Humpy-Trumpty wants a big wall, Humpty-Trumpty will have a big fall . . .
The “locker-room talk” video last weekend was a bombshell to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Instead of defusing it with an apology that at least sounded heartfelt, Trump scowled at the camera with a face that looked like an icky-sticker on a bottle of rat poison. He then read a message, spitting out the words that had been hurriedly cobbled together by his panicky campaign staff. The so-called apology segued quickly into an “Ode to the Working People” and then to a “Declaration of War” against Bill and Hillary Clinton. And this time he wasn’t lying because two nights later there he sat in a conference room, showing off his new acquisitions – Bill’s former partners in adultery. Then he took to the debate stage (boxing ring) where, like a cornered dog, he sneered and snarled at Clinton for 90 minutes. It was a gleeful gloat fest for Hillary-haters.
Many claim Trump won the debate – that is, he landed the most punches. Others think Hillary won by enduring the nasty loudmouth as he wandered, puffed up, across the stage, trying to loom above Hillary just like bullies do on a playground. The world, after all, is just a stage on which The Donald struts in his never-ending reality show. And that stage has long been set for last weekend’s bombshells, second thoughts about Trump had been growing among the GOP establishment.
When the San Diego Union-Tribune, now in its 148th year, decided to endorse Hillary for president, you can bet tectonic shifts are trembling beneath the surface of this political season. That paper has never in a century-and-a-half endorsed a Democrat for president. In an editorial, the Union-Tribune warned Trump is “vengeful, dishonest and impulsive,” and Clinton would be “the safe choice for the U.S. and for the world.”
That was just one of Republican-leaning major papers that called Trump unfit for the presidency. The ink-and-paper uproar was echoed last weekend when many Republican Party leaders un-endorsed him and/or denounced his obscene misogynist remarks.
Oh, well, so what? Who needs establishment Republicans? Who needs newspaper endorsements? Not Trump supporters. Like their hero, they hate the media, which – they claim loudly – are trying to undo Trump and to protect the sclerotic status quo.
Why can’t the media sing the praises of this “knight in shining armor,” this change-agent named Trump, who tells it like it is, who scoffs at political correctness, who will bring our jobs back home and who will destroy ISIS with his bare hands within hours of taking office?
Hillary is no Snow White, but compared to the Big Blusterer, she is the Rock of Gibraltar when it comes to real-world intelligence and emotional stability. Trump’s volatile temperament underlines his weaknesses and undermines his dog-chasing-tail ambitions. His hotheaded eruptions are the very reasons he should never be elected president of anything. He’s a bundle of deficits:
- The attention span of a gnat.
- Rampant double-down misogyny.
- Crude, undeveloped understanding of racial issues.
- A demagogue’s instinct to blame immigrants illegal or otherwise for just about anything, the way some people blame Obama for everything.
- Reckless dismissal of the importance of NATO.
- A crazy cuddly attitude toward Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin.
- Last, not least, an utter lack of coherent policy proposals other than his cure for the economy – giving billionaires tax breaks so they will create jobs, thus trickling down goodness to the rest of us. (Heard that one before, anybody?)
Those who pay close attention to Trump’s business dealings know that far from being a “genius,” those dealings have been mainly shady manipulations. Genius? The word “crook” leaps to mind. (In the second debate, he all but stated he had never paid federal income taxes for almost two decades, much to the chagrin of billionaire Warren Buffett who has paid many millions in income taxes throughout the decades.)
Trump is not and never has been a friend of the working folks; he’s a friend of himself, an egomaniac in love – with himself.
Imagining Trump as president is akin to pondering the end of the world.
Let’s hold our noses if we have to, but let’s vote for Hillary.
After the last debate, Trump is on his feet again – for the moment. But he just might have his biggest fall come Tuesday, Nov. 8, on Election Day.
. . . And all The Donald’s horses and all The Donald’s men cannot put Trumpty together again.
