“They didn’t used to fight at night. Now they do. Because they have goggles.”
That’s a quote from Donald Trump. Because of course it is. You can tell by the cadence. And the apparent non sequitur. And also by the demonstrable air of bullshit.
Trump’s demagoguery isn’t unique in doubling as a dark stand-up comedy routine. Demagogues are often grotesquely and deliberately droll. But Trump’s penchant for anecdotes and ad hoc editorializing around random, and very often misremembered, news snippets is inescapably funny. Which, in turn, is perilously disarming: We shouldn’t be laughing. This clown’s got some bad ideas. And he’s got it in for (some of) us.
If you’re curious, Trump’s nocturnal fighters are the Taliban. After steamrolling Nikki Haley on Super Tuesday, Trump delivered an objectively ridiculous speech from Mar-a-Lago which, beginning in 2021, was repurposed as a kind of luxury fortress exile — an operations center — for America’s first would-be strongman. While critiquing Joe Biden’s admittedly (and unavoidably, I should note) disastrous exit from Afghanistan, Trump veered off course. “Jets. Tanks. Everything you can think of.” That’s what the Taliban has. They also have goggles. “Night goggles,” Trump clarified. “They have better goggles than we have.”
Trump wasn’t lying by the way. He was just bullshitting. Those two things are similar, but not necessarily synonymous in a strict sense. Unlike George Washington, the Taliban doesn’t have a bunch of trained pilots ready to hop into fighter planes and fly them around. So I don’t know how much use any leftover “jets” would’ve been. But, as one US official told Reuters shortly after Kabul fell in 2021, “Everything that hasn’t been destroyed is the Taliban’s now.” The title of the linked article read “Planes, guns, night-vision goggles: The Taliban’s new US-made war chest.” Some of those weapons have turned up in other conflicts.
Of course, that dynamic’s hardly new. ISIS famously stumbled on a bunch of US military equipment in Iraq. And just generally speaking, America leaves stuff behind in conflict zones for people to pick up, drive and shoot all the time. Trump wasn’t breaking any news. He was riffing off-the-cuff. But he’s good at it. He’s terrifyingly effective at propagandizing non sequiturs, and by now he does it instinctually.
Trump barely mentioned his actual Super Tuesday victories in his victory speech. He didn’t mention Haley at all. And why should he? Very much contrary to the delusion harbored by Haley and her billionaire backers, including Wall Street titans like Stan Druckenmiller, she wasn’t running. She (and her backers) just thought she was.
Druckenmiller and all the rest would’ve been better off burning their money than giving it to Haley. The Republican party belongs to Trump. Just ask Mitch McConnell who, while abdicating last week, said that “misunderstanding politics” isn’t among his “many faults.” It’s apparently among Druckenmiller’s, though. And it’s also on Ken Griffin’s “faults” list. Griffin thought Ron DeSantis had a chance. And then there’s Bill Ackman, who threw $1 million at Dean Phillips’s hopeless bid to replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket. “This is not a joke,” Ackman tweeted last month, of his investment in Phillips. (Yes it was, Bill.)
The media’s made a lot in recent days of the Trump campaign’s funding shortfall versus Biden’s war chest. Specifically, Biden has $130 million on hand and another $700 million pledged via allied groups. By contrast, Trump’s campaign and PACs are blowing through money on their candidate’s legal fees, and judgments against Trump suggest he may owe staggering sums to settle claims related to fraud, defamation and various other alleged shenanigans.
Politico ran this headline on Wednesday: “Biden’s plan for Trump: Bury him with campaign cash.” Unless Biden intends to literally buy votes, I’m not sure that’s a good plan. What’s the point of a campaign? To get your message out to voters. Or, increasingly in a world where it’s more important to denigrate your rivals than sing your own praises, to castigate and otherwise demonize your opponent. Is there anyone, anywhere who doesn’t know what Trump’s message is? Is anyone, anywhere somehow insufficiently apprised of the risks associated with a Trump presidency? Do those need to be expounded any further? I doubt it.
As for Trump’s campaign, the media may have it backwards. In the linked article above, Bloomberg wrote that Trump’s PACs “are spending millions on his legal defense that would otherwise go to reelection efforts.” But Trump’s favorability seems to increase the more times he’s indicted. His figurative and literal trials keep him in the news. In that sense, the legal fees are no different than ad spending. And you can’t buy the type of publicity Trump gets every, single day courtesy of the dizzying array of court cases to which he’s a party. Try to imagine a more effective pitch to disaffected, rural Americans suspicious of government than this: “States are trying to take my name off the ballot so you can’t vote for me. That’s how desperate they are. It’s you versus them. And I represent you.”
I got this wrong too. I suppose I’m no different than Druckenmiller and Griffin. I thought the NFTs marked the end of Trump. By late 2022, he was reduced to peddling $99 digital trading cards featuring poorly Photoshopped images of himself dressed as, among other things, a sheriff in a white trench coat, a shotgun-wielding pheasant hunter, an astronaut, a fighter pilot and a race car driver. It seemed, I wrote, like a denouement, and a rather anticlimactic one at that.
“Trump’s almost a footnote,” I mused, 14 months ago. “Even the biggest Trump news is now routinely subjugated to the latest developments in the Sam Bankman-Fried case, and on any day when Elon Musk’s making headlines, the former president struggles even to land above the digital fold.”
Fast forward to 2024 and Musk’s parroting Trump’s narrative about crime, the southern border and a lot of other things besides. Musk met with Trump in Palm Beach three days ago to discuss a possible campaign cash infusion. MSNBC took the opportunity to declare Trump “afraid.” I doubt it.
In the same December 2022 article, I described myself as “newly confident,” that Trump was “for all intents and purposes finished in American politics.” That assessment, like Biden, isn’t aging especially well.
I did give Trump credit for one thing. He was correct, I said, in his description of America as “SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer.” He wrote that on Truth Social between pitching the NFTs.
During his Super Tuesday speech, Trump delivered a similarly dour, and equally accurate, description of America in 2024: “In some ways,” he said, “we’re a Third World country.” He’d know.
I think you said it very well earlier. That many erstwhile supporters of autocrats do not either get the benefits they hoped for or are on the receiving end of what they hoped for others. Especially perilous for government employees, reporters and wealthy.
People understand these things instinctively. The key moment they cast their vote will be the moment of truth, do they listen to their conscience or not. I believe at this juncture too many votes will go the way of safety to allow a win by Trump.
Having just spent the last 12 days back in Louisiana & Arkansas seeing relatives and friends I can assure you that the all the people I know are Trump voters and have no idea what the future holds for democracy if he is re-elected. It really was depressing.
@Alex, I’m right there with you, but my family is in Ohio.
Best way to defeat Trump’s autocratic, self-serving push for power: “castigate and denigrate” over and over and over. And talk repeatedly about the threat he poses to women’s equality in general and reproductive rights in particular (remember Kansas and Ohio). Motivate women, independents, and unhappy far left voters to go to the polls. Trump’s Jim Jones brand Kool-Aid drinkers are beyond hope (I recognize not all his voters fit that description).
Not sure Dems have it in them to fight clearly, aggressively, and even a little diabolically–as Republicans have done for years. Time to sacrifice idealism for what works. The price of losing is too high.
I agree – somewhat. I don’t think denigration is going to work, but Democrats have missed a series of opportunities to clearly and plainly, aggressively and repeatedly, show the craven, self-serving and manipulative thinking driving the Republican party by pointing out that they are really not interested in fixing what is broken – that they will continue to just use your gripes as a cudgel to beat their enemies. The immigration bill stands out as one such wasted opportunity. You could argue that many that feel that is good enough – that just recognizing the gripes is good enough (and sticking it to the people believed to be the cause). But I would argue that many, many younger people are looking for actual solutions. Pointing out the efforts – and the obstruction – might be enough to pull them in.
Agree. Immigration bill fiasco great example of potential for constructive denigration.
My civil engineer Indian immigrant turned citizen uncle lives in a well to do suburb of LA. You can see Catalina Island from his house. When Trump built a golf course on the sliver of land between my uncle’s house and the Pacific Ocean, my uncle led the fight to at least preserve public access to the beach. He used to proudly subscribe to the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal back then. Somewhere along they way, while learning about the Founding Fathers, he became a Republican. He quietly dropped his LA Times subscription, put an American flag up on his house and voted for Trump in the last election. He genuinely thinks the Democratic party and Biden in particular are destroying America.
Then there’s my well off and well educated Southern Baptist in-law family. All staunch Republicans. We don’t talk politics or religion. Are they STILL Trump voters? We don’t dare ask.
Based on that and on other friends who’s parents are Trump voters, it seems most “average” Republicans genuinely believe that Democrat’s are as dangerous as we think Trump is. Prepare yourselves, Trump has a really good chance of winning.
Your candor about missed calls in the past is one of the reasons I subscribe. I can’t count the number of times I’ve thought, “Well, that will do it. Trump’s not coming back from that.” And yet… Clearly, after eight years, there’s something fundamental that we just don’t understand about Trump’s support. This might be an even more demoralizing time if we did. Thanks for shining a light.
I think we just don’t understand (or don’t want to admit) who “we” actually are as a country. Trump sees the nation for what it is: A sea of exploitable disaffection. My disagreement with the few intelligent apologists that he has (and some readers fall into that intelligent apologist category) is that just because the disaffection’s in many cases righteous and justified, doesn’t make the exploitation ok. In fact, it makes it worse. If you’re crafty enough to exploit the privileged and the intelligent, well then good for you. They should’ve known better and they shouldn’t be vulnerable. But if you’re out here exploiting the vulnerable, which is what Trump does, you’re a “bad” person. I put “bad” in scare quotes because as regular readers know, I’m not big on normative statements. But most people are, and that (the exploitation of the vulnerable) is why other people (not necessarily me) say he’s a bad human.
Personally, I don’t like him because in my opinion he’s a grifter. I don’t care for grifters. If you say you’re going to — whatever — sell me a decent mail-order steak or give me a great hotel experience and I pay you for it, then you need to deliver. If not, we have a problem. That’s my gripe with Trump. In my judgment, he doesn’t believe he has an obligation to make good on the promises he makes. I don’t understand that mentality. When he goes out and claims he’s the world’s best promise-keeper, against all evidence, that makes it even worse — it makes the grifter label seem even more apt.
“Promise-keeper” (with scare quotes) indeed with its roots in Evangelical Christianity cultdom preaching to keep it in your pants and stay faithful to your spouse(s). I hope they put it on his tombstone, or that it at least becomes his prison nickname.
But H, a wise political man once said that promises are only liable to those who listen to them…
The worst things Dems could have done was take this long to prosecute him of his many crimes… It is so easy for him to say, “look witch hunt.”
I understand the need to methodically build a case when going after a former president but Dems have poorly mismanaged what should have been a coronation for Biden into an actual race.
If you run a candidate who can only win if the orange guy is thrown in prison, your problem is not the orange guy. Folks are so afraid of the orange guy that they create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which we all have to pretend to ignore how unfit Biden is in order to ‘save democracy’. It’s the pretending itself and the shaming of people to raise concerns in polite society that will actually cause the orange guy to get elected. Everyone’s preparing their excuses for why Biden shouldn’t debate (e.g., we should not legitimize the orange guy) as if we don’t all know the actual reason you don’t want Biden to debate is dramatic deterioration will be on display. It’s all this societal lying that’s going to tip the scales in favor of the middle finger vote. It’s okay to say that it’s not okay that either of these guys are the candidate and that you’re holding your nose at the polls. Let’s just be honest with each other about what this is.
Ok let’s be honest. The threat to American democracy is about much more than any candidate’s failings.
The election may be viewed as debate b/n those who idolize Trump and don’t consider the consequences of his election for the principles of accountability, fairness, reciprocity, and predictability of America’s republican form of government–and those who do value those principles. The unusual and historically transformative nature of America’s form of government is described well in the Federalist Papers. In Federalist #10, James Madison anticipated “factions” that would attempt to advance their own agendas in opposition to democratic principles. He argued that the checks and balances inherent in America’s novel, tripartite form of government, when combined w/ the character of principled leaders, would overcome factions bent on reverting our government back to a monarchy or converting it into some other un-democratic ‘system.’ Unfortunately, over the last several years one of the two political parties has gradually abdicated its responsibilities to honor the Constitution and is firmly immersed in a form of idolatry and hero worship at odds w/ the leaders of character Madison envisioned. So in November we discover whether party or principle prevails.
Madison was right to an extent: the checks and balances held in 2020 and the folks in charge of the transfer of power honored their responsibilities. What Madison missed is that it’s not always going to be faction v. democratic government with principled leaders. When people are afraid, it becomes faction v. faction, with both sides claiming to represent “democratic principles” and both sides being wrong with that statement. One side is looking to undermine the integrity of our elections in the thrall of an autocrat. The other is looking to secretaries of state, judges, and the criminal justice system to prevent an American citizen from running for office. Swap out every reference to Biden with “Putin” and every reference to Trump with “Navalny” and you’ll see how off-sides the left is on democratic principles (you can claim false equivocation but it’s not). Madison I assume believed in the rule of law, too. These days, everyone is highly selective of their reverance of the founding fathers. Today we’re citing the federalist papers in support of Constitutional principles, and tomorrow we’re dismissing these folks as slave-owning hypocrites who left us with lifetime SCOTUS appointments. Which is it? Are we in support of our institutions or not? It’s now the left-of-center faction that is punching below the belt out of fear of a 2016 re-run. I share the Trump fears but the tactics betray your argument about one side supporting the constitution and the other side betraying it. It’s now a street fight all around.
Ok, enough’s enough. Donald Trump’s not Alexei Navalny and Joe Biden’s not Vladimir Putin. That’s too absurd for me to countenance. Give me a break. You’re obviously a smart guy/gal. Don’t insult your own intelligence. You had a great comment here, and then you threw that in. You don’t need that to make your point.
I’m sure there are citizens in Russia who actually believe that Putin’s antics to block a legitimate challenger is in service of the country. Those citizens would of course be wrong. The point is, it’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle. The analog was meant to be absurd to drive home the point that it doesn’t matter who the names are. But I agree it wasn’t necessary to make the point.
It has to be witchcraft. The world has gone crazy.
What I can’t believe is that people ever, let alone 100% of the time now always, discuss Trump as if the open racism never happened. As if he didn’t, with his own two hands, post a video of a man shouting “White power! White power!”, and in his own words express his love for that man. (And what was a US president looking at that he even happened to run across a video praising a man who shouted “White power”?) The talk about “riggers” and “peekaboos”, as if changing one letter makes it absolutely fine to for a presidential candidate to refer to Americans with horrible racial epithets. His willful libel to US Governors that “sometimes Jews blow up their own synagogues for sympathy” (again, what exactly does he watch that even gives him these ideas? These are fringe hate-group notions, not anywhere in the mainstream media until he willfully mainstreams them.) A man who goes out of his way to position his table at Mar-a-lago so everyone can see he’s dining with some of the nation’s leading antisemites.
I can’t believe this isn’t mentioned every single time he is talked about. As if anything else is even worthy of consideration, as if anything else even matters, after a US president has openly expressed his love for “White power! White power!”
For those of us not members of this country’s majority racial demographic, this is, or should be, about one thing, and one thing only: people’s willingness to give a pass to white supremacy. It’s the worst and least excusable thing about him and about his supporters.
Perhaps, secretly, it’s the reason his supporters love him so much. But for those who oppose him, why isn’t it a talking point in every single conversation? Am I the only one who thinks it’s the single biggest disqualifier, beyond which nothing else is even worth discussing? We can disagree on all kinds of things that might qualify or disqualify a presidential candidate or public figure of any sort, however strongly. Disagreement on white supremacy is the one thing that is absolutely not acceptable. Anyone who disagrees with me on any other issue, well, they’ll have an uphill battle convincing me to see it they’re way, but I’ll at least listen for a moment. Anyone who disagrees with me on white supremacy is, in words Trump supporters have said are acceptable to describe fellow American citizens, “vermin” who should have their “entire existences crushed”. Period.
That should be reiterated every single time his name is mentioned. No Trump supporter should have any opportunity to ever see criticism of him, and to cook up their BS trolling replies, without having to answer specifically for that.