the old Trump era merry go-round
I stare at the Trump press conference. The whole thing is untethered by reality. Like, this differs from, oh, Bill Clinton and sexual relations with that woman — which is a lie tethered to reality — you can connect its falseness to the truth that he is evading. Or the Bush Administration and a large constellation of war propaganda, that I have to equovicate on what are actual lies in the 2000s era speeches and what were conclusions fitting priors makes the difference here. On Trump in this year 2024, the old man lives in a myopic fantasy world and he has dragged us all along with it. I really don’t know what to say or do with it, but let us see what is animating Rod Dreher.
This is a hell of a lot more leeway than what either EW Erickson granted Biden post debate (or any other showing his age moment) on how that man could “reset” his campaign. It kind of throws me back to Nikki Haley’s campaign drop out race speech comment that “now hopefully Trump will earn my voter’s support”. Somehow after everything there is no “I’ve seen enough”. No permanent statement is permanent — no “I’m done with this guy” ever sticks.
And Erickson’s “reset”, simply looking at what Dreher has clipped here, is a little bit off kilter from the baseline Republican cries that he needs to get back to messages of the onerous regulation state and tax and spend inflationary big government! — in that what he wants is for him to pound the names of every undocumented / illegal immigrant who committed a violent crime, a matter of demagoguery that though at least tethered to reality — stems from something, anything — still cannot be cut off from the rest of Trump’s spiel. A guy who does that is going to be the same guy who goes after a party member, a guy who does this makes hay over Kamala Harris’s mixed race background — that mean tweets that are your static noise.
Still, I am always trying to find a “something sensical” in the insane morass. By way of contrarianism if nothing else — let’s debate the merits of water storage policy or something. The illustrious reporters here a tad tied down to horse race coverage, I do find myself in agreement with Trump’s sneering of “what a stupid question” on why we are not seeing him campaigning. It is ultimately nothing that should concern me or you — spectator sports are all good and well but I am wanting and hoping for a mass re-conceptualizing of it all. And maybe we see it anyways — the broadest part of the populace only tunes in now. After this statement, Trump makes no sense and then bobs back into sense. He is filming ads on a level you have never seen from right here. Nonsensical statement. He shuffles away the statement “Montana is a swing state” by offering, sanely, he is out campaigning for Senate candidates. Though, he throws in what is apparently a stop-over in Wyoming, which I assume there are rich jackasses there to meet and raise funds out of, but in political terms other than maybe trolling Lynne Cheney there is not much political point. A Republican primary is set, but he is just endorsing the incumbent. Like, I am sure there are elected Democrats somewhere in the state, but I have to squint hard to figure out where this dirty trick flier is even aimed at.
Well. We need to know the evil that lurks in Tim Walz.
I see the National Review has Rich Lowry land him as a combination force of Blagojevich and Menendez. There was a third name but it evades me. At least more interesting a charge than radical leftist, but I kind of figure that their worldview is one that views any expansive government run program as corruption defacto. But the bigger issue here is that on Lowry, he already said multiple times he is done with Trump and yet… Nothing sticks.