The issue at hand is character. Period.
PLUS: Check out The Piazza
MAGA differs by a degree from other stripes of fascism boiling around the world. Perhaps the difference is driven by the personality of Donald Trump, which was summed up perfectly by President Barack Obama at the DNC last week:
Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he is afraid of losing to Kamala. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes.
It just goes on and on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. Now, from a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a President, it’s just dangerous.
The truth is, Donald Trump sees power as nothing more than a means to his ends. He wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would mostly help him and his rich friends. He killed a bipartisan immigration deal written in part by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress that would’ve helped secure our southern border, because he thought trying to actually solve the problem would hurt his campaign. He doesn’t—
He doesn’t seem to care if more women lose their reproductive freedom, since it won’t affect his life. And most of all, Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided: between us and them, between the real Americans who—of course—support him and the outsiders who don’t. And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you will just give him the power to put those other people back in their place. It is one of the oldest tricks in politics, from a guy whose act has—let’s face it—gotten pretty stale.
We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse.
Or maybe it has to do with American culture in 2024.
Whatever the cause may be the result is unimpeachable. If complaining, whining and foot-stomping were the only Olympic sports and MAGA was a country then it would be the most athletic on Earth.
Have you heard the latest?
Vice President Harris hasn’t been specific enough.
MAGA spokespeople are all over television making demands instead of threats for a change. Suddenly, they want answers. They want substance. They want details.
What a joke.
Does anyone else remember the bleach injection policy from the Trump years? The Greenland purchase? The Great Wall of Trump paid for by Mexico?
The issue at hand is character. Period.
Trump doesn’t have any — or maybe it’s more precise to say that the adjudicated rapist and convicted felon possesses a deformed character of heretofore undiscovered hideousness. He lacks judgement, wisdom, grace, integrity, empathy, decency and patriotism. Trump is, was and always will be an abomination, but by all means let’s take seriously his demands for substantive disquisitions and policy forums. LOL.
Don’t get me wrong, who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned debate about substantive difference? It’s just that it’s hard to do with an orange bloviator who incited a violent insurrection, and has lied to the American people over 40,000 times.
The American media is about to have an eruption of self-regard and entitlement that is positively Trumpian. They will be enticed through institutional egos and cliquish access operators to start demanding interviews with the vice president in the name of “journalism” and the public interest. Most of the invitations will come from desperate companies, losing money, hunting for clicks and ratings points.
VP Harris should continue to take her message directly to the American people and be very judicious with her time, particularly with folks who have no standing or credibility to make demands on it. A case in point would be the performative idiocy of Fox News nepotism specialist Peter Doocy, who shouted to the vice president a question about when she was coming on FOX News.
She responded by saying that she’s “working towards it.” She should have responded with something like, “As soon as you count to 787 million out loud.”
The bottom line is that MAGA is spinning, spiraling and losing. The screams of complaint are but a harbinger of the attempted coup to come.
Seventy-two days from now Vice President Harris will become president-elect Harris. She will have won a free, fair and legitimate election. One of America’s two major political parties will take the position that it was stolen, and just like last time, it will all be nonsense.
This is the only policy debate that matters.
Do you believe that losing elections, like winning elections, is a vital part of a free society? Do the people get to decide or not?
Maybe another policy question could be around the meaning of these words from the presidential oath of office written out in the Constitution of the United States. What does “preserve, protect and defend” mean?
Summer is ending with a MAGA whine. It is a cry of weakness and moral turpitude.
The 2024 RNC convention was hands down the weirdest, creepiest, and least effective since the invention of the teleprompter.
There is something we don’t talk enough about and we should. In a nation of 330 million people there are bound to be a fair number of wack jobs. Because of technology all of these people are instantly connected to each other, and have formed a community. It has a name: MAGA. They want to take control of everything and everyone.
The only decent American answer is, “NO.”
Now, that’s what I call a policy debate.
New on Substack: The Piazza
A former The Warning producer, Lorenzo Ferrigno, recently launched
, on Substack. It is a space where culture meets current affairs. He explores how the arts reflect politics, how disciplines can bend and blend, and how creativity can spark change.Check out his latest article about a new statute of John Lewis that will be unveiled where a Confederate monument once stood. You can subscribe to The Piazza here.
“Does anyone else remember the bleach injection policy from the Trump years? The Greenland purchase? The Great Wall of Trump paid for by Mexico?…..The issue at hand is character. Period.”
Steve, do you really need to remind us? The Trump show is nothing more than a “Carnival Barker of Horrors.” Don’t forget to visit the “Hall of Smoke and Mirrors” and the Theater of Projection and Deflection. One must literally suspend disbelief.
That said, Trump is having a complete meltdown. More than 500k people watched Harris’s speech, than Trumps. The DNC destroyed the RNC in ratings. And when the new polls are released, I have no doubt Harris will be leading in every swing state by at least four to five points and about ten nationally. This will blow Trump’s mind and send him over the deep end of a cliff.
He literally knows he’s be outmaneuvered by Harris and defeated. And as far as character goes, he has none, unless you include being inhabited by the ghost of Hannibal Lector. Not to mention, he’s losing the war of attrition; his age. He’s just a shell of the misogynistic, narcissistic pathetic parasite he used to be, and devoid of all energy and any original thought; if he ever had an original thought to begin with.
So I agree, ignore the MSM until necessary, and let Trump do the talking. Just like all delusional sociopaths; he just can’t help himself. IMHO!….:)
I have burst out laughing a few times over the last couple of days. His comment that he will protect women and read another this morning that Republicans are leading on IVF. I wish every person voting would say no to him, but there will be those who will yes. Sad.