Have you ever seen the film Out of Sight? In the climactic scene of that great Elmore Leonard adaptation, a dim bloated thug named White Boy aims his gun at George Clooney and tries to lumber up a winding staircase. But he trips over his own feet, lands hard on his stomach, and discharges his gun into his own head. What a putz.
That was Donald Trump yesterday, at Mar-a-Lago.
This old white boy – desperate for media attention now that Harris and Walz are running him ragged – is incapable of getting out of his own way. He has virtually nothing new to say; he makes things worse for himself merely by opening his mouth. I watched his news conference yesterday, and, assuming that you did not, I can reassure you with full confidence that all you missed was a recycled litany of the same old lies.
It’s a disgrace, of course, that the news networks allowed him to spew for an hour before anyone stepped in to fact-check, and it’s disgrace, of course, that the Republican party has tethered itself to this delusional font of falsehoods, but you already know that. I’ll simply summarize his gig by listing his dirty dozen reliables. He clings to them the way a baby sucks a binky.
* “Nobody died on Jan. 6.”
* We had a peaceful transfer of power in 2021.
* Gas is $7 a gallon.
* “I’m leading in the polls by a lot.”
* “Nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me.”
* “Everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned.
* Democrats want to kill babies after birth.
* Democrats, including Harris, want to defund the police.
* Biden’s Justice Department is running all the criminal cases against him.
* The world is emptying its insane asylums and sending everyone here.
* Twenty million illegal immigrants are invading us.
* Mail-in ballots are unfair and corrupt.
Naturally, none of the reporters in attendance at Mar-a-Lago roused themselves to challenge any of those whoppers, not even when he said that the crowd he addressed on Jan. 6 (25,000) was bigger than Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” crowd (250,000).
Nor did they question any of his new grifts, like when he said that his MAGA base “is 75 percent of the country.” In the polls conducted when he was still matched against Joe Biden, he rarely hit 50 percent. And in the last two presidential elections, his top vote share was 46.8 percent.
But, in the press’ defense, nobody in the room could’ve possibly fact-checked his helicopter yarn in real time. Even by his sordid standards, this one tops the charts.
A reporter, clearly seeking favor with Trump, teed him up to talk about how Harris had dated California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown 30 years ago. Trump’s response, verbatim:
“Well, I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this was the end. We were in a helicopter, going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing. And Willie was – he was a little concerned. So I know him, but I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But he told me terrible things about her…But he – he, I don’t know, maybe he’s changed his tune. But he – he was not a fan of hers very much, at that point.”
Turns out that (1) He was never in a helicopter with Willie Brown, (2) He did share a helicopter ride once with Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown, but there was no emergency landing, and (3) Willie Brown never trash-talked Kamala in front of Donald Trump.
Enough of that. We need to mark an important anniversary. Fifty years ago today, scandal-plagued Richard Nixon quit his job and flew away. The new president, Gerald Ford, declared: “Our long national nightmare is over.” In a mere 88 days, we can end this one. And if Trump keeps tripping over his own feet, he’ll make it easier.