We warned them. At least, we tried to. “Don’t do it,” we said. “Don’t be a fool.” We argued with facts, but facts vaporized between our lips and their ears. We tried logic, but they had no interest in logic. “It’s too big a risk,” we argued. “The danger is too high.” They refused to acknowledge the hazard, although to most of us it was obvious. You simply can’t elevate an unqualified, dim-witted narcissist to the American Presidency without risking the national welfare.
Many of us had the same conversation with Trump voters. We would present our case against electing Trump, based on facts and logic. They would always reply with some variation of this template: “Sure, Trump is a (choose pejorative noun), but he (insert stupid comment).” I can share two examples. When I told my Republican dentist that Trump was a con man, he replied, “Sure, he’s a con man, but he gets things done.” I pointed out that Trump “gets things done” with lies, fraud, and bankruptcies that wound up costing other people millions while he slithered away untouched. My dentist then said a relative of an acquaintance claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton. He had no idea what the information was, but insisted, “It’s really something.” No, it wasn’t “really something.” It was nothing, but that didn’t matter. It gave him cover for his inexplicable decision to vote for Trump.
Hillary came up in the other example. I was trying to persuade an acquaintance in an email exchange to not vote for Trump, arguing that it was not in the nation’s interest. He didn’t find Trump likable, writing, “Sure, Trump is a dick. But I can’t vote for Hillary.” The salient factor wasn’t that Trump was a “dick,” but that he had one.
The 2016 election was fueled by fantasy and misogyny. Some Trump voters convinced themselves that he would bring refreshing change, “drain the swamp,” and reform the federal government. They were the somewhat reasonable ones. The rest were driven by a belief that the presidency cannot be occupied by a woman and the most pressing national issue was building a wall to keep undesirables – dark-skinned people – out. Hillary appealed to hope, the way her husband and Barack Obama did. Trump, on the other hand, offered hatred and division and peddled them with enough fury to put him in the White House.
Our most effective argument against Trump was the “3:00 AM telephone call” scenario. What happens in the event of a national or global emergency? How can you trust Donald Trump to exercise sound judgment and leadership should that happen? It seemed like a strong argument. Hillary, like her or not, had been through the crucible. As for Trump? He told Howard Stern that sleeping around without contracting STD was his “personal Vietnam,” adding, “I feel like a great and very brave soldier.” As President, he has designated himself a “very stable genius” who knows more about various subjects than anybody else. In fact, Axios in January of 2019 pointed out two dozen examples of Trump claiming to know more about something than anybody else. Recently, during a visit to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, he claimed to have a “natural ability” to understand complex medical issues.
Trump’s supporters loved his boasts, but the rest of us knew better. What happens, we worried, if this babbling egomaniac faced an actual crisis? Will he put down his Twitter app long enough to take the 3:00 AM call?
We have the answer. The coronavirus pandemic is attacking hundreds of thousands, killing many, crashing the global economy, and Trump is panicking. Witness his manic response to a “softball” question by NBC’s Peter Alexander. Watch the video if you haven’t already seen it. The self-proclaimed “wartime president” is a pathetic and frightened little man.
“By any objective measure, Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has been a failure,” writes Eric Lutz in Vanity Fair. “After hamstringing the government’s ability to respond to pandemics like the one we’re now facing, he ignored warnings for months.” Lutz added that Trump “failed to take timely, adequate action beyond cutting off travel from China, and offered empty assurances to the American people that the situation was totally under control. Only after the virus dramatically upended American life has he taken any action at all, and even then it’s been woefully inadequate: states and hospitals remain in dire need of resources; his leadership has amounted to attacking the press, brushing off responsibility, and casually mocking a 73-year-old senator in quarantine; and he is now poised to undo whatever limited progress his administration has made by pledging to restart the nation’s economy before the coronavirus even hits its peak in the United States.”
The latter observation is the most chilling. “We’re opening up this incredible country,” Trump told a Fox News town hall. “Because we have to do that. I would love to have it open by Easter.” “Wouldn’t it be great to have all the churches full?” Trump said a few moments later. “You’ll have packed churches all over our country.” Just you, dozens of your (literally) closest friends, and a dangerous virus raging through the congregation Old Testament style. Praise the Lord and pass the disinfectant!
When people practice social distancing, so does the virus. Act like you have it and avoid infecting others. If people have been listening to Trump and ignoring medical advice, there’s a good chance they have it already and are spreading the danger.
Trump voters thought they were choosing a President. In fact, the damn fools were voting for the Mayor of Amity and now find themselves in league with the shark.
© 2020 by Mike Tully
Lean On Each Other To Fight the Trump Virus
The Trump Virus brought tragedy, along with financial distress, mental and emotional challenges, and a few surprises. One surprise, at least to me, was writer’s block. I try to update my blog at least twice a month, ideally weekly, usually focusing on politics. I’m a sports fan and politics is a lot like sports. But it’s always fun until someone gets hurt. If an errant fastball leaves a batter lifeless on the grass, the stadium goes silent and nobody feels like calling balls and strikes. Whether it’s on the diamond, the gridiron, or the hardwood, when a player is badly hurt the announcers say the same thing: there are more important things than sports. The scoreboard recedes as we focus on and pray for the victim.
That’s how covid-19 affected me. I would write a few sentences, then wipe the screen blank. Over and over. I tried to be insightful, maybe humorous, hopefully useful, but anger and sadness got the best of me. It was appropriate and satisfying to write about Donald Trump’s narcissism and incompetence until people started dying on account of them.
But fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and writers gotta write. When my late friend Emil Franzi would invite me back to his Inside Track radio show, I always said yes, telling him “I need to scratch my radio itch.” I keep this blog because I need to scratch my writer’s itch. I’ve published it for more than a decade, originally as a source of bullying prevention information, more recently for punditry. Writing about current events and, when possible, relating them to historical events, requires research, which I love. Research and writing are therapeutic, especially now that I’m mostly retired. I don’t mind that not many of you visit the site – you know who you are and bless you! – it keeps me relatively sane. But my muse went AWOL.
An old law school pal I’ve known for more than four decades bailed me out. You’ve read about the so-called “Trump bump,” a recent increase in the President’s favorability. It’s still under fifty percent, but the highest of his presidency and he’s basking in it. The bump has two causes: there’s always a “rally around the leader” reaction to a national crisis, thanks to the natural inclination of a nation to look to its leaders for safety. The other is that Trump has commandeered the daily coronavirus briefings for his personal political benefit, blathering for two hours while posturing as a “wartime president.” Trump praises himself more than he expresses sympathy for disease victims – narcissism promoted to sociopathy. Perhaps that’s why his “bump” is paltry compared to presidents whose popularity soared to the 80s and 90s in times of crisis. But, given Trump’s disastrous incompetence, even a minor increase was perplexing.
Then, my old law school pal, Jim Watts, who lives in Minnesota, put the bump in context and cured my writer’s block by crafting a definition of “Trump bump” that is more relevant and accurate than a mosquito bite of a polling rise. Here is how Jim defines “Trump bump:”
Trump Bump, n. 1. The increase in preventable deaths, permanent pulmonary impairment, unemployment, poverty, foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, business failures, divorces, etc., directly attributable to delay, denial, deliberate misinformation, incompetence, and malfeasance by President Donald J. Trump in failing to lead the nation’s response to the novel coronavirus covid19. 2. An attempted deflection of responsibility by President Donald J. Trump for leading the nation’s response to covid19 from himself onto others. 3. The surge of pleasure President Donald J. Trump experiences when millions of frightened people watch daily televised media events which he uses instead for self-promotion.
Jim was okay with using his definition in Substantial Disruption, so there it is. He hit the right note: decrying the calamity of Trump’s leadership with irony. Good old-fashioned satire. Our exchange reminded me of similar email exchanges immediately after 9-11, when I reached out to old friends and they did the same. Emil Franzi and I hadn’t been in touch for a number of years, for example, but we forged a bond in the 9-11 backwash that lasted until he died. The days following the 9-11 terrorist attack were long and painful, but the fellowship that sprang from it became a healing balm. I think we’re starting to reach out again.
Sadly, there’s no healing from the top. Donald Trump cares more about insulting governors, making bogus accusations against hospitals, spreading false information and bragging about his poll numbers and ratings than showing even a wobble of human empathy. When the nation cries out for unity, he offers divisiveness. As the virus burns into the landscape and the death count rises, he preens like Nero. He’s not worthy of the people he purports to lead.
But he is worthy of the label “Trump virus.” The Washington Post reports, “(T)he United States will likely go down as the country that was supposedly best prepared to fight a pandemic but ended up catastrophically overmatched by the novel coronavirus, sustaining heavier casualties than any other nation.” The Post added: “It did not have to happen this way.”
These are dark times. There ain’t no sunshine and Bill Withers is gone. But he left us with the words we need when an enemy too tiny to see is strong enough to bring our world to its knees. In the absence of treatment, cure, and vaccine – not to mention presidential leadership – the only way to defeat the enemy is by leaning on each other.
Lean on me, when you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend
I’ll help you carry on
For it won’t be long
‘Til I’m gonna need
Somebody to lean on
© 2020 by Mike Tully
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