Freak Out Friday – June 19, 2020

“It’s fading away.  It’s going to fade away.”

That is what Trump told Sean Hannity, the man whose lips are permanently caved into the shape of Trump’s ášš on Wednesday, about the Coronavirus.

If that sounds at all familiar to you, it’s because that’s what Trump was saying months ago, when the virus was just getting revved up.  That it was going to magically disappear, that the warm weather in April would terminate it.  Now here we are, 110K deaths later, with ten states reporting record numbers of infecitons, most of which—at Trump’s urging–have attempted to proceed as if nothing abnormal was happening, and twenty-three others reporting increases, and Trump is resorting to his typical magical thinking and trying to sell the notion that the illness will magically terminate on its own.

Indeed, he is planning to singlehandedly spike the disease in Oklahoma this Saturday by having an indoor rally surrounded by people who will not be wearing masks and be shoved in shoulder-to-shoulder with each other.  Meanwhile Jacksonville, FL—another state with spiking disease reports—has stepped in where North Carolina wisely backed off and volunteered to give Trump another mask-free assembly point in August for the RNC convention.  Somewhere two horsemen of the Apocalypse—Pestilence and Death—are looking in wonderment at each other and saying, “Really?  He’s making it THIS easy?  Is he insane?”

Well…yes.  He is.

We know he’s a sociopath; that much is indisputable.  Now he’s fallen into Albert Einstein’s famed definition of insanity:  doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  He is once again asserting that the virus will magically fade away and is hoping that this time the disease actually listens to what he says and just departs without doing any further damage.

Meanwhile he got repeatedly pummeled by the Supreme Court this week.  First the SCOTUS, in a 6-3 decision, declared that LGBTQ citizens could not be discriminated against.  Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s OWN APPOINTEE, wrote the majority opinion.  This was quickly followed by a 5-4 refusal to dismantle the Obama-era Dreamer’s act.  Trump proceeded to rage on Twitter (“A shotgun blast to the faces”) about how we need new justices on the SCOTUS even though Gorsuch was his appointment and Chief Justice Roberts was installed by George W, the man who has most benefitted from Trump because Trump has supplanted him as the worst president in the history of the country.  It should also be noted that the two worst presidents we ever had lost the majority vote and were installed by the Electoral college, a voting device that exists in no other country that has a Constitution.  

On top of that, John Bolton’s book is getting major traction.  Granted, the New York Times gave it a bad review, which Trump should naturally dismiss since he typically disbelieves everything the “failing” Times says.  But this time he’s embracing it, loudly declaring that everyone should ignore the book while simultaneously launching a law suit against it.  Of course, anyone familiar with the Streisand Effect could have predicted how that was going to turn out:  It’s Amazon’s top seller.  Part of me is amused and part of me is furious.  Rather than reveal his knowledge back when it might have been useful, like during the House investigations, Bolton dicked around until it was too late and the hearings moved to the Senate.  By that point he was ready to talk but naturally the Senate GOP made sure that didn’t happen.  His book apparently verifies the entire case against Trump, and even adds items both big (begging China to help him get reelected) and just stupid (wanting to get an autographed CD of “Rocketman” to Kim jong un.). Bolton belatedly declares that the man whom he relentlessly supported for months is unfit for office.  I know, I know, better late than never, but Bolton could have been a major figure in American history rather than an after-the-fact addendum.

Plus Trump’s polling numbers continue to crater.  But having been burned in 2016 by polls that give Clinton a substantial lead right up to election day, every bit of reportage on Trump’s numbers are accompanied by warnings of “You never know.”  Meanwhile the GOP continues to do everything it can to make sure that the poor, students and minorities are precluded from voting, while Trump does everything he can to make the post office go away.  It’s an obvious gambit to avoid a Big Blue Shift:  That’s when the initial voting seems to be leaning Republican, but the subsequent tally of mail-in votes swings it over to the Democratic side.  Since Trump and the GOP want to do everything they can to impede the Democratic right to vote, naturally they have to target both the post office and the procedure itself, which Trump baselessly claims is rife with fraud.  

If Trump loses in November, this past week will be regarded as the beginning of the end:  when Trump’s tone-deaf response to everything from Coronavirus preparedness (he asserted that people are wearing facemasks just to piss him off) to Black Lives Matter (his fear mongering is causing armed “militia” men to harass peaceful demonstrators in small towns) to his actions on Twitter (he retweeted a doctored video that falsely depicted a non-existent CNN story which Twitter wound up labelling as such) finally turned enough people against him to make a difference.

That’s assuming they’re allowed to vote.

PAD