What is it about our President that attracts people?
He lies incessantly, he insults and calls people names, he surrounds himself with corrupt bootlickers, he sucks up to Chinese, North Korean, and Russian dictators, and he is a terrible manager. His Administration has yet to develop distinguishable policy on any subject except for racism and xenophobia…which, obviously, he supports. He likes tariffs, too, even though they are an un-voted-upon tax that American consumers have to pay.
While a majority of Americans swear at him, there are a rock-solid group of Americans who continue to swear by him.
How does he manage that?
The image of the Pied Piper in the Dark Ages comes to mind. The guy plays his beguiling flute and the mass of plague-infested rodents follow him to the sea…where they drown.
At least the Pied Piper could play a mean flute.
Donald Trump may be the worse public speaker ever to hold office in the United States. His pronouncements from the White House podium are so monotone and boring that even he struggles to stay awake. His lack of interest could have something to do with the content of his briefings…stuff that even he doesn’t believe. Just a bunch of lies strung together to make it appear that he’s doing something. Or, blaming someone.
And the “man tan” product that he uses to look healthy is…ridiculously orange. C’mon, your head looks like a basketball!
Our President doesn’t seem to understand that he’s President of the United States; i.e. responsible for Federal shit. Things go wrong in his Administration and he asserts that he had nothing to do with those problems, that the blame must fall on previous Presidents, other Administrations, a cabal of anti-Trump Federal bureaucrats who are out to stifle his ideas, or officials that he hired that turned bad. It’s not his fault, it’s not his responsibility.
Even when he hires a guy to fuck up the Postal Service, and the guy gets outed by postal workers, the Pied Piper claims innocence, even though he had been musing, publicly, for weeks that mail-in ballots would never be processed in time by the Postal Service…which he runs.
Gee, when he was a candidate for President, EVERYTHING was the fault of the previous Administration and the Democrats who didn’t control Congress. He was smarter than all of those folks. In fact, he said, “Only I can solve the problem” when describing the mess he observed from the cheap seats.
Okay, America said, “Solve it.”
Three and a half years into his Presidency and the Nation is mired in a pandemic, as many as 40 million people are out of work and there are large protests in American cities over social issues. None of these problems are the fault of his Administration, the President says. As a matter of fact, he claims that the economy is rebounding “tremendously”, the pandemic which has claimed 175,000 souls is overblown and will go away, and the protests are minor skirmishes with anarchists which will be dealt with summarily.
Everything is fine, says Donald J. Trump. And, it would be worse under the Democrats, he adds.
(He also has some oceanfront property in Arizona that he’d be willing to sell you…cheap, because he likes you.)
Incredibly, lots of people are buying into the siren song that the Pied Piper is playing, which is, “Don’t believe what your eyes see and your ears hear. Trust me.”
Here in Mesquite, Nevada most of my neighbors and friends are Trump people. Of course, most of them are religious people, which explains why they might believe something that is obviously not true. I hear a lot of “they say” (Fox News) stuff from these folk, intermixed with Qanon conspiracy theories and the latest lies that the President has Tweeted, re-Tweeted, or vocalized at a press conference.
(Gee, I wonder what these good Christians think about the President’s a-hole buddy, Jerry Falwell Jr., who was ousted from super-religious Liberty University this week for his scandalous behavior with a woman not his wife. During the last Presidential campaign, Mr. Falwell vouched for Donald Trump’s religious credentials in speeches to evangelicals, claiming his friend, who cheated on three different wives, was “chosen by God”.)
My pious neighbors, whom I consider friends, don’t doubt anything that Donald Trump, ex-salesman, TV “reality show” host, and morally corrupt “Grab ‘em by the pussy!” braggart, offers up. What is wrong with these adults? What have they been drinking?
I don’t get it.
Pretty much everything that our President utters can be, and pretty much has been, proven to be a lie of biblical proportions. Factcheck.com has documented 20,000 lies that President Trump has publicly made in 3-1/2 years. The rate of lying has increased this Summer, as it is an election year. The President will probably top 40,000 blatant lies by November 3rd, now that he’s limbered up.
If the Pied Piper claims to have a cure for Covid-19 in the next month, there will undoubtedly be 50 million American followers who will believe that. Of course, he made the same claim for Hydroxychloroquine and Chlorox, and is lately promoting blood plasma transfusions, none of which cure anything. We can expect a “miracle” coronavirus vaccine in the next week or so.
The Pied Piper said something interesting yesterday, as he accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for President in 2020. While the crowd was cheering “Four more years!”, the President was heard on a microphone clearly saying, “How about twelve more years!”.
That Freudian slip means one of two things to me: (1) If re-elected, he would have no intention to only serve one more term, even though that’s all the Constitution provides; or, more likely, (2) He is planning for another Trump, either Donald Jr. or Ivanka, to succeed him.
Shoot me.
Given the state of American politics, and the gullibility of its citizenry, I would say that anything is possible with the Pied Piper in the mix: he knows no bounds of propriety or law. He basically does whatever he wants.
This is apparently what the Trump cult is comfortable with: an egomaniacal grifter managing America in perilous times.
I can only hope that most eligible voters cast a ballot on or before November 3rd. If they do, and the Pied Piper is their choice, then I will be forced to admit how wrong I was about this guy.
In that case, he might get that Nobel Prize he’s been yearning for or his face plastered on Mount Rushmore, something he’s publicly lobbied for.
Stranger things have happened: Californians liked bodybuilder Arnold Schwartzeneggar for Governor, and millions of people elected Adolph Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
It’s a crazy world.