But he’s their lunatic
Two weeks from now, Election Day polls will be open. Vanity Fair‘s Bess Levin summarizes what Donald Trump’s been doing with his last days to build a winning coalition.
Policy? Did he finally lay out his health care plan after over eight years of promises? Perhaps explain his plan for resurrecting an America he claims Democrats “destroyed”? Did he explain [timestamp 1:05:00] how he’ll “cut your taxes, end inflation, slash your prices, raise your wages,” etc.? (More on raising wages in a moment.) If Trump promised everyone in Greenville, N.C. a pony yesterday, I missed it.
“Donald Trump’s closing message to voters appears to be: I’m insane,” read the tweet from Vanity Fair promoting Levin’s take:
Instead, he talked about the size a famous golfer’s penis, pretended to be a fast-food worker at a closed McDonald’s, and claimed every single goose in Springfield, Ohio, has has gone missing.
Yes, that’s correct: On Saturday, the Republican nominee for president of the United States told rallygoers in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, that golf legend Arnold Palmer had a huge schlong. “Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women—and I love women. But this guy, this guy…this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ’Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’”
The following day, Trump pretended to be a fast-food worker at a McDonald’s that—to be clear—was closed to the public. There, while serving pretend customers, he baselessly claimed that Harris is lying when she says she worked at a McDonald’s during college, telling reporters: “Now I’ve worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala.” Asked why she would fabricate having held such a job, he responded: “Because she’s Lyin’ Kamala.” Note: In case it was not clear, Trump was born with several silver spoons in his mouth; in 2018, The New York Times reported that “By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire” and was “a millionaire by age eight.” While being born wealthy does not preclude a person from caring about the working class, there is a laundry list of reasons supporting the notion that Trump does not actually give a crap about such people. In fact, while “working” at the McDonald’s on Sunday, he declined to give an actual answer re: increasing the minimum wage.
But pandering? He’s hell at pandering.
Over the weekend, Trump declared all the geese in Springfield, Ohio, had gone missing (cooked and eaten by Haitian immigrants is implied). He confirmed his belief that America’s real enemies reside within the U.S. The “enemy from within” is you, Dear Reader. And he believes he should use the military against people like you who don’t support him.
On his way to the Greenville, N.C. rally on Monday, Trump blew through here to visit devastated Swannanoa so fast that I missed it while the internet was down again. He stopped adjacent the exit, stepped out of his limousine, and walked a few steps to reach a makeshift podium.
Asked by a Politico reporter if he still urged his voters to support Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson for governor, Trump pretended not to know the man he once called “Martin Luther King on steroids” and who once called himself a “Black Nazi.”
“I’m not familiar with the state of the race right now,” Trump said amidst the dust and wreckage. “I haven’t seen it.”
No Trump stop would be complete without him repeating debunked lies. Swannanoa was no different.
Tom Fiedler of the Asheville Watchdog recounts:
And he repeated several false claims that FEMA is running out of money because funds were being diverted to help “illegal migrants” enter the country with the possible intention of illegally voting for Democrats in the election.
“It’s all gone,” Trump said. “They [FEMA] spent it on illegal migrants. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are drug dealers. Many of them come out of mental institutions and insane asylums, and many of them are terrorists.
“And they spent money to bring these people into our country and they don’t have money to take care of the people of North Carolina and the other states.”
“Is it helping the recovery effort in North Carolina to keep making these claims that FEMA isn’t doing their job well?” asked a reporter, referencing a supporter arrested for threatening FEMA workers. William Jacob Parsons, Fiedler writes, “said the threats were needed to prevent the FEMA workers from taking the actions Trump falsely claimed they were engaged in.”
Trump evaded:
“I think you have to let people know how they’re doing,” he replied, apparently referring to his false statements. “. … But, you know, [there are] very bad statements coming out about the job that FEMA and this administration has done.”
Incumbent NC-11 Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards issued a statement debunking the lies on October 8. He stood by silently on Monday. Except:
Edwards, however, told Trump that by “getting dust on your shoes,” he had done more to view the devastation than the president or vice president.
The fawning and kowtowing Trump cult members exhibit over this obvious (emotionally stunted) career con man in visible mental decline is beyond comprehension. I sat at my parents dinner table in early 2016 and declared him mentally unstable. Nothing he’s done since has undermined that assessment. Hundreds of thousands of Americans dead because of his incompetence in handling the Covid-19 pandemic are beyond commenting.
When you surrender to the MAGA media bubble, you don’t get to choose which items confirm your prejudices, which ones hurt you in service of making you mad at people Trump wants you to be mad at. Some may wake up to the cruel manipulation. Others will be victims to the end.
Witness the difference in the photos at the top.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney framed the choice facing voters in this presidential election as succinctly as anyone. It’s a matter of trust: “If you wouldn’t hire somebody to babysit your kids, you shouldn’t make that guy the President of the United States.”