Donald Trump’s performance in this Chris Wallace interview is the best Joe Biden ad we’ve ever seen.pic.twitter.com/NX6cA2rijZ
— Rantt Media (@RanttMedia) July 19, 2020
With possibly any other candidate, it would make sense for a campaign to "get his face out there" and have him do interviews to directly discuss the issues of the day and refute criticisms about his performance, and so on, but this? Following the awkward Hannity interview (a softball if there could be one) where Trump boasted that he "aced" a basic cognitive test, this performance is sad and alarming, because Trump not only is still preeeettttyyy impressed with having basic cognitive function, but wants you all to know some of those questions were hard, and he does not believe everyone else would do as well.
The entire interview is laced with WTF moments, from facetiously suggesting that the name of Fort Bragg (from which we won "beautiful world wars"--who thinks like that?) be replaced with Fort Al Sharpton (interesting and not at all random choice) and his exceptional level of denial that the testing is the reason for the high number of COVID-19 cases in the US, not actual community spread, and of course it would be. Anyone who has observed Trump lately knows what he's like, the difference in this interview is that he is like this, only in the hands of a skilled interviewer and sweating like an ice-cold glass of lemonade.
One could almost imagine an interview like this being granted, approved, and aired, as a form of benign sabotage, as if someone decided that, for crying out loud, would everyone just look at this guy??!?!? But in order to do that, one would still have to imagine that the White House, and the Trump campaign alike, were not really full of grifters, cultists, and long-game authoritarians. But I don't really see a sign that this is the case.
Trump can identify an elephant, but he is surrounded by people who not only don't talk about the other elephant in the room, but can't identify it themselves.
2 comments:
Excellent point. The elephant has no clothes.
"One could almost imagine an interview like this being granted, approved, and aired, as a form of benign sabotage, as if someone decided that, for crying out loud, would everyone just look at this guy??!?!?"
Rosenstein had exactly the same thought in February 2017, after talking to Trump about pressuring, and ultimately firing, Comey in order to protect Flynn. He had the idea that he should wear a wire for his next conversation with the president, not trying to get Trump on tape committing any sort of criminal or ethics violation, but to convince people that he was demented. Surely, when exposed to the obvious inability to discharge the powers and duties that such a tape would reveal, the responsible govt officials would act, and Trump would be suspended from office before the sun set.
How quaint such a plan seems now, how detached from the reality of our system's metaphorical dementia. Trump has long since done much more quite publicly -- ne need to wear a wire -- that has no possible explanation than dementia, he has so often displayed an indisputable inability to discharge the powers and duties of his office, that failure to remove him for his literal dementia confirms that he is the culmination and logical end point of what we have let our govt become.
There are no responsible govt officials who will ever do their clear duty and remove Trump from office. VP, cabinet, Congress -- all of them are also unable to discharge the powers and duties of their offices. Unlike Trump, they aren't literally demented, that's not the source of their inability. They are all of them unable to take action because we have let our govt become reality TV, a realm whose hallmark is of course the complete separation from reality. None of the actors in that reality TV world can act in violation of the premise of the show, which is that the president of the US is the most powerful person on the planet, and got into that office by being the smartest person pursuing this highly coveted position.
Trump is a genius, by definition. If he isn't, our whole system is a mockery and an abject failure. Of course it is a failure, our inability to respond to COVID sets us down as a failed state, but good luck selling that script to the reality TV fans.
Post a Comment