It being mid-term season, Trump is out in the hustings campaigning for Republican candidates at every opportunity, because apart from golfing at his own resorts, bloviating at political rallies is really the only thing he enjoys these days. Every rally is a performance that strikes the usual high notes – the big Electoral College victory in 2016, the Wall, the evil habit of all Democrats, all of ’em, folks, to hate border security and love crime, because they figure all those MS-13 thugs vote Democrat, blah blah blah. It’s hard to tell whether the crowds are starting to find the old schtick tiresome – I’m guessing not. Fox News may have stopped carrying his rallies live in their entirety, but the masses still show up to hoot and holler at all the scripted moments. As somebody said on one of the cable news shows last night, this is all de rigueur at a Trump rally – if you go to see the Rolling Stones, you’d feel rooked if they didn’t play Satisfaction, right? Trump has to rant about immigrants and how he won the election in 2016. Otherwise how would the yobbos know they were at a Trump Rally?
OK, but there are a couple of new talking points, first promulgated by Newt Gingrich, of all people, while he was over pulling duty as a talking head on Hannity or another of those Fox shows, and these seem particularly disturbing. The first is that the protests during the hearings for Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination were an appalling travesty funded by George Soros and emblematic of the newest Democratic tactic: mob violence. That’s right, getting the frat boy on the court was a triumph over mob rule. The Democrats and their liberal hangers-on are a ruthless mob. You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, yells The Donald, and you don’t hand public policy to a violent mob.
OK, so you got that? Democrats are an angry, violent liberal mob.
He yells this even as he exhorts the actual mob in attendance to chant “Lock Her Up” about whichever woman is most irritating at the moment. Last time I noticed, it was Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), nasty architect of Blessed Kavanaugh’s Unfair Public Humiliation.
The other theme is that the Democrats, and their always nefarious and scheming money maven George Soros, are actually paying people to try to migrate illegally into the United States. Why there’s a large caravan of migrants heading our way just now! A caravan. A huge group of illegals, coming at us all systematic-like, in a great big organized caravan. Right up the Pan-American highway! In a caravan!
Right, so to recap, there’s a caravan coming, folks. You follow? A caravan, which is a big bunch of people, and it’s because of the Dems and the stinking liberals.
Like Newt said, the midterms are about two words, and two words only, and all that they imply: Kavanaugh, and caravan. They even sound alike, which is sort of neat.
I’m too tired to even go into why this is transparently nonsense and borderline insane, and I bet you’re so tired of me ranting that you’re glad if I don’t. I’ll just say this: it’s terrifying. This isn’t just a pack of lies and distortions, it’s straight-up totalitarian fear-mongering. This could just as easily be coming directly from a desk within the Reich Chancellery, or perhaps the Ministry of Truth. Once this type of swill becomes standard discourse, its tough to go back to anything approaching reason. People get addicted to hate, they come to crave that rush of being whipped into a frenzy of fear and vengefulness. It’s a horribly dangerous Pandora’s Box to crack open.
There’s another standard Trumpian line that always gets hollered at some point, about the awful liars who populate the so-called press, AKA the “fake news”. One of my favourites is when he looks into the cameras and screams that the fakers aren’t even going to cover him calling them out as fakes, which, as he knows, of course they will.
Most recently, he had an even better opportunity to throw shade at the press, when he was in Montana, stumping for Greg Gianforte, Montana’s sole member of the House of Representatives. Gianforte’s main claim to fame was that he physically assaulted a reporter during the last election cycle. Slammed him right to the ground – the impudent bastard was asking questions, you see. About health care. The dick. So Greg threw him on the ground and got down there to punch him out, like the good Montana politician that he is.
OK, that was a criminal assault, for which Gianforte was duly convicted, but as Trump told the crowd, it was a good and admirable thing to do. Damned reporter had it coming, right? Plus, that Greg was one tough cookie, right? “Never wrestle him. Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of guy.”
“I shouldn’t say this — it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I was in Rome with a lot of the leaders of other countries … and I heard about it, and we endorsed Greg very early, but I had heard that he had body slammed a reporter. And he was way up, and I said, and this was the day of the election or just before — ‘This is terrible, he’s going to lose the election.’ And then I said, ‘Wait a minute, I know Montana pretty well. I think it might help him.’ And it did. He’s a great guy. Tough cookie.”
So there you have it. All hail another noble blow against the enemies of the people.
Oh, and never forget Benghazi. Donald threw that in, too. Benghazi. No, seriously. Benghazi. It was like it was a word he hadn’t heard in a while, and he figured he should be doing his part to keep it in circulation. Benghazi. Sometimes, Donald has a way of repeating words into the mic, as if he isn’t sure what they mean, but it might help to sound them out. Space Force. Puerto Rico. Benghazi. Remember Benghazi – kind of like Remember the Maine! Who could forget it? Maybe by next week, that terrifying caravan will be coming straight from Benghazi, where George Soros personally loaded the vans full of ISIS terrorists aiming to join MS-13.
Why? Why do I pay attention? Even Fox can’t stand the Full Donald any longer. I must be under the malign influence of some sort of mental affliction. Horror, maybe. Terror. Something like that.
the needlefish 