As you may or may not be aware, Donald Trump is traveling to Ohio today, where he’ll visit an actual tank factory in an effort to “prove” to the state’s voters that the General Motors plant closure in Lordstown is just an example of Mary Barra being a heartless witch, and not indicative of broken campaign promises.
Trump relaunched his offensive on GM and Barra over the weekend and has since insisted that one way or another, the Lordstown plant will be resurrected. The last Chevy Cruze rolled off the assembly line there earlier this month.
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Trump Spends Saturday Shouting At John McCain’s Ghost, Restarts Battle With GM, Google, France
As is customary whenever Trump departs the White House to go on tour, he took some time to address the media over the loud din of Marine One’s rotors.
Suffice to say there was a lot to discuss.
Amusingly, Trump has now taken to shouting “no collusion” at reporters as he approaches them, as though that’s the new slogan. Watch this:
As you can see, he also unfurled an ISIS territory map that he had somebody draw up for him – it’s like a terrorist version of his electoral college stage prop.
Predictably, he didn’t mention the decisive role Iran-backed militias played in routing ISIS in Iraq or the role the Russian air force and Hezbollah played in defeating Sunni extremists in Syria or the key support the US got from the Kurdish YPG. Rather, it’s all about his legendary skills as a battlefield commander (which is strange, considering we’re talking about a man who, very much unlike John McCain, received five deferments and was branded “Cadet Bone Spurs” by Purple Heart recipient Tammy Duckworth, who knows a thing or two about war).
Speaking of war, Trump was also asked about his extremely contentious war of words with George Conway. Earlier Wednesday, he took aim again, tweeting the following about the husband of one of his closest advisors:
George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!
If you listen closely to the following clip, a reporter asks Trump how that kind of tweet is consistent with the First Lady’s “Be Best” campaign. Spoiler alert: it’s not. And Trump doesn’t care.
Of course no “Chopper Talk” segment would be complete without Trump lambasting the very people who he’s talking to and expounding on the relative merits of shouting in all-caps on social media platforms.
Some of that is ironic. After all, Trump insists those same social media outlets are trying to silence him, an assessment that is starkly at odds with the number of followers he has (i.e., Trump is doubtlessly the loudest “silenced” politician in history).
All in all, just another day in the parallel universe that America now begrudgingly calls “reality”.
We’ll all look forward to the soundbites and visuals from Trump’s tank plant tour (in Lima, Ohio) and the subsequent address at a fundraiser in Canton.
The economics of plant closure must be very compelling. No doubt GM factored in the negative publicity that would predictably come along with that decision. The only way Trump gets the Ohio plant open again is if he changes the economics of the situation. Short of restructuring the economy of the entire world, he really has only one option, to pay GM to stay. I predict it will happen, one way or another, well before the 2020 election.