With Trump, It's Possible

Monday night the British thinker and politician Daniel J. Hannan posted on TwitteX what was from all appearances a typical “Truth” “Social” screed by Donald Trump. It said that there would be no need to count ballots from next week’s elections because he, Trump, had already declared that Republicans had won every race and there was nothing anyone can do about it.

It seemed legitimate — at least genuine. The only clue that it wasn’t real was that it didn’t display typical Trumpian illiteracy. There weren’t misspellings, random capital letters, or misuse of punctuation.

But it was fake, and upon learning this Hannan quickly took it down.

Frankly, it didn’t matter, because it was entirely believable, which ought to tell us much about Donald Trump. We have a president who very well might say such things. Who does say such things. A day or two earlier he attacked Norway, in his usual thuggish vulgarity — it was not for nothing that SPY magazine 40 years ago referred to him as “the short-fingered vulgarian.” He went on to say Norwegians are not welcome in the United States. This is because the Nobel Peace Prize is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, and in his view he should be rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He never specifies whether he should receive the award for the peace he brought to Venezuela or the peace he brought to Iran or, maybe, the peace he brought to the toddler whose lifeless body we saw in her stroller on a Ukrainian street last week following a Trump-approved Russian missile attack.

Trump thought it was just great that the Trumpian lickspittle squirt Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor of Ohio, has a campaign ad in which the mentally disturbed mother of his opponent attacked her daughter. “I told him to leave it up and look upstairs and say: ‘Thank you, God, very much. I appreciate it,’” Trump added. “I only wish I could have had an ad like that against somebody.” Hey, religious people who support Trump — is that your view of God, too?

The fact is that if Trump were to begin a speech with “All hail Satan” — and who would be surprised if he did? — most of his “religious” supporters would go right along with it. They do not worship God, though they say they do. They worship Trump. Unless they have some kind of crooked inside deal with the absolutely corrupt president, they are certifiable.

Trump has undertaken two wars this year alone. After quickly capturing the boss of Venezuela in exchange for what he thinks is a deal with the boss’s successor for cheap oil (one of the reasons gasoline is so cheap now?), in statecraft reminiscent of “The Godfather,” he figured he could bump off Iran just as easily. He was wrong about that, but he never admits to having been wrong about anything, so the lies he tells to cover his earlier lies grow increasingly fantastic. But he is inadvertently right about one thing: Yes, the current price of fuel is because of him. I just got some: $5.29 per gallon for 89 octane.

It would be good if the second impeachment of his first term had resulted in conviction, because he might then have been barred from seeking the presidency again. But many people who have gotten the nomination of the Republican Party and afterwards gained public office are either loyal to the Trump syndicate or afraid of him or both. These profiles in cowardice will not be remembered fondly. Some may discover this as soon as next week. If you do business with one in real life, count your change.

The “Republicans” should be easily able to retain the Senate in next week’s election, but thanks to Trump’s support of lowlife losers that is now in doubt. The Democrat incumbent will win in Georgia because in a deranged rage in 2020 and early 2021 Trump told Georgia Republicans to stay home. He said the election was fixed, so instead of the likelihood of two Republican senators from Georgia he ended up with two Democrats — and a Democrat senate majority. (There was an attempt to fix the Georgia election. Trump was indicted for it, and but for the ineptitude of the prosecution he probably would have been convicted. As it is, he got a mugshot of which he is inordinately proud, even beyond his pride in any image depicting himself.)

He’s doing the same thing this election. He endorsed Trump-loyal crooks and grifters over respected veteran senators, got his band of flying monkeys to vote for them in the primary, and now is hoping they won’t lose the general election, which they probably will. It is commonly pointed out that if Trump were trying to throw the election he’d be doing nothing differently.

He’s been traveling around to states where Republicans and even Trumpians should be easy winners, speaking about himself in half-empty arenas, telling the same lies over and over. There isn’t any evidence that his presence at campaign events is doing anything but harm. And he’s coming a little unglued. Yes, Joe Biden lost his marbles. But Biden was followed by a president who, like a monkey in the zoo, is flinging poo to demonstrate a different kind of insanity. Our current president is a crazy man who likes to kill people, for the greater glory of himself. His commentary has become so outrageous that it was perfectly easy to believe a fake note saying he had declared the elections null and void. David Axelrod accurately described Trump’s recent speeches as “a dry drunk on open-mic night.”

Sadly, the Trumpiam version of the Republican Party refuses to exercise its Constitutional duty to keep him under control. So the Democrats may experience the one occasion where they might actually do some good: keeping Trump somewhat under control. Could they do it? Yes. Will they? Who knows.

I think that what we should be shooting for here is a narrow “Republican” majority in the Senate and a Democrat majority in the House of Representatives. A Republican Senate could serve to keep the Democrats from enacting their nuttier notions about the Supreme Court, adding new states, and so on. A Democrat House could — I’m not saying they would, but we already know Republicans won’t do it — keep a tight hold on the purse strings, at least preventing Trump from surrendering so freely to the greater demons of his nature.

I don’t vote for Democrats, but in this case I’m willing to make an exception. I’ll vote against my local congressman, because he’s a Trump-tinged Republican and is in my estimation a little scummy (have I repeated myself?), and of course I’ll vote against Ramaswamy, because I think he should be squashed like the bug he is.

Trump’s popularity is declining at an ever-accelerating rate. Good. Perhaps it will become politically wise to impeach, try, and convict him.

Increasingly, people may come to look for a different kind of trial for the president, both over his domestic swindles and through his Trump-syndicate-enriching international activities such as the betrayal of Ukraine, which has cost many innocent lives.

A trial that ends with the judge saying, “And may God have mercy on your soul.”

And, why not, they could livestream it.