We Don’t Want Donald Trump to Drive the Indy 500 Pace Car (update)

As I’m sure most have heard by now, Donald Trump will not be driving the pace car in this, the 100th anniversary running of the Indianapolis 500. I think that it is safe to say that the efforts of my We Don’t Want Donald Trump to Drive the Indy 500 Pace Car page on Facebook were instrumental in making this happen.

I hope to write more about this entire saga sometime, including my thoughts on what made the effort so successful. But that is a task for another day. I did want to take a quick moment, though, and update one item from the original post about the Bump Trump effort that I first wrote about here just after midnight on Saturday, April 30. That night I said:

Until earlier this week, the page had garnered very little attention. But then on Wednesday evening, it exploded. From 30 fans to 300 that evening and now, as I write this on Friday night, the page is up to over 1,300 fans!

If you told me then what would happened, I probably would have laughed at you. On both Saturday and Sunday, the Facebook page added about 1,000 more “likes”. By early Tuesday, it had reached about 5,000 likes and when I went to bed that night it had just reached 8,000. But as I write this post, on Thursday afternoon, the Facebook page has grown to 17,828 likes. Simply unbelievable. Since last Friday, I’ve done four TV interviews (including a telephone interview with a TV reporter who wanted to interview me at 1:00am!), a radio interview, and several newspaper interviews. My name has shown up on CNN and in Sports Illustrated. And Steve Inskeep even mentioned the effort on NPR.

And I’ve had the privilege of talking to a group of people the size of a small town, as we’ve shared our thoughts on why Trump was not the right choice, who we might like to see replace him, and how best to let sponsors and the Indianapolis Speedway hear what we thought.

The effort also gave me the platform to espouse my message of civility; a message that I believe was very well received.

Anyway, and pardon the pun, this has been a fabulous ride. My thanks to those who have supported the effort.