It is my considered opinion that if the incumbent wants to be reelected to stay in the White House, it wouldn’t be that difficult. All he has to do is say nothing and close his Twitter account. OK, that’s a bit hyperbolic. Still, I do believe that, even in 2020, every time he doesn’t say or tweet something amazingly wrongheaded, he’s accused of finally becoming Presidential.
Fortunately, this appears to be utterly impossible for very long. The item that’s gotten the most play recently is his interview with Axios National Political Correspondent, Jonathan Swan. It was conducted on July 28 but aired on August 3. on HBO It is worse than I could have possibly imagined. The answers were just bizarre. And, as is usually the case any time he speaks, PolitiFact needed to fact-check 22 claims from the interview.
Twitter and Facebook removed recent false claims of his about COVID-19. not for the first time. His assessment of the Beirut explosion seemed to be based on talking through his hat.
Are his recent executive orders even legal? Or actually executive orders? Kevin Drum posits that “the stuff that’s legal is unimportant and the stuff that’s important is illegal.”
Something he has promised, since before Day One, is a better health insurance plan. There is NO plan. He hires people with great hyperbole and fires them with even more.
His record has initiated a series of The Lincoln Project advertisements, often quoting the man’s own words. Chuck Miller describes the evolution of the snake, a story djt told quite frequently. It’s odd; often, what he describes of others is what he does, who he is.
He’s the butt of some pointed satire. Here’s an Honest Government Ad, a “message from the White House.” Borowitz in the New Yorker declares Americans Support Using U.S. Postal Service to Ship Him to Different Address.
Lest We Forget
“Early in [his] term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of his cruelties, collusions, and crimes…
“It felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors — happening almost daily — would not be forgotten. This election year, amid a harrowing global health, civil rights, humanitarian, and economic crisis, we know it’s never been more critical to note these horrors, to remember them, and to do all in our power to reverse them. This list will be updated between now and the November 2020 Presidential election.”
Is This the Beginning of the End of American Racism?
In the September 2020 Atlantic, Ibram X. Kendi posits that IMPOTUS “has revealed the depths of the country’s prejudice—and has inadvertently forced a reckoning.” Hmm.
Back in 2019, “Trump now faced reporters and cameras. Over the drone of the helicopter rotors, one reporter asked Trump if he was bothered that ‘more and more people’ were calling him racist. ‘I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world,’ Trump replied, hands up, palms facing out for emphasis.” He says that a lot.
Kendi, the author of How To Be An Anti-Racist, suggests the current regime “has paved the way for a revolution against racism.” The “denialism has permanently changed the way Americans view themselves. The Trump effect is real and lasting. The reckoning we have witnessed this spring and summer at public demonstrations transforms into a reckoning in legislatures, C-suites, university-admissions offices.
“On this path, the American people demand equitable results, not speeches that make them feel good about themselves and their country. The American people give policymakers an ultimatum: Use your power to radically reduce inequity and injustice, or be voted out.”
My, Kendi is more optimistic than I. Has America truly embraced an anti-racist agenda for the long term? Or will they have moved on to some other concerns come November? Je ne sais pas.
Hi Roger,
I had unexpected free time today and decided to invest some of it in reading your blog.
Good choice!
This piece on the unnameable one is excellent.
Generally, I’m a realist, but I can’t even try to face the possibility that he could be re-elected.
No way!!!!!! (Please!)
Also, sadly, I share your doubts about the beginning of the end of racism.
I would have been more optimistic if not for the very chilling lessons of the Obama administration.
Then, I really didn’t want to believe that so many people were against him simply because of his color. Unfortunately, I was forced to understand that, no, that’s exactly why they were against him.
Really hard for me to accept the truth of America’s ongoing racial divide, but there it is, so clearly expressed in the current situation. I do, however, believe that the next generations are less racist.
Must stay hopeful that time will help us improve, and that current efforts to correct the wrongs will have enough traction to make a lasting difference.
Peace, brother!