As the coronavirus pandemic surges throughout the country, Donald Trump is hard at work at what he considers his job: posting lies and incoherent babbling on Twitter. After which he promptly assumed his post on the golf course for the remainder of the day. Priorities.
Trump began his rage-tweeting with a demonstration of his cowardice and utter desperation. “I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night,” he twitted. Never mind that he is in no position to make such a demand. It’s a hollow appeal for something he knows won’t happen and that he would never submit to himself. Trump is simply trying to malign Biden’s mental fitness for office, even though polls show that a majority of voters say that Trump is the one who doesn’t have the mental soundness to serve.
Following that, Trump took a swipe at Sen. Richard Blumenthal for embellishing his military service ten years ago. Trump said that because Blumenthal was untruthful he should be impeached and “should not be entitled to a vote on anything of importance!” But if that’s Trump’s standard, then Trump’s punishment for telling more than 20,000 lies should be 20,000 times worse. At least Blumenthal had the dignity to serve his country in uniform, as opposed to Cadet Bone Spurs who dodged the draft five times and insults America’s fallen as “losers” and “suckers.”
Next up was a frantic twantrum over Mike Bloomberg’s donation to a Florida group that is paying the outstanding fees of former prisoners so that they can vote. Trump is terrified of losing the state and determined to suppress the vote any way he can. And in this case he also recklessly charges that Bloomberg “committed a serious crime” without bothering to mention what law was broken.
Then there is Trump’s three word, all caps command to “WATCH THE BALLOTS!!!” It’s difficult to tell if Trump is advocating election integrity (yeah, right), or promoting a new show on Fox about the Ballot family. That would make a good vehicle for Scott Baio as the patriarch of a Klan clan that is afraid of the Black Lives Matter movement and a society that has turned against his repulsive brand of bigotry.
Finally, Trump re-twitterated his obsessive commitment to terminate Obamacare, even while the nation is suffering through a deadly pandemic. He grotesquely characterizes it as “a big WIN for the USA!” And as he frequently does, he lied about it being “replaced with a MUCH better, and FAR cheaper, alternative.” However, Trump has never had a healthcare plan, despite announcing that one would be unveiled in two weeks numerous times for the past three years. And the GOP has similarly spent ten years promising a replacement, but has never even drafted a proposal.
It’s notable that in this Twitter tirade Trump has focused exclusively on his political pet peeves that he littered with lies and infantile nicknames. He didn’t once mention the pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 200,000 Americans and is, by all the accounts of every expert, going to get worse this winter.
More than anything, Trump wants to shift the public discourse away from COVID-19 and his wretched mishandling of it. He wants people to forget the loss of their loved ones and the illnesses that have resulted in permanent disabilities for many of those who survived. Unfortunately for Trump, the issues he’s using to deflect also have the effect of reminding people of his ignorance, incompetence, and his aspirations to authoritarianism and dictatorship. It’s a lose-lose proposition for America’s Biggest Loser.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
