Not Debatable

 

Around thirty percent of voters, the kind that attend Trump’s rallies or wish they could, who cheer at everything he says no matter how dishonest, disconnected from reality, or undecipherable, will support him no matter what. No amount of fact-checking or pointing out dangers will dissuade them. They love the idea of his promised military tribunals convicting and imprisoning the Obamas, Bidens, Clintons, members of Congress’s January 6 Committee, people he falsely accuses of election fraud, including election officials, voters, and donors; even some of their neighbors. The similarity to the world’s worst dictatorships concerns them not; it’s their most fevered dream.

When Trump says rounding up undocumented migrants will be “a bloody story,” they must imagine it with delight. Unbatted eyes view his phantasm of school children heading off to school, only to return home sex-changed. Held down, castrated, given vagino- or phalloplasties, mastectomies or implants, presumably by the school nurse. Only people whose detectors have been wiped away like bugs on a windshield believe such obvious b.s.

They also buy his stunningly counterfactual claim (lie!) that tariffs are a tax on other countries and won’t cost American consumers a penny. It’s unsurprising that a “businessman” who managed to bankrupt casinos and several other projects could so thoroughly misunderstand economics; likewise his thirty percenters who lack the capacity to question it. But the ones bringing his support even with or ahead of Kamala Harris? Clueless voters, voting.

People educated beyond fourth grade ought not need explaining; but, for the record, tariffs are paid for by consumers, not the producing countries. They raise prices. They’re inflationary. To conservatives, they once were anathema. Think: a country sells a widget to importers for ten dollars. The US demands a ten percent tariff, which it collects not from the sender but from the importer, who then sells it to consumers at an increased price to cover their increased costs.

Trump’s “plan” would raise the cost to consumers of whatever imports he chooses by whatever rate he decides. He’s threatened as much as 100% on cars, and not just for China. Imports from everywhere. The money from tariffs comes from Americans. The US has no power to tax other countries. Our timid media should call him on it. 

He’d have you believe tariffs solve everything: the trillions he says other countries pay (lie!) will balance the budget, eliminate the national debt, and cover the cost of everything he’s promising, including tax cuts for the wealthy. Is he so stupid that he actually believes that, or is it just that he thinks his voters are? If, as tariffs are intended, consumers switch to buying only American-made products, there’d be a worldwide recession, and there’d be no revenue from tariffs. Until other countries’ retaliatory tariffs kicked in, American businesses would do fine; and, absent competition from abroad, raise prices. Either way, consumers lose.

Trump’s tariff lie is but one of the countless others on which mainstream media fail to push back, while Foxophilic media amplify them, because they DO think their listeners are stupid. In Tuesday’s “debate,” awakening voters to Trump’s lies, Kamala Harris did the best she could in the time allowed. With minimal pushback, debate “moderators” let Trump say whatever he wanted, rant about a horrible future that won’t happen, and ignore questions.

Asked why he forced Republicans to vote down the border bill that would have solved much of the current problems, he avoided answering and the feck-deficient “moderators” moved on. They did, however, let him melt down time and again, repeating his golden oldie lies about crime, immigration, and, yes, tariffs.

To her true statement that world leaders laugh at him, he proffered Hungary’s notorious dictator, Victor Orban, as a character reference. Comedy gold.

The thirty percent will think Trump “crushed” Vice President Harris. Notwithstanding being prevented from responding to all of his lies (or maybe she just chose to ignore them), Kamala Harris did extremely well. Real pundits, though, will tell us what to really think.

Now, Trump voters must ask themselves: his own Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, and many of his Cabinet, people who’ve been with him in the Oval Office and the Situation Room, are warning of the dangers of another Trump term. What do you think you know about him that they don’t? Why is your assessment, from afar, more accurate than those who worked with him, daily, up close?

In the biggest of pictures, beyond yourself, for your country, how is it better to have as president a confabulating liar who will, despite is truthless denials, follow Project 2025’s path to autocracy, rather than a current Vice President, former senator, attorney general, prosecutor, who’ll protect your freedom and democracy and respect our laws, even if you don’t agree with every one of her policies?

Brain Drain

 

I apologize to all the veterans and their families I’ve offended. It was a very bad mistake.

Can anyone imagine Trump saying that? About anything, let alone his Arlington Cemetery desecration? One of the last honorable Republicans, John McCain did, using those final six words. Instead, after floating various excuses and lies, Trump went with “it was a setup” by the Biden administration and, yes, even Gold Star families.

Dutifully, JD Vance tried to flip it to attack Kamala Harris. “She wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up?” Vance said. “She can go to hell.” Big cheers. At the time, she’d said not a word about it. Later, she did, and remains topside.

In addition to Trump’s inability to take responsibility, there’s his lack of core values, seen as he set the 24-hour flipflop record, on Florida’s six-week abortion ban. (Advice for the Vice President: when he attacks her changed positions, she should say, “He was once a pro-choice Democrat. I changed for the better; he changed for the worse.”)

Last week, to “Moms for Liberty,” who are, more accurately, moms for the exact opposite, Trump said this: “The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and he comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s gonna happen to your child. And you know many of these childs (sic) say fifteen years later “What the hell happened? Who did this to me?”” OMG: It's real!

Suspecting that Kamala Harris will do the transgenderizing surgery herself, it’s unlikely the “moms” were concerned that a would-be recidivist “president” uttered something so hallucinatory, so bizarre, so weird that no brain within two standard deviations of stable could have birthed it.

There are only two possibilities for being so unloosed from reality: Either his mind is so unraveled that he actually thinks it happens, or he knows it doesn’t but assumes voters will believe and vote for him. Except within the most Foxified, uncritical, Trumpically-unbalanced minds, both should be considered disqualifying for another stint in the White House. As we witness him becoming increasingly incoherent, everywhere, option one is the more likely.

Imagine: Trump, divorced from reality even more than from his first two wives on whom he cheated, is in the Situation Room, faced with a multifactorial international crisis, demanding that he process rapidly changing, incomplete information, and evaluate advice from his confidants. As he’s made clear, those advisers will have been chosen not for competence but for obsequious willingness to do whatever Trump asks, constitutionality and rationality be damned. He’s said he’ll purge his “government” of career experts, so the advice he gets will be useless sycophancy. The prospect of him applying his dissociative thinking, unrestrained, ought to be terrifying to everyone. Likely, he’d just ask, “WWPD”?

Who but MAGAs could trust him to make well-reasoned decisions in the best interest of the US? Only those who love him for his hatefulness, finding all else irrelevant, could rationalize putting him back there, finger on the nuclear button. He’s promised to fire all general officers who refused to activate his impulsive, catastrophic ideas first time around, and replace them with ones like deranged, QAnon-adherent Michael Flynn.

If not for truthless rightwing and feckless mainstream media, the nightmare prospect of Trump again in office, babbling like he did to the “moms” while making critical decisions, should put him behind in the polls 75-25%. That he’s not confirms the anti-democracy success of post-Reagan endumbification efforts by Republicans.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to stoke and praise violence. At a rally last week, an attendee leapt into the press area and had to be tased and restrained by police. Trump said, “That’s beautiful” and "That's alright. That's OK. No, he's on our side.” The man to whom the Supreme Court gave near-absolute immunity for crimes. The man readying his mobs for another January 6. 

Who “our side” is, if not already clear, might be learned from his recent choices of rally venues: Howell, Michigan. Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Johnstown, Pennsylvania. What they have in common is that they were once known as “sundown towns,” cities in which Blacks were not allowed to be out after dark. Perhaps it’s unintended coincidence. I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but they are what they are. 

Always for conspiracy theories, Trump is now suggesting the assassination attempt was an “inside job,” coordinated by President Biden. But it balances the social media chatter that it was orchestrated by Trump, to get that money-making photo op. The evidence is that, like school shooters, the perpetrator was a solo, sick person.

There’s another sick person, too, one who endangers us all. Maybe not solo, though, as he’s the choice of a major political party. He was “president” once. Remember how it was. For the sake of all Americans, including his deluded supporters, he must never be again.