Burke: Is anybody really buying Trump’s campaign trail patter?
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, July 31, 2024
By Tom Burke / Herald Columnist
Donald Trump says a lot of stupid stuff. And a lot of scary stuff. And a lot of stuff that makes no sense; that demonstrates his profound ignorance; that’s clearly projection.
I get that, he’s a terminal narcissist who loves to hear himself talk.
But what I don’t get is why his supporters buy it.
They gotta know he’s, as my Dad’s mother used to say, “Talk’n through his hat.”
Are they so stupid they actually buy into what he says?
They can’t be, can they?
I mean, I’ve yet to hear a logical (or illogical) explanation of his “late, great Hannibal Lecter” riffs. He’s talking about a make-believe movie character who eats people as part of his campaign speech, trying to convince folks to elect him to the highest office in the nation. Just what do the MAGAs make of this?
And then there’s his latest, and most dangerous pronouncement, spoken to Turning Point Action’s West Palm Beach, Florida Believers Summit where he unequivocally stated, “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
He then added, “I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
The Trump campaign has offered an anemic response — a complete non-sequitur — about faith, unity and prosperity; while TV talk-show Republicas nervously laugh it off with mumbles about it being a “complete Trumpism.”
But lots of other people aren’t laughing and point to the obvious link between this latest threat to his pronouncement that he will be a dictator on Day One and his threat (posted to his Truth Social account) to ditch the Constitution, “A Massive Fraud of this type (his loss in 2020) and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
OK, here’s an abrupt segue, from the dangerous to the absurd: his story about the sinking electric boat and the shark and how, if he were on a boat built with such a big battery it would sink (you’d think naval architects and builders might know, in advance, when a battery is too heavy for a boat to float) and he was faced with death by shark or electrocution. What is that about?
I am clearly troubled by Trump’s words.
I am equally troubled by how much of the media has normalized and under-reported his lunacy.
But I am most troubled by how his followers actually take him seriously and still support him for president.
Intellectually, I’ve read all the explanations of why MAGAs are MAGAs; why Republicans who don’t believe a word he says still say they’ll vote for him. They are terrified or power hungry — waves at Nikki Haley and J.D. Vance — and why low-information voters buy into his B.S.
But emotionally, in my gut, I just don’t get it.
Trump says, “I will seal the border … we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history by setting up temporary immigration detention centers and relying on local, state and federal authorities, including National Guard troops, to remove the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S.”
His MAGA minions cheer. Loudly. Ignorantly. (He’ll try, and fail. He’s never been able to organize his way out of a paper bag.)
Trump says, “And on day one … I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.”
His MAGA minions cheer. Loudly. Ignorantly. (They do know that means an increased change for polio, measles, whooping cough, and mumps to rage through their kids’ schools!)
Trump says, “My first acts as your next president will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!”
His MAGA minions cheer. Loudly. Ignorantly. (They aren’t “hostages,” they are convicted, sentenced insurrectionists.)
Trump says, “What I have always said is we need to get some of these (NASCAR) guys … Roger Penske won like 20 Indianapolis 500s, this guy wins all the time… let me use these guys to guide our military. When you can win so many races that’s OK, you guide.”
“It’s the same with coaches, you take some of the greatest football coaches and put them in a room… what do you like coach? Because in its own way it’s not so much really different.”
His MAGA minions cheer. Loudly. Ignorantly. (Because it is different. Very different. Tommy Tubberville Chair of the Joint Chiefs? Really?)
Trump lost the 2020 election by 7 million-plus popular votes and the eectoral college 306-232.
Now, Kamala Harris has changed everything.
So I’m going out on a limb predicting he’ll lose the 2024 popular vote by 10 million.
He’s going to get crushed. Obliterated. Destroyed. Humiliated.
He’ll get his hard-core MAGA base, the Christian nationalists, and the low-informaiton Fox News watchers and … that’s it.
And the Republicanss will lose both the Senate and the House as he flushes his party down the potty.
But only if we let up not a bit for the next 100 days.
I’m giving the last word to “Sam Harris,” who was George M. Cohan’s partner in James Cagney’s 1942 bio-pic “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “It’s in the air, kid! It’s in the air! You can’t stop anything that’s in the air!”
(Note: If you’ve never seen “Yankee Doodle Dandy” it’s a dandy flic. A bit dated, but lots of familiar music, a sweet story (kinda true), and tough-guy movie legend Jimmy Cagney dances. And dances very, very well (he started in show-biz as a hoofer).
Slava Ukraini.
Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.
