“Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. It was so much and so interesting and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many different ways, it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And, uh, the statement of Robert E. Lee, who’s no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? He’s no longer in favor. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They were fighting uphill. He said, ‘Wow, that was a big mistake.’ He lost his great general. And they were fighting. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys!’ But it was too late.”
You may or may not be familiar with the preceding paragraph. It depends to some extent upon how much of a political junkie (or masochist) you are. But even if you’re not familiar with it, you can probably guess the source. And if you guessed, Donald J. Trump, you win.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee scatted the forgoing brain jazz at a speech in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. It was just one discursive, rambling aside in an oration that consisted of more than 75 minutes of discursive, rambling asides. Some highlights:
“China is sending illegals here to start a little army in our country.”
“I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”
“I love women more than I love anything. I looove women.”
“Last night we had 20 people come to our country from the Congo. Welcome to our country. Where do you live in the Congo? We live in prison. They’re bringing them in from Africa!”
“The 2020 election was rigged, pure and simple. It was a disgrace and we can never let it happen again.”
“I’m perhaps the most honest guy in the world.”
Perhaps. And if you believe that, well, you’re an idiot. We’re past the point of pretending any of this is remotely normal, but here’s the worrisome thing: It actually is normal in one sense. It’s “normal” because it happens every day that Trump says something in public. After nine years of listening to this guy, Americans have become inured to it; our politics have literally transformed. Trump has normalized things that would have destroyed the career of any politician before he came along.
Gary Hart was the front-runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination when revelations of an extramarital affair emerged and he was finished. In 2004, presidential candidate Howard Dean was deemed unelectable because he screamed “Yeah!” at a rally in Iowa. See ya, Howard. You’re not “presidential” enough.
And Jimmy Carter was so concerned about a possible conflict of interest that he put his little Georgia peanut farm in a blind trust during his presidency, so as not to appear to be in the pocket of Big Peanut.
In contrast, Trump and his family made millions from his businesses while in office, including from a hotel in Washington, D.C., where foreign diplomats and lobbyists stayed in order to curry favor with the American president.
And just imagine the merde-storm that would engulf the mass media if Joe Biden bumbled his way through anything remotely similar to Trump’s lie-filled Schnecksville speech. Think of the outrage from the Confederate-loving MAGA types if Biden invented a Robert E. Lee quote that made the general sound like a surfer-pirate.
Argh, dude.
As this presidential campaign stumbles into summer, and as Trump’s trial in New York takes center stage, it is becoming more and more obvious that the GOP presidential candidate has some real issues with, well, reality. Trump is quite literally making things up — creating stories, statistics, and personal anecdotes out of whole cloth. This is not an opinion; it’s a verifiable fact: He’s a full-service gaffe station.
The question becomes: Is he doing it knowingly — just running a hustle to get elected again — or is he truly losing sentience, unable to tell fact from fiction? Does he truly believe all vaccines are bad, and that he is the most honest person in the world, and Robert E. Lee said “wow.” If it’s the latter, well, that is so interesting and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many different ways. And we are so in trouble.