Oh, yeah? Name five.
by Tom Sullivan
It was surprising last night to flip on the TV and see live coverage of Donald Trump’s speech in Dallas. Yesterday morning it seemed Bernie Sanders’ speech at Liberty University would draw lots of press, but nothing like this.
I lost count of the times Trump used “decimated.” John Kerry is a “schmuck.” America’s leaders are incompetent and everybody hates us. But Donald? Donald loves everybody who hates us. Watching Trump campaign is like watching a bad movie version of democracy. What is more disheartening is watching a stadium full of people cheer wildly for one empty boast after another:
“Nobody’s going to be able to do the job that I’m going to do.”
“You will see numbers like you’ve never have seen before.”
“We can do things with oil and gas that will be unbelievable. Unbelievable.”
“We can do things with energy that will be so, so incredible.”
Like watching an old Johnny Carson monologue, you want the crowd to shout, “How incredible is it?” Only they don’t, and there’s no punchline. Just more boasting.
Trump thinks he can simply call up captains of industry, impose a 35 percent tax on imports on his say so, and stop them from moving billion-dollar factories overseas overnight. Donald knows how to negotiate.
He just knows nothing about the office he’s running for, or about how our democracy works. And neither do the people cheering.
A close friend used to have this joke he did where when someone made vaporous, unsupported statements like Trump’s, his stock response was, “Oh, yeah? Name five.”
Oh, we’re negotiating? Okay then, name three. I know. We’re going to love them.