Afterthoughts

Dang. I’d been planning to begin this week’s column with a riff on that laughably large ear bandage Trump sported at his coronation, and, having seen his cult fashioning similar ones, to note the similarity to farmers tagging the ears of their sheep. Probably, I’d have puzzled that, next day, he wore a small Band-Aid appropriate to the injury he incurred.

Maybe he realized, despite seeing his flock lower to the occasion, how ridiculous it looked to everyone else. As a former trauma surgeon, I’d never have applied that honker to such a minimally injured ear. Nevertheless, he was very lucky and that’s a good thing. I don’t minimize the seriousness of the close call; just the crazy that came after.

So I’d also have reflected on miracles. If defined as evidence of divine intervention, and if God saved Trump from death, then it’s no less miraculous that He made Mr. Comperatore die. Same for late-discovered survivors of earthquakes that kill hundreds. You can’t see saves as godly and not the killings. So, maybe there are no miracles. Were I reckless enough, I’d have proposed that to think He would choose an amoral man like Trump to lead us is disrespectful of God. Blasphemous, even.

I’m sure I’d have mentioned the similarities between Kim Jong Il’s ceremonial appearances and Trump, when he wasn’t nodding off, smiling beneficently as sycophants like Tucker Carlson and Hulk Hogan (!) praised him, deified him, one after another. Likely, I couldn’t have avoided noting that, halfway through Trump’s endless, rally-repetitive acceptance speech, the faithful were scrolling their phones or walking out.

President Joe Biden’s magnanimous decision to withdraw from contention is the reason I’d have said none of that. MAGA Republicans won’t, but present company and future historians will agree that President Joe Biden is one of the most, if not THE most effective president since FDR.

Assuming the reins of a devastated economy while a mishandled pandemic was requiring refrigerated morgue trucks outside overwhelmed hospitals, as unemployment was soaring and businesses were closing, he turned it all around, creating millions of jobs, lowering Covid-rebound inflation – never as high in the US as in other developed countries – to a third of its maximum.

Record numbers of small businesses have been created. Decaying infrastructure is being rebuilt. And, had Trump not shepherded his sheep into blocking it, President Joe Biden’s negotiated, bipartisan deal would have made significant progress on border issues.

It’s a remarkable, proud legacy, with a terribly sad ending. Compared to Trump’s venality, President Biden’s decency, placing country above self, couldn’t be more obvious.

Concerned he might not be the one to beat Trump, who, notwithstanding MAGA credulity, historians will agree was one of the if not THE worst president ever, President Biden’s decision to withdraw speaks of patriotism and selflessness. I hope he makes a barnburner of a speech at the Democratic convention.

While we await whatever mess Democrats and pundits will make of their nominating process before selecting Kamala Harris, we know for sure their convention won’t be the festival of falsehoods foisted by Trump’s fraudulent fluffers.

After Speaker-of-Sorts Mike Johnson testified that theirs is the party of law and order, and before his party nominated a convicted criminal, adjudicated rapist, defrauder of New York State of millions of dollars, and recidivist scammer, they welcomed, to delirious cheers, a convict caravan: Manafort, Stone, Navarro, J6 insurrectionists. If he weren’t still serving time, Bannon would have been similarly received.

Came then the strategic lies: Crime rates; energy production; EVs; gas prices; rampant “migrant crime,” the fakest of fakes.  And the one Trump hopes to ride to the White House: election fraud. To which he, the oldest presidential nominee ever, has added another, nearly as pernicious: that he knows nothing of Project 2025.

He knows. Praising the world’s worst dictators, to replicate whose regimes the Project aims, he knows. If elected, he’d follow its marching orders toward a government by and for its billionaire advocates, himself as figurehead, secured by permanently diluted elections.

Continuing its election interference, Russia is praising Trump and, now, his V.P. pick. The former Republican Party would have been appalled to see their nominees praised by America’s enemies and lauded at home despite – or because of -- their disqualifications. In the graves of the respectable old guard, rotations must be continuous.

Money and endorsements are flooding in for Kamala Harris, breaking records. Trump might hide from debating her, but he and his surrogates aren’t hiding their awful, desperate misogyny and racism when attacking her, with worse to come. To which I say, bring it!

Something reminiscent of optimism is nibbling at worry for our country. Too soon to say; but Trump is still Trump, an aged, diminished, fourth-grade name-caller, repeater of lies and incomprehensible digressions. If cultists can’t see it, it’s true nevertheless: he’s become even more unfit for office than he was eight years ago.