OH MY GOD. Did you watch it? Have you seen the highlight reel? Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists leapt so far off the rails that you would have felt bad for him, if you didn’t hate his guts so much that your heart sang every time he crammed his big fat racist foot into his puckered little sphincter of a mouth. Bombed? I guess he bombed! A guy with late stage Ebola would have gone over better on a crowded elevator. No kidding, the maiden voyage of the Titanic was less disastrous. The tangerine dum-dum couldn’t have been more offensively tone-deaf if he’d decked himself out in white robes with a matching pointy white hood. He was just so stupid. Confronted with a political and racially-charged mine field, Donald figured what the hell, he might as well lace up his big old MAGA boots, tromp right on in, and see what happened, and of course what happened was he stepped on one Bouncing Betty after another. Following the first couple of blasts, you had to conclude he was repeatedly blowing himself up on purpose. There was no other way to interpret his behaviour. He knew he was on the cusp of inciting a riot, and he didn’t even think about changing tack. It was like watching a guy light himself on fire, climb into the cab of a fuel truck, and drive it over the lip of the Grand Canyon, and folks, he didn’t just steer straight for the abyss, he floored it.
You see Donald, being Donald, simply couldn’t help himself, especially when the black person posing the tough questions was, adding insult to injury, female. A woman! Can you believe that shit? And right off the bat she’s all over him about all the racist things he says, and how many of his pals and dinner guests are borderline Nazis and white nationalist bigots. Not so much as a “how-dee-do”! Straight away she’s giving him the third degree! No fair! What came next was all too predictable, given that our Donny, like every right wing bully who delights in taunting liberal snowflakes, is easily triggered, never more powerfully than when he’s being held to account by a “nasty lady”. It makes him mental when some uppity girl forgets her place and puts the screws to him. How dare she?
So, after griping about being held up because the hosts couldn’t get their act together setting up the sound system, and calling ABC reporter Rachel Scott a (you guessed it) “nasty” purveyor of “fake news” whose tone was “disgraceful”, he decided to spit venom in response to every fair but pointed question. It veered into surreal territory when, asked whether he agreed with the GOP talking point that Kamala Harris was a “DEI” hire, Donald figured it was a good idea to question whether his opponent was actually black. She was Indian up until a little while ago, right? Now all of a sudden she’s “black”, says Donny, implying that Kamala was playing the race card as some sort of cynical dodge. Sure, she went to Howard, and was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the famous black sorority, but that didn’t really make her black, did it? They captured the essence of the exchange over at Mother Jones:
There were gasps and outraged howls throughout the room as Donald dug himself deeper and deeper arguing about Kamala’s racial bona fides, yet he couldn’t muster the wit to quit while he was behind. Nope. Next came his boilerplate tirade against immigrants, rife with the usual lies, which he seems to have thought he could sell to the room if he reminded everybody that the interlopers were taking “black jobs”, impliedly adding you know, all the low class, low skill, low paying shit jobs that all you people do. Keeping the migrant hordes at bay would be good for the black community, didn’t they get it? Remember, he was pitching this denigrating “black jobs” bullshit to a hall full of highly educated professionals, seemingly oblivious to where he was and who he was trying to gull. Or was he deliberately race-baiting?
Either way, the audience could hardly believe their ears. Whenever the moron opened his yap to say something combative, petulant, childish, divisive, and insulting – that is to say, every time he spoke – it was more gasps, shocked howling, and boos, while Donald sat there pouting and looking mystified, until his handlers called a halt and hauled him off stage.
Whoo boy.
Tim Miller and J.V. Last of the Bulwark supply a spirited reaction typical of the entire non-Fox press corps:
You have to wonder what Trump thought he was going to accomplish by being interrogated by actual journalists, instead of the fawning, softball-tossing sycophants over at Fox. Maybe he’s gotten so used to the kid glove treatment from Sean Hannity et al that he forgot how it works outside the padded walls of Rupert Murdoch’s MAGA-friendly media rumpus room. Or maybe he went in with a plan to behave himself, and possibly pick up a couple of votes, but forgot the script and reverted to form as soon as the impudent female started asking substantive questions, as if she had the right to behave so disrespectfully.
Anyway, the moron just supplied the Harris campaign with enough sound bites to fill a hundred juicy political spots for the goggle box. That’s the real beauty of running against Donald. Your attack ads can simply play clips of what he says without comment – why gild the lily? – then conclude with “I’m Kamala Harris and I approved this ad”, and it’s mission accomplished.
I can’t wait to see what the Lincoln Project does with this cornucopia of raw material.
Can you believe this contest is a dead heat? Factor in the distortions imposed by the damnable Electoral College and a Democrat has to win the popular vote by four or five points to come out on top, while right now they’re polling even. So far, it looks like it’s going to be a nail-biter. But Donald didn’t do anything to improve his chances today, that’s for damned sure. Let’s hope he keeps it up, until he’s alienated every voting bloc outside of his rabid base of deplorables and brainstem cultists.
97 days to go.
the needlefish 