As a progressive outlet, it’s pretty obvious that we at Big Easy Magazine don’t see eye to eye with President Trump, to say the absolute least. To say the most, we’d rather let Emanuel Lombard of the Facebook page “Donald Trump Is Not My President” do the talking.
Lombard’s page currently has over a quarter-million followers and features breaking news, critical articles, and of course, memes making light of the President and his most unusual antics and ideals. Liked by fellow-minded folks (and those with opposing views), the page may exist in a sea of similar brands and sites but certainly holds its own.
I chatted with Emanuel about creating the page, maintaining it, and what it would take for impeachment proceedings to actually happen. A man of few words, Emanuel certainly doesn’t mince or miss his points:
Bill Arceneaux: With all of the Facebook pages devoted to countering President Trump, why/how did you decide upon creating your own?
Emanuel Lombard: It was a spur of the moment thing. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. That place just happened to be the Cameron ferry on my way to go flounder fishing the day after the election.
I honestly didn’t think anything would come of it, but within an hour or so, my phone was blowing up with notifications about new likes for the page. It had more than 100,000 likes within just a couple weeks as I recall, and it is still slowly growing as we speak.
I have a couple of other admins who post content for me. They come from my science and skepticism circle, which is another passion of mine.
BA: How does your page cut through the volume and noise of awful rhetoric and misinformation?
EL: One thing I am very committed to is countering the flood of misinformation coming from the clickbait mills of both the right and the left. I only post news articles from reputable sources, and you’ll never see anything like Occupy Democrats or Fox News on the page, ever.
There are partisan blogs out there that tell people what they want to hear instead of the facts. I consider myself to be left of center, but the truth is more important to me than party lines. This goes for all of the pages I own or help run, this isn’t the only large page out there that I’m involved with.
BA: What has the feedback been like to your page?
EL: I get messages daily along the lines of “If you live in America, he IS your president.” It annoys his base, but I get a lot of messages also thanking me, so it evens out. I’ve had people offer to buy the page from me (which is a violation of the ToS), people try to hijack the page and multiple mass reporting attempts in an effort to shut it down.
BA: What will it take to get Impeachment proceedings going (be as blunt as you’d like)?
EL: Quite honestly, there could be a video of him raping a 12-year-old girl with Jeffrey Epstein (I believe something like this exists) and half his base would deny it as “fake news” while the other half would be too busy trying to figure out how to download it.
As much as I would like to see him impeached, there aren’t enough votes in either the House or the Senate to make that happen. The only way to remove him at this point is at the ballot box. Once that happens, hopefully, the Southern District of New York can bring charges against Trump which can’t be pardoned by a president since they’re not federal.
BA: Should Trump be unseated in the 2020 election or before, what plans do you have for the page then?
EL: I look forward to the day the page is no longer relevant. It will probably be archived or possibly repurposed, only time will tell.
BA: Punching Nazis: Yay or Nay?
EL: Being Jewish and having lost a lot of my family in the Holocaust, I have zero tolerance or sympathy for Nazis. The only good Nazi is a dead one.
Bill Arceneaux has been an independent writer and film critic in the New Orleans area since 2011, working with outlets like Film Threat, DIG Baton Rouge, Crosstown Conversations, and Occupy. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association and is Rotten Tomatoes approved. Follow him on Twitter: @billreviews
