Every time a stupid politician says something stupid, you don’t have to reply to him because it is nonsense to shoo every barking dog away—– Mehmet Murat ildan.
One of the sacred tenets in campaign politics is never to raise expectations, always lower them. It’s a simple formula for looking good.
You never make grandiose promises unless you know you can keep them, not in the age of cell phones and social media.
Another is never to shoot yourself in the foot, leave that to your enemies.
Trump is proud of his disdain for sacred tenets in government; this week, his disregard for common sense is rearing up to bite him on the ass. Again.
Catastrophe Number Four, Tulsa, Oklahoma:
First, there were those dreadful press briefings; then that disastrous Bible photo shoot in front of St.John’s church, and the gassing of protesters; then his suggesting George Floyd was happy in heaven because of declining joblessness numbers, and this weekend, his newest and perhaps most humiliating disaster yet: Tulsa.
This campaign is going up in smoke on the day it officially began.
I was sure the rally would be a catastrophe, a testament to desperation, not triumph. But I didn’t expect that so many people wouldn’t even bother to show up.
Donald Trump is over, we can dither about it all we want, but that is the hard truth. And it is a piteous and demeaning way to go.
You don’t ever want to start a political campaign to celebrate yourself during racial turmoil, a weak economy, and a Pandemic with a smaller than promised crowd.
That is not just bad politics. It’s a superhighway to failure.
What does this all mean? And where do we go from here?
Trump is sinking in every respected poll in the country. He begins his campaign in the worst possible way at the worst possible time.
From now on, it’s a desperate game of catch-up, he is way behind the eight ball. And he rattles easily.
The world is not co-operating with his ego.
Trump even had to cancel that big outdoor overflow rally he was bragging about all week – about 30 people showed up. Even his people are tired of him like exasperate parents hold up for months with brats.
For him, it was the worst news and image possible: for the first time since he declared for President, there were thousands of empty seats in Tulsa.
This for a man who has never seen an empty seat in a political campaign.
I would hate to be on his plane heading home to tonight.
The problem is becoming more apparent every day. It is hitting us right in the face.
Trump listens to no one but himself and believes his instincts are superior to everyone else’s.
We see that he is wrong; he has horrible instincts and terrible judgment. There is really only so much hatred and division human beings can absorb. And that’s the problem with reality TV shows – most of them don’t last too long.
Even as the Pandemic begins to rise again, as black mothers grieve for their sons, as the economy struggles, and as we will be looking at stories about sick Tulsa rally-goers for weeks, if not months, I can’t see a way that he can get up and recover from this.
The goal of this insanely irrational rally was to reinvigorate a re-election campaign battered by devastating health and economic crises that have occurred during his leadership, as well as the nationwide protests against racism that he has mishandled from the first day.
Instead of moving past those crises, he has drawn national attention to them in Tulsa and humiliated himself in the process.
This politician depends on White Man Machismo; any sign of vulnerability is damaging, the bubble bursts.
A wounded, frightened, and the grieving country is offered John Wayne with a Bible. Really? Is that the best they can do?
This is the fate of the unknowing narcissist: they can’t see the real world around them.
There is no rational explanation for staging a rally during a national Pandemic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, scene of America’s worst racial massacre.
This happens only when the candidate has an inflated view of himself that can’t be challenged. His is an addiction to adoration. But even adoration has its limits.
The wolves, smelling blood, are nipping at his heels, from generals to former aides to angry U.S. Attorney’s, to his now mortal enemies in the media (another self-inflicted and unnecessary wound), not to mention Democrats, minorities, the young and so-called progressives.
People are lining up to denounce him and warn us about him. Politics are like that; you never want to campaign with open wounds. They all smell blood.
This campaign is a farce, not a civic contest.
All Joe Biden has to do is sit home and look decent and videotape his statements and collect his campaign contributions.
His opponent is beating himself to death, all bluster and no sense or solutions.
As far as political rallies go, it was a good crowd in Tulsa, but not close to the capacity – 20,000.
But Trump and his campaign aides (six of them have contacted the coronavirus already, here come more bad stories) had given estimates ranging from one million flooding Tulsa to 100,000 people in overflow crowds.
Trump had arranged to speak to them, even made sure there was no curfew so they could have “fun,” while Tulsa residents commemorated the slaughter of hundreds of people in a race riot.
It was a mortifying evening for him.
He is entirely out of touch with mainstream America right now and blowing off a disease that has killed more than 110,000 Americans with hundreds of dying every day.
This time, people are paying attention. His idea for the country seems to be taking his cues from century-old westerns. He is morphing into a statue himself, a monument White Man’s America, circa 1850. No wonder he wants to keep those Confederate statues standing.
For him, the Pandemic no longer exists. It is just not as important as he is. How I wonder will all those sick people and their families feel about this during this longest of summers?
And this time, his opponent is not Hilary Clinton, one of the least popular people to run for President in modern times.
But seriously, this is Greek Tragedy writ large: a performance in which the protagonist, usually a person of importance, falls to disaster through the combination of a personal failing and circumstances with which he or she cannot deal.
This campaign is not Donald Trump’s chosen story. Truth matters.
There is no joy in it for me. It is sad for him, even more, disturbing for what it says about us and our country. Look what we allowed to happen.
The battle for a kinder America is on.
At his rally, Trump blamed the media and the new bogeymen, “left-wing radical protesters” for the small crowd, and mythical protesters he says blocked the metal detectors.
The police and hundreds of reporters didn’t see anyone preventing anyone from entering the arena. But then, nobody believes a word this President says about anything, so why try to make sense of it?
Even the marchers and protesters celebrating Juneteenth, the slave emancipation holiday, mostly ignored Trump’s rally. They said it wasn’t as important as their celebration.
With Tulsa, he has made another grievous and unfathomable miscalculation, bursting his bubble of infallibility and popularity.
He has even further damaged his credibility if that is even possible.
As it happens, you can’t govern on bravado alone. It’s a relief to know that.
At the same time, Trump added another bitterly controversial crisis to his growing list by firing the U.S. Attorney in New York City and lying about it as he tries to block yet another investigation into a friend. Another poorly -timed and self-inflicted wound.
Trump is now the leader only of religious and far-right extremists and angry white men; almost everyone else is running for the hills.
In a sense, Trump came to power, flaunting every conventional wisdom about politics. For years later, his campaign is cratering because he is flaunting every traditional wisdom about politics.
This is ironic; it is also politics.
Our country is in trouble, but not just because of Trump. It’s in trouble because the country was so broken and troubled that he got elected in the first place.
That is the hard work that will follow his being drummed out of office.
The pundits keep saying there’s plenty of time, anything can happen, he’s bounced back before.
But what is happening now is different, this is a new and very different Trump, or perhaps the real one exposed. He has almost no chance of winning this election now.
The good politician surrounds him or herself with smart people and depends on them to keep him from doing or saying anything too stupid. The bad politician loses.
No one seems able to stop the President from saying or doing stupid things every single day.
Trump has mishandled the coronavirus, insisting it is over when it is rising in nearly half of the country.
He simply can’t relate to the grief and anger and restlessness so much of the country is feeling in the wake of the George Floyd killing.
The economy is damaged beyond his ability to fix quickly, and his White House is in shambles.
His response to so much suffering is to insist on his mad plan to hold a rally at possibly the worst time in modern American history, and the worst possible place.
His arrogance and self-absorption have most likely sickened, even killed, a bunch of people.
Can you imagine what the Democrats will do with that?
I’m guessing it is making him crazy that Joe Biden seems to glide right over all of the plots and conspiracy theories and insults the Trump campaign is tossing at him.
For now, Biden is masked up in Deleware, raking in 80 million dollars in just a few days while mostly sitting at home. He’s our new national Grandpa, once they finally shove Anthony Fauci out of the picture.
There are only four months to go in this campaign. In political terms, that is a blink. Trump will have to be saved by someone other than himself to win re-election.
Maybe he can summon one of those Greek Gods. He will need one.
Great essay but I will quibble about one sentence. I don’t think our country “was broken and troubled” before Trymp’s election. The economy was improving and social justice issues such as Marriage Equality and affordable health insurance were being addressed. If there was trouble, its cause was the evangelical and big money forces destroying the Republican Party from within. Add to that, racists were coming out from under their rocks because a black man won two terms and the pot was simmering. Trump and his minions are the ones who have created a sense of brokeness because their goal has been to divide and weaken the country and its democratic underpinnings. This is all on the Republican Party and the big money behind the scenes, pulling the strings.
Thanks Cathryn, I can’t agree with you. No country where 40 per cent of the wealth is owned by one percent of the people is healthy. I’m glad you have been doing well, I know an awful lot of people who weren’t and aren’t. Life for rich people is great, not so good for most other people.
This is why I cringe when anyone says they just want to “get back to normal”. Normal wasn’t working all that great for a whole lot of people — maybe most people. COVID-19 is laying bare all the problems with what we accepted as “normal”: healthcare tied to employment at a time 40 million people are suddenly unemployed, systemic racial oppression, bashing of immigrants, horrible working conditions and starvation wages for our “essential” workers, nursing homes evicting Medicaid patients to homeless shelters to make room for higher paying COVID-19 patients. We’ve got to do better than that. Surely we can do better than that.
Thanks Jill, I am full of hope..
Hi Jill. While there are no quick fixes, I’m of the opinion, after 68 years of teaching, union organizing, and being a wife and mother, that employees/workers of most medium and large companies have to negotiate wages and other forms of compensation, hours, and working conditions with freely elected representatives… similar to the EU system of labor relations. Workers need to be empowered to represent their bargaining unit at the Board Room level and the supervisory level.
I live in Tulsa and I would have to disagree with some of your conclusions regarding Trump’s rally tonight. You were certainly quick to post your opinion. There were some empty seats. Maybe some of the Democrats actually got tickets so nobody would be in those seats? They bragged about doing that and AOC seems excited about it working.
Based on what has gone on in other cities with riots, looting, and complete anarchy, I think both Trump supporters and the peaceful protesters handled themselves well. I hope you took note of that while you watched.
These have been very difficult times since mid March when everything shut down. Then with the tragic death of Floyd followed by riots, etc. along with attacks on police, and with the continued threat of COVID 19 people are more cautious. I would have gone to the rally but I was concerned about opposition rioters. It appears that Tulsa and the state of OK handled that before it became a problem.
Yes a race riot, just recently renamed a massacre, took place 99 years ago. Next year will be the 100 anniversary so there is quite a bit of facts on it. Much has been done to rebuild the Greenwood District and to try and learn the exact magnitude of what took place. I don’t think it was problem having the Trump rally in Tulsa because something horrible took place in our city 99 years ago.
I have never been completely happy with any of our Presidents. They all have feet of clay. I certainly have some issues with Trump, however, I have more issues with the Democratic Party and Biden. To think he could be used the way he is used when he has obvious problems with memory saddens me. The party knows they need him to stay away from the public because you never know what he will say.
I also am opposed to socialism, support law enforcement, and hold more conservative values. I don’t think a lifetime Republican politician would take any real conservative stands because he would be too interested in pleasing everyone. Thus we have Trump.
You may be correct about the election but I think it will go to Trump again surprising the progressives once again. We shall see. But for now things in Tulsa went very well tonight.
Pamela, I’m not sure where the complete anarchy is that you are writing about, there have been several nights of violence in some places, almost all of the legitimate and legal protests were peaceful. You seem to be spouting propaganda here the myth of the radical left and Antifa. There are extremists on both sides, of course. And I am not aware of Mr. Biden or any major democrat figure urging socialism. Most of the socialist countries in Europe are faring a lot better than most Americans are, by the way. If you have any further details of anarchy or leftist plotting, please share them. We can rationalize everything, last night was a disaster for Trump, and I don’t feel it any less this morning than I did last night. Beware of left/right propaganda, it is a brain killer.
Anarchy is clearly demonstrated in Seattle by CHAZ/CHOP. If a foreign country did what they have done it would be considered an act of war.
I think equating it with war is a bit of an overreaction, I hope everybody keeps talking and they work something out. Sometimes protest can be very healthy and very American..They are fighting for a kinder America. I hope they can leave peacefully…they are encroaching on the lives of others..But I think they are also trying to do something important..
Some of what may appear to be a “memory problem” for Biden is undoubtedly due instead to his long-term difficulties with stuttering.
Again Jon, you’ve captured the reality of life in your words. Thank you and Happy Fathers Day!
You are so right Jon. I think the worse things get for Trump the more he will lash out in unhinged behavior, doubling down on the comments or actions that caused the uproar in the first place. He is just exhausting on so many levels. Should Joe Biden win in November, he will have a monumental task ahead of him to heal this country and repair our standing in the world. But one thing we know for sure, and that’s every decision will be based on what is good for all Americans, not just for one little spoiled brat.
I am reading your long essays and I hope that I am one of a silent majority who believe thatyou have hit the truth on the head. I hope,oh how I hope, that the Democratic Party will gather more strength than it usually has done in past campaigns who ever is chosen for Vice President must work with Biden and fight strongly to win instead of producing its usual flappy activity.
Thank you for your writings. They clear my mind so well.
Thanks Erika, this is not a silent majority, they are speaking up all over the country..thanks for the message.
Jon, I don’t care what party a politician represents, Rep. or Dem., to plan and hold a rally that is so in-your-face as Trump did, putting on his showman act with the glass of water, loping across the stage, childish, self-centred, ego-driven behaviour, placing people enmass when this virus is still so threatening in people’s lives, makes you wonder about the term ‘leadership’. It’s like becoming president of the United States was the ultimate feather in a narcissist’s cap. No thought for anyone else but himself. While people die of this virus, while people have lost family members, friends, what does that matter except the showman says the show must go on. A performance not worth watching.
Sandy Proudfoot
You are my hero Jon!!
Smooch..
I love it when you occasionally put on your political commentator hat. Maybe because I generally agree with you. But mostly because you are smart, articulate and impassioned (in an integrity sense).
I am less confident that Trump will lose in November though that would be a tragedy for us and the institution of democracy. I am anxious because Trump seems to have a reptilian, primitive sense re his own importance and winning. I think he sees what we all see and is trying to divert attention while planning his next destructive foray. Hard for him to top himself now that he has asked people to risk dying for him in Tulsa. But I have confidence in he and his supporters list for power.
That said if the recent momentum keeps up it is hard to believe Trump will win. It is hard to convince a nation in various stages of Covid lockdown with friends and relatives sick and dying that you are a messiah.
i believe the good Dr. Hunter S. Thompson has reincarnated in you for this article – it’s so much like reading his fine, fiery articles that make your soul swoon – I love it! And the Doctor is smiling in Gonzo heaven!
I voted for Trump in 2016 not because I thought he was so wonderful, but because I believed Hilary Clinton would have been a nightmare for our country. I don’t like Trump or Biden, but perhaps this time Biden is the lesser of two evils. Where are the statesmen, the people with real leadership abilities & intelligence? Is this the best both parties can do? I don’t understand the die-hard Trump supporters, but they exist. I run across them now & again. For them, Trump can do no wrong. They plow right over all his nonsense and lies, convinced he is The Man. They are like the folks who wear tinfoil hats to keep the CIA from reading their minds. There is no reasoning with them. They go on & on while I stand there with my mouth hanging open in amazement, thinking, “But, but, but, but…”.
Hi Jon. Thanks for another meaningful and fascinating blog post. I agree that Trump is a narcissist who is on the way down, and I agree that that is very sad, for him, his family and our country. I worry, though, about depending on that too much for outcomes in November. Remember, we grossly misjudged his appeal and power in 2016–I would guess that the vast majority of Democrats assumed he would lose. And look where that got us. I know so much has changed in the meantime. But I worry about how much damage he can do this fall, and after the election, even if he does end up losing. So let’s not assume he will lose or that losing will be the end of him! We can’t afford to. Keep up the good work!
I do believe the good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson inhabited your soul when writing this article – reminds me so much of the fine, firey spot on political essays he wrote that made your spirit swoon and soar when reading. I love it and know the Doctor is smiling in Gonzo Heaven!
Billie, I worked with Hunter at Rolling Stone..thanks for the great compliment..
That must have been a memorable experience – he sure was one hell of a writer. Think I have everything he ever wrote and enjoy reading his unique view of things over and over. I also enjoy quoting him – “Let us toast to the good life wherever it is and whatever it happens to be.” Oh – and I didn’t mean to post two comments – I realized first one had some errors and couldn’t figure out how to delete it so posted second one hoping first one would be deleted on your end.
Jon, I agree with you on most everything you say about Trump, the political atmosphere, the protests etc. I cannot imagine another 4 years with Trump and what this USA would look like. However…most of my family lives within 15-20 miles from you and they will all vote Trump. They feel no one else cares for farmers.