Tag Archives: Trump

Compelling Versus Repelling

The New Republic recently had a column by Michael Tomasky comparing the Trump campaign to a long-running television show. His point was that the shtick has gotten old and boring. He compared Trump’s performances to several sitcoms that had been enormously popular, and noted that few of them had sustained that popularity for nine years–the length of time that Trump has inflicted his buffoonery on the country. He also pointed to data that indicates Americans are tiring of him.

It was an interesting comparison, and obviously, I hope it’s a correct one. But what caught my attention was his conclusion to the following paragraphs:

But again, for now, let’s just judge him as an act. His act is way tired. It’s now nine years of “Fake news” and “You won’t have a country anymore” and all the rest. In 2015, all those Trumpisms were stupid and disgusting; but at least they were new. I actually laughed when he described Jeb Bush as a “low-energy person.” He was! I could imagine then how, for voters who didn’t hate him, he was interesting and possibly amusing as a species that American politics rarely produces: someone who threw the script in the air and said whatever the hell popped into his mind.

That was bound to be something people wanted to watch, for a while. And it was just as bound to be something that became less compelling over time. It’s an act. And this is a key difference between politics and show business that Trump can’t see. In showbiz, and on TV, it’s all about whether the production values can sell the act. In politics, it turns out, the act needs more than slick production. It still needs to show some connection to people’s lives and concerns. Harris is better at that than Trump is. And her act is a lot fresher, too. And Walz’s act versus Vance’s? Not remotely close. Yes—Walz is so compelling, and Vance so repelling, that this is one election where the veep choices may actually make two points’ worth of difference.

Tomasky’s characterization of Walz as “compelling” and Vance as “repelling” isn”t just an accurate description of the two vice-presidential candidates. It’s an accurate description of the great majority of current Democratic and Republican candidates.

I understand that I live in an urban bubble, but everyone I know finds Trump repellant–and those who watched the Democratic Convention found most of the speakers at that event compelling. That contrast isn’t limited to national figures, either. It’s really hard to look at the Indiana Republicans’ statewide ticket without being repelled. (When MAGA Mike Braun is the least offensive candidate of the four, the GOP has really outdone itself.)

In addition to MAGA Mike, an empty suit who just wants to be important, you have smarmy Micah Beckwith hating on LGBTQ folks, advocating censorship, and telling voters that God directed the disreputable and looney mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. (Micah says he talks to God…)

You have equally-theocratic, anti-woman, anti-gay, wrong about pretty much everything, Jim Banks, who is evidently so personally unpleasant that even the Republicans in his current Congressional district dislike him.

And you have  “no bar is so low that he can’t go lower” Todd Rokita, who has (mis)used the. office of Attorney General to wage interminable–and tiresome–culture wars as part of his incessant pandering to the most MAGA voters of the GOP base.

I certainly find these men repellant. I also find the Democratic state ticket compelling–if you haven’t had the opportunity to hear Jennifer McCormick, Terry Goodin, Valerie McCray or Destiny Wells speak, you should try to do so. But even if you don’t find them as compelling or inspiring as I do, you’ll definitely notice that they are all sane, competent and –unlike their Republican opponents–actually qualified to do the jobs they’re running for.

I really hope that Tomasky’s comparison of political and television show popularity is correct. It would be great if the American voters who have been fascinated or intrigued (or sucked in) by the first few seasons of “Entitled White Faux Christian Guys” might be getting bored with the same-old, same-old, and ready for a different show.

How about a documentary? Say, for example, one titled “This is How Government Is Supposed to Work”?

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Ron DeSantis: Poster Child For Today’s GOP

In the wake of his pathetic performance in the presidential primaries, coverage of Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has faded from the national media. A recent exception was an article last week in The Guardian, explaining how he’s lost the support of many Florida Republicans

Ironically, that support didn’t diminish due to his appalling and seemingly endless assaults on civil liberties– some of which were enumerated in the first two paragraphs of the article.

In the end, it wasn’t culture war feuding over restricting LGBTQ+ rights, thwarting Black voters or vilifying immigrants that finally broke Republicans’ DeSantis fever in Florida.

Nor was it his rightwing takeover of higher education, the banning of books from school libraries, his restriction of drag shows, or passive assent of neo-Nazis parading outside Disney World waving flags bearing the extremist governor’s name that caused them to finally stand up to him.

It wasn’t even his bill scrubbing the term “climate change” from all Florida state laws. Evidently, none of those things upset Florida’s Republicans. The step too far was DeSantis’ effort to pave over the state’s parks.

It was, instead, a love of vulnerable Florida scrub jays; a passion to preserve threatened gopher tortoises; and above all a unanimous desire to speak up for nature in defiance of Ron DeSantis’s mind-boggling plan to pave over thousands of unspoiled acres at nine state parks and erect 350-room hotels, golf courses and pickleball courts.

Thousands of environmentalists, former allies and GOP elected officials denounced the plan. Even the Republican state legislators who have dutifully rubber-stamped anything DeSantis proposed, denounced the projects. Many pointed to the evidence of intended corruption, since the plans–devised in secret– contemplated “no-bid contracts destined for mysteriously pre-chosen developers outside the requirements of Florida law.”

Faced with that blowback, DeSantis copied Trump, pretending that he was unaware of the proposal.

Desperately trying to pin blame elsewhere for a misadventure that was very demonstrably his own, he continued: “This is something that was leaked. It was not approved by me, I never saw that. It was intentionally leaked to a leftwing group to try and create a narrative.”

Tsk tsk. Those pesky “left-wing” groups…..

The rest of the article details the fallout in Florida, and speculates that DeSantis is “losing his grip” on Florida’s voters. While that’s interesting (although not as interesting as the question “why did this awkward fascist ever have a grip”), the article was far more intriguing for its parallels with Donald Trump and the national GOP. The opening recitation of DeSantis’ priorities mimics the agenda of today’s Republican Party and Project 2025. His effort to distance himself when it became obvious that those priorities were unpopular (to say the least) mimics Trump’s insistence that he knows nothing about Projecct 2025.

Take a good look at those priorities.

DeSantis and Trump and today’s No-Longer-Grand Old Party are one big hate-fest. It isn’t simply the war on women’s autonomy. The party wants gays back in the closet. It wants Black Americans returned to a subservient status, and Brown immigrants deported. It exalts Hitler for his effort to eradicate Jewish people. And today’s GOP has an incredible, seething animosity to the life of the mind–seen in its determination to turn higher education into indoctrination, to dictate what can and cannot be taught in public schools, and its persistent efforts to prevent people from accessing books of which its White Christian Nationalists disapprove.

The devolution of the Republican Party into the party of racial grievance and nostalgia for a past that never existed has occurred gradually over a period of time. For that reason, a lot of people have failed to recognize the GOP’s transformation into a neo-fascist movement–a hodge-podge of chauvinist, xenophobic, theocratic, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and reactionary views.

What struck me about the opening paragraphs of the cited article was the enumeration of those very unAmerican goals as DeSantis has pursued them in his state–with the acquiescence (nay, the enthusiasm) of that state’s GOP.

It is telling that the break between DeSantis and the state’s Republicans came only when his authoritarianism threatened the parks they enjoy. Only then, evidently, did Florida’s “good Germans” recognize that an autocratic agenda eventually targets everyone.

A Martin Niemoller paraphrase seems apt–if a bit awkward and with a less tragic ending:

First they came for the intellectuals, and I did not speak out—because I was not an intellectual.

Then they came for the gays, and I did not speak out—because I was not gay.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for my parks—so I finally spoke up.

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The Documented Trump

I recently read Joe Conaston’s book “The Longest Con”–a deep dive into political corruption. It was an admittedly partisan dive, focused on Republican officeholders–I’m not naive enough to believe that Democrats are all saintly do-gooders. But Conaston’s reporting did “bring the receipts” as the saying goes; the last quarter or so of the book was a comprehensive list of resources.

When he got to Donald J. Trump, the sleaze went off the scale. From simple laziness and inattention to the job (Trump spent one out of every three days of his presidency on visits to his resorts, hotels and golf courses), to his direction of millions of public dollars to his own businesses (he arguably violated the Constitution by encouraging foreign governments seeking favors from the U.S. to stay at his hotels and resorts), Conaston concluded that Trump kept his business enterprises solvent with taxpayer dollars.

It was a portrait of the grifter as President. 

None of those observations would surprise those of us who follow politics closely. But a recent column in the Washington Post focused on an element of Trump’s tenure that did surprise me, although it was obvious once Matt Bai, the author of the article, pointed it out: unlike virtually every other President, Trump didn’t show signs of aging while in office.

Watch any video of Biden four years ago, and you’ll have the odd sensation of having turned back the clock by a decade at least. It was the visual effects of Biden’s aging, rather than evidence of any cognitive decline, that doomed his candidacy from the moment he appeared on the debate stage in June.

Why does the presidency have this effect? It’s not the late nights and endless flights (although they probably doesn’t help). It’s the physical burden of awesome responsibility. Every decision seems to involve bad options and worse; some cost livelihoods, others, actual lives. Add to this the toll it all takes on a family (in Biden’s case, the very public prosecution of his only surviving son), and you can see why a normal person isn’t built to withstand it.

But this is where Trump is truly not normal. I’m trying not to be cruel here, but it’s not exactly breaking new ground to say that he seems to lack for something innately human: the basic capacity to internalize other people’s pain. As president, Trump never betrayed remorse or apologized, never seemed to take personally the 800,000 Americans who died of covid-19 on his watch. Tragedy breeds in him only defiance. Trump’s motto might be: “Don’t worry, be angry.”

At another point in the essay, Bai points to a behavior that reinforces Conaston’s perspective on what really matters to this very twisted man:

When Trump and his children talk about the sacrifices their family made to serve the public, they aren’t talking about his anguished nights spent roaming the halls of the White House. They’re talking about money.

The point is that empathy and self-doubt — the feeling that we’re failing to meet the critical needs of others — are the things that really take a toll on us. Whereas clinical callousness may well be a fountain of youth — from which Trump has been guzzling his entire life.

This analysis goes a long way toward explaining why people thought of Biden as much older than Trump, despite the fact that, at 78, Trump is less than 4 years younger, and is now the oldest person ever to run for President. Anger and hostility can manifest as energy. Not caring about others–certainly not the people he was elected to serve–protected Trump against the dramatic aging we almost always see in Presidents after they’ve served a term. 

What anger and extreme entitlement/narcissism cannot mask, however, is increasing senility– loss of even the minimal control Trump was once able to muster. After Biden’s withdrawal and the surge in support for Harris, an increasing number of articles have asked whether Trump is “losing it.” (That assumes he ever had “it,” but I quibble.)

As one such article noted,

Today in New Jersey, Trump tricked reporters into covering a “press conference” that turned out to be a lengthy speech to his supporters at his golf course. Low-energy Trump read from a thick binder that included a string of outrageous lies, including the ridiculous claim that more than 100% of new jobs created in the U.S. are going to migrants….

“He lacks self-control. He lacks discipline,” Republican donor Eric Levine told the New York Times. He’s focused on a “very strange victimhood and grievance,” said Republican strategist Liam Donovan.

Yet millions of Americans will vote for this deteriorating con man–presumably, because he gives them permission to be as hateful as he is.

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Let’s Talk About Economic Performance

One of the recurring questions on presidential polls asks respondents for their perceptions of economic performance.
Although Kamala has bested Trump in a couple of recent polls, it has really rankled me that so few Americans have recognized and/or appreciated either the damage Trump did to the economy or the Biden administration’s incredibly successful management of it–management that financial markets and economists acknowledge was masterful, and brought the U.S. out of the pandemic downturn faster (and better) than any other country.
Knowledgable observers compare Biden’s performance to that of FDR. He will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential Presidents. In my humble opinion, the lack of popular recognition of his performance is attributable to his relative lack of oratorical skills–if Biden had the oratorical gifts of an Obama, perhaps a general public fixated on celebrity, salesmanship and hype (and too lazy to consult evidence and data) would have appreciated the extent of his administration’s accomplishments.
The Democratic convention got underway Monday, and in his speech, Biden justifiably reminded listeners of his “greatest hits.” In a column about the convention and the speech, Jennifer Rubin focused on Biden’s economic and foreign policy performance, noting the historic pieces of legislation Biden managed to pass even when the House of Representatives was in the hands of a partisan–and looney– GOP: measures on infrastructure, microchip manufacturing, and green energy investment. Cost controls on insulin and a variety of prescription drugs for Medicare patients. A massive operation to immunize Americans against the coronavirus, despite what Rubin called–accurately– “irrational and destructive” Republican opposition. That operation saved thousands of lives in addition to allowing the U.S. economy to recover. 

These domestic successes accompanied equally impressive foreign policy accomplishments: “repairing and expanding NATO, arming Ukraine, reestablishing the United States’ credibility on the international stage, new and reinvigorated alliances to check China’s power).”

Kamala Harris has been part of the Biden administration, and can be expected to continue the policy approaches that have been so successful. There will be some “tweaks,” but she has administration “bragging rights.” She is running on four years of demonstrated, excellent performance.

So, you might ask, what are Donald Trump’s “bragging rights?” My sister recently listed them, and seeing them all in one list was–shall we say–edifying:

First President in history to serve a full term and increase the deficit every year he was in office.

First President in history to maintain a debt to GDP ratio over 100% for his entire term

Highest annual budget deficit.

Most added to the national debt in a single term.
Most new unemployment claims.
Largest single day point drop in the history of the Dow.
First President in almost a century to lose jobs in his first term.
Longest government shutdown in history (and he did that while his own party controlled both chambers of Congress).
In addition to that dismal economic performance, Trump was also the first President to lose the popular vote twice, the first to maintain a net negative approval rating for his entire term, first to be impeached twice (with bipartisan support for his conviction after both impeachments) and, as we know, the President with the most indictments, guilty pleas, and criminal convictions of members of an administration.
The first to be a convicted felon.
The only people who cheered Trump’s economic policies were the super-rich, who benefitted from his tax cuts–cuts that placed the tax burden squarely on the middle class, and further enriched the wealthiest Americans.
You know what to do. VOTE BLUE.
Listen to the nuns….
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So Here’s The Thing…

Since 2016, I have participated in more conversations than I can count focused on the query: “How can anyone look at Donald Trump and conclude this mentally-ill buffoon should be President?'”

The only answer I’ve been able to come up with, after surveying the research, is that Trump hates the same people they do, and to MAGA, shared racism is all that matters.

During the last few months, that question has taken on even more relevance, because Trump’s mental processes–such as they were–have dramatically declined. That deterioration was “front and center” during what was billed as a press conference a week or so ago.

The best account of that event–attended by what was evidently a hand-picked group of “journalists” unlikely to ask pertinent or follow-up questions–was written by Tom Nichols in the Atlantic. 

Donald Trump’s public events are a challenge for anyone who writes about him. His rallies and press conferences are rich sources of material, fountains of molten weirdness that blurp up stuff that would sink the career of any other politician. By the time they’re over, all of the attendees are covered in gloppy nonsense.

And then, once everyone cleans up and shakes the debris off their phones and laptops, so much of what Trump said seems too bonkers to have come from a former president and the nominee of a major party that journalists are left trying to piece together a story as if Trump were a normal person. This is what The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has described as the “bias toward coherence,” and it leads to careful circumlocutions instead of stunned headlines.

The so-called “press conference” was Trump’s response to the publicity that Harris and Walz were generating (Trump can’t bear not being the center of attention) and was even more bizarre than usual.

Trump, predictably, did an afternoon concert of his greatest hits, including “Doctors and Mothers Are Murdering Babies After They’re Born,” “Putin and Xi Love Me and I Love Them,” and “Gas Used to Be a Buck-Eighty-Something a Gallon.” But the new material was pretty shocking…

He said (again) that the convicted January 6 insurrectionists have been treated horribly, but this time he added that no one died during the assault on the Capitol. (In fact, four people died that day.) He made his usual assertion that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he’d been in office, but this time he added how much he looked forward to getting along with the Iranians, despite also bragging about how he tanked the nuclear deal with them.

Harris recently spoke to approximately 15,000 people in Detroit; 30 times that would be nearly half a million people, so Trump is now saying that he’s having rallies that are five times bigger than the average crowd at a Super Bowl—bigger, even, than Woodstock—and somehow fitting them all into arenas with seats to spare….

He claimed that attendance at the rally preceding the January 6 insurrection exceeded that of Martin Luther King’s March on Washington–an event that drew a quarter of a million people.

Trump also invented a helicopter ride with Willie Brown, who had once dated Kamala Harris, saying that Brown had told him (unspecified) “terrible” things about Harris. (Brown says no such ride ever took place.)

Nichols properly described the bottom line to all this:

The issue is that a former president is frighteningly delusional, and if any other candidate had done this—Biden was roasted over stories that were obscure but turned out to be true—it would dominate the news with understandable alarm about the well-being of the candidate.

The New York Times ran this headline: “Trump Tries to Wrestle Back Attention at Mar-a-Lago News Conference.” The Washington Post said: “Trump Holds Meandering News Conference, Where He Agrees to Debate Harris.” The British paper The Independent got closer with: “Trump Holds Seemingly Pointless Press Conference Filled With False Claims,” but CNN went with “Trump Attacks Harris and Walz During First News Conference Since Democratic Ticket Was Announced.”

All of these headlines are technically true, but they miss the point: The Republican nominee, the man who could return to office and regain the sole authority to use American nuclear weapons, is a serial liar and can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

Donald Trump is not well. He is not stable. There’s something deeply wrong with him.

Here in the real world, we’ve noticed.

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