An Impossibility

I had promised myself that I would lay off Donald Trump for a while.  There are a lot of good people out there doing good things, and I was going to write about them for a change.  But, confound it, Trump will not leave me alone.

I’m not talking about the facts that he is an adjudicated rapist, a convicted multiple felon, a person who faces multiple more felony charges, or that he’s criminally mentally ill, or that he wants to destroy our democracy and become a Hitler-like dictator, or that he supports Project 2025 although he says he doesn’t, or, well, I could go on, but you know the litany.  No,  I’m just talking here about the stuff he’s done in the very recent past that, especially added to all the rest, proves he has gone completely off his rocker.  He’s bonkers.  Bat-guano nuts. Weird!

And so it has become impossible for me to understand how anyone who has not been hypnotized could even consider voting for him.  Consider some of his very recent actions.

He said 88,000 people turned out to greet  him at a South Carolina rally. It wasn’t 88,000 people and it wasn’t a rally. It was a football game, between the University of South Carolina and Clemson University at Columbia’s Williams-Brice Stadium , and Gov. Henry McMaster and he stood on the 25-yard line at halftime for a few seconds and waved to the crowd.  As for 88,000 people, the stadium’s capacity is 77,559, and the all-time record attendance there was 85,199 for a 2012 football game against the University of Georgia.

Trump also said his Jan. 6, 2021, rally on the National Mall exceeded Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 rally where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.  The true numbers were King 250,000 and Trump 53,000.

When a huge mob met Kamala Harris at a Detroit rally, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that the crowd was faked by AI.  It “DIDN’T EXIST,” he wrote.  “Nobody was there.”  It did exist, and the crowd was huge.

He talked about being with California’s Willie Brown in a helicopter that nearly crashed.  It never happened.

He said Joe Biden’s withdrawal as a candidate was “unconstitutional” (it wasn’t) and he wants back in (he doesn’t).

He said President Biden faked covid to get out of debating him again.  Biden’s doctor attested that he did indeed have covid.

Trump claimed there was a “peaceful transfer of power” on Jan. 6, 2021, even though he watched the Capitol riot on three television sets.

He said no one died in the Jan. 6 insurrection.  Five police officers and two insurrectionists died.

Trump held a press conference during which PBS fact checkers discovered he told 162 lies or false statements in 64 minutes.  That’s more than two lies a minute!

He said, “The prison population all over the world is at the lowest point it’s been in many decades because they’re dumping their prisoners into our country.”  He’s made that statement many times before, but immigration experts say they know of no such effort anywhere.

He said Democrats “will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth.  After birth!”  That’s pure nonsense, of course.  Infanticide is illegal in all 50 states and no Democrat is trying to change that.

And, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, is just as bad with his attacks on Kamala Harris.

“She has said things like, ‘it’s reasonable not to have children over climate change,’” Vance said while trying to explain his 2021 remarks that Harris was one of those “childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives and they want to  make the rest of the  country miserable, too.”  There is zero evidence that Harris ever said  that.  Also, she has three stepchildren who call her “Momala”.

Vance said Harris “wants to take away your gas stoves.”  She has never advocated that.  She has even tweeted photos of herself cooking with a gas stove.

He even said Harris “wants to take away your ability to eat red meat.”  She never said that, either.  Indeed, she’s even expressed a fondness for cheeseburgers.

Just for the record, Vance also has said some pretty nasty things about Trump —  before Trump chose him to be his running mate, of course.  Here’s a sample:

• “I’m a Never Trump guy. I never liked him.”
• “My god, what an idiot.”
• “America’s Hitler.”
• He’s a “cynical asshole like Nixon.”
• “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”
• “I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
• “I think there’s a chance, if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.”

But getting back to Trump, his handlers keep trying to get him to talk about issues and what he plans to bring to the table if he is elected, but Trump says that’s not necessary.  He told reporters at his Bedminster golf club, “All we have to do (to win the election) is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s gonna destroy our country.”

That’s the entirety of Trump’s intended campaign, just a constant spewing of lies and hatred.

Compare it with Harris’ proposals for her first 100 days in office.  She pledges to cut taxes for the middle class, reduce grocery costs, take on price gouging, lower the costs of owning and renting a home, continue to bring down the costs of prescription drugs, and relieve medical debt for millions of Americans.

She also promises to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare; bring together labor, small businesses and major corporations to invest in America, create jobs and deliver for Americans; lower costs of education, childcare and long-term care; empower workers and their right to come together to bargain for higher wages; create a stable business environment with consistent and transparent rules; encourage innovative technologies while protecting consumers; and so much more.

She has made clear that building up the middle class will be a defining goal of her presidency. She will deliver for Americans who are demanding a new way forward toward a future that lifts up all Americans so that they can not merely get by, but get ahead.

So again, compare all that with Trump’s pledge that “all we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s gonna destroy our country.”

See why it’s impossible for me to understand how anyone who has not been hypnotized could even consider voting for Trump?

Come, blue tsunami.