Now that the Georgia runoffs are over, let’s talk about Donald Trump.
When we really needed all hands on deck in Georgia, Trump was a wrecking ball. He went down to Georgia and insulted everyone, refusing to talk about anything but himself.
Based on his rally speech this week, Trump apparently thinks he won the November election because there was a red wave for everyone except him. How else could all those Republicans win congressional seats on his “coattails,” while he lost?
There are other ways to interpret the election results, such as that Trump didn’t have any “coattails.” In Texas, for example, Trump won, but Sen. John Cornyn got more votes — the first time a Texas senator has bested a Republican president in a couple of decades.
Maybe Americans are terrified of the Democrats, but also sick of Trump.
From the moment the election was over, Democrats were single-mindedly focused on winning the Georgia runoffs. By contrast, Republicans indulged in their usual circular firing squads, while Trump kept the base distracted with his petulance about the November election. (Yes, the Democrats cheated. They always cheat. Maybe somebody should have done something about it before the election.)
With Republicans facing these two crucial runoffs, Trump was too narcissistic to care about anything but his personal issues, and he busily set landmine after landmine for the candidates.
After Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue had triumphantly voted for the coronavirus relief bill, Trump began attacking it as a “disgrace” and ridiculing the paltry $600 individual payments.
Let’s see, who had negotiated this “disgrace” again? Trump’s own Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. But Trump was too busy denouncing the November election to pay attention to the negotiations.
For a week, Trump pretended he wasn’t going to sign the bill. In the end, he signed it, but waited so long to do so that instead of Georgia voters receiving their checks days before the runoff, they’ll be getting their checks sometime later this week.
Fantastic.
Then Trump launched vicious attacks on the (admittedly ridiculous) Georgia governor and secretary of state, blaming them for his loss in the state. Republicans needed every vote in this election, and surely there are some Georgians who prefer those guys to Trump. But Trump forced Loeffler and Perdue to choose between him and their own elected Republican leaders.
It also didn’t help that we’re in the middle of another COVID surge. You can’t blame Trump for the coronavirus, a gift from China to the entire world. Trump did better than most world leaders, especially with Operation Warp Speed.
The usual problem with Trump is that he’s all talk, no action. He talked about the massive fraud that would ensue with mail-in ballots … but did nothing. He talked about “LAW & ORDER” as cities burned to the ground … but did nothing. He talked about the wall … but built only about a dozen miles of it.
With COVID, it was the reverse. Trump did the right things, but wouldn’t shut up. Worst of all, he talked to Bob Woodward.
To Woodward: I could curl your toes with some of the stories about this virus! See, I get these briefings every morning …
An hour later to the public: It’s gonna be great. This will be over by Easter.
That’s not a strong leader rallying the country. It’s a con artist telling you to put all your money on a stock that’s about to tank. Worst of all, it shows you who he is that Trump so desperately wanted Woodward to like him and was stupid enough to think he could win him over.
For all that, Trump had it all! He won the presidency by running on wildly popular issues that no other candidate would touch. He had devoted followers. For the first two years of his presidency, he had a Republican House and Senate.
Oh grief that Earth’s best hopes rest all with Thee!
Trump could have been a massively popular president and won reelection comfortably, if only he’d kept faith with his voters. Even people who abhorred him would have had to say, I thought he was a coarse vulgarian, but he was right about China ripping us off, he was right about the border, and he was right about standing up to crazy woke culture.
The 2020 election should have been like Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection (49-state landslide). Like Trump, Reagan ran on popular issues left on the ground by other candidates — primarily his vow to destroy the Soviet Union and reignite the economy by slashing government.
But — and here’s the big difference — Reagan kept his promises.
Not Trump! Instead — in the greatest bait-and-switch in American history — he promptly turned his presidency over to nimrods Jared and Ivanka, while he watched TV and tweeted. Suddenly, the populist hero was replaced with two idiots, who were all about being friends with the Kardashians and sucking up to Goldman Sachs.
Why don’t we have a wall? Why didn’t Trump impose a tax on remittances to make Mexico pay for it? Why are American workers still training their cheap labor replacements?
Answer: Stephen Miller, Trump’s crucial immigration aide during the 2016 campaign, survived his first year in the White House only by convincing Ivanka he was working on “Women’s Issues.” He spent his remaining three years with his nose up Jared’s butt.
We knew about the hucksterism. There was no warning about the kids.
The Republican Party’s only hope is to become a populist party, but without a shallow, narcissistic ignoramus as its head.
What is the point of being slavishly loyal to a person who is loyal to no one (except his numbskull kids)? Trump has sold out everyone who was ever faithful to him — Jeff Sessions, Kris Kobach, Chris Christie, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys, Corey Lewandowski, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and, of course, his own voters.
Half of the betrayed are still desperately seeking Trump’s favor by signing onto the futile “Stop the Steal” effort. Not good enough for the administration! But good enough to humiliate themselves in Trump’s final days in office. At the first Stop the Steal rally in Washington, Trump didn’t even show up. He went golfing.
Give up the cult of personality, Trumpsters, or at least find someone with a better personality.
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