even attempt to solicit contributions from such persons. If Hogg isn’t careful, his seat of the pants verbal gymnastics are going to land him in handcuffs.
How sad it must be to realize that the person who has to bail you out from your public gaffes is Michael Moore. But not nearly as unpleasant as the coming day when Hogg realizes that his Democratic cheerleaders have determined that his usefulness is at an end and cast him aside. Then he might have to go back to being a high school graduate who skipped out on going to college for a year and now has nothing to show for it. I’d have more sympathy, but Hogg really has brought this on himself.
