It’s so pathetic. Having learned nothing since 2015, Republican advisers are still begging Donald Trump to act like a normal person – as if such a thing were ever possible.
Kellyanne Conway says she wants “fewer insults” and “more insights.” Peter Navarro, fresh from prison, says that “when Trump attacks (Kamala) Harris personally rather than on policy, Harris’ support among swing voters rises, particularly among women.” Nikki Haley says that Trump needs to “quit whining.” Douglas Heye has this advice for Trump: “Don’t say the things that don’t make any sense.”
But here’s the insolvable problem, which is obvious to anyone with a functioning intellect:
You can’t just put a bow tie on an untamed ape and expect it to sit at a table with human grownups. That simply won’t work, not after you’ve been feeding the ape and indulging its ape behavior for nine long years.
At his New Jersey country club yesterday, the advisers handed him an “economic policy” paper and compelled him to read it on national TV, in the hopes that he would hew to its contents and show some discipline. Alas, he riffed relentlessly while he read. And for more than an hour, what we got (big surprise) was the usual moldering poop pile of petty insults, petulant grievances, and wild lies concocted out of thin air. Rest assured, the Harris and her running mate loved it for the ammo he gifted them.
His latest lies have inspired me to quote Shakespeare in Much Ado Without Nothing: “Men were deceivers ever/ One foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never.”
Trump ranted that the American economy (the strongest in the western world) is in the toilet, at the same moment when the Dow, flashed on the TV screen, was posting a 500-point gain. He said that Kamala ruined San Francisco – “San Francisco, you know, was a great city 15 years ago” – apparently unaware that the DA in San Francisco 15 years ago was Kamala Harris. He said that she’s a low-intelligence “communist.” He said that Harris is responsible for all his felony indictments (“I’m very angry at her that she weaponized the justice system”). He said he’s leading in all the polls, the inverse of reality (and even the usually Trump-friendly Emerson Poll currently shows him trailing nationally by four points). He said that wind energy is killing all the birds and giving us “bird cemeteries.”
Was that all? Nope. He said that if we convert to electric trucks, we’ll have to rebuild every road and bridge in America. He said that car insurance has gone up “52 percent.” (He didn’t provide a time frame, and earlier this week he said the figure was “82 percent.”) He said, “I won Pennsylvania in 2016, and I did much better the second time.” (Right, so much better the second time that he spent weeks trying in vain to overturn his defeat.) He said that a diesel-fuel truck can go 3000 miles to California and halfway back before it needs to refuel (gee, that doesn’t sound right). He said that in San Francisco, thanks to Harris, “you’re allowed to rob a store as long as it’s not more than $950…If it’s less than $950 they can rob it and not get charged” (in San Fransisco, it’s illegal to rob any store; the only calculation is whether it shoiuld be charged as a felony or misdemeanor).
Anything else? Yes, this gem: “Virtually 100 percent of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants. In fact I’ve heard substantially more and actually beyond that number 100 percent. It’s a much higher number than that.” (All wrong. According to a new study, native-born employment rose by 740,000 last year; foreign-born employment – mostly naturalized citizens, not migrants – rose by 1.7 million.) And here’s a pop quiz: Since the number of new jobs is finite, how can they be filled by “substantially more” people than 100 percent? What kind of math did they teach at Trump University?
I can barely muster energy anymore to lament his insults, lies, and ignorance. More worthy of condemnation are the fools who lap it all up – and, above all, the Republican leaders and strategists who keep hoping against hope that an aging grifter will somehow civilize himself.
Personally, I hope that he blathers the same way from now til election day, because I suspect that a majority of voters are just sick and tired of being sick and tired. As Shakespeare wrote, “It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing.”