Taking the Axios to His Own Campaign

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

To even the most cursory news consumer, it seems Donald Trump is as bound and determined to lose the election coming up in 90 days as much as he wants to kill as many Americans as possible with this coronavirus through greed, ineptitude, cronyism, spiteful vengeance, sadism and sociopathic nonchalance. 

    Of course, he needs to succeed at both, because if you're one Donald John Trump, the office of the presidency he'd never legitimately won and never will is the only thing giving him any significant protection from the Southern District of New York, the Attorney General of New York State and Manhattan District Attorney's office. And that pending litigation doesn't even include countless lawsuits in state courts, Congressional investigations and lawsuits from private parties.

     Oh, he says he wants to win the election but his actions paint a different picture. Between first naming a glorified website designer named Brad Parscale to head his campaign despite him having no experience in running a political campaign, let alone a major presidential campaign, then demoting him when his poll numbers began sinking, Trump is running his campaign like a business that he'd typically run into the ground only to waddle off into the sunset with a pile of cash.

     Between making millions off Trump International Hotel 16 blocks from the White House (where dignitaries and lobbyists fly in from all over the world), millions more at Mar a Lago, the so-called "winter White House" plus his other properties, licensing deals struck on behalf of his family (like his daughter and son in law who officially work there), Trump succeeded what he set out to do all along- Make a killing off the presidency.

     4-5 years ago, Trump obviously thought that it would be all glitz and superficial photo ops, having his picture taken with the most glamorous and powerful people on earth, that no crises would plague his "presidency" and, if they did, well, his gut and/or his right wing cronies would take care of all that.

     It was as if Donald Trump thought no terrorist, no rogue dictator with a few nukes, no virus would dare accost him in his pursuit of even more riches. He stumbled into the Oval Office on January 20th, 2017 not having the slightest idea of cause and effect any more than he had any idea what Tim Cook's name was, or how to pronounce "Nepal" or "Yosemite."

     And one would think that even the pettiest tin pot dictator would know that a pandemic that has struck every nation on earth and that has killed 700,000 worldwide would recognize that one disaster leads to others. If businesses shut down because you didn't get ahead of the pandemic, that will damage your economy. Tax bases shrink, people get evicted, homelessness becomes yet another problem, etc, etc.

     But Donald Trump isn't even a tin-plated dictator. He's a 300 pound mountain of lard with chewing gum foil swaddling his ample bulk and a Rodney Dangerfield costume over that. Then, as if he couldn't cripple his reelection campaign even more, he had to sit for the HBO-Axios interview with an increasingly alarmed Jonathan Swan.

"It is what it is."

This Hindenburg-Titanic of all presidential interviews was held in the White House's historic Blue Room as Congressman John Lewis' body lay in state at the Capitol Building (a ceremony that, typically, Trump chose not to attend, not that he was wanted). He wasted little time in attacking John Lewis and his legacy, downplaying the man's pain and sacrifices for the Civil Rights movement by saying "there were many others" and "no one's done more for black America than I have", a fact completely unsupported by any metric or rubric. If that had been the nadir of the interview, it would have been bad enough.

     But, of course, it was bound to get worse.

   Still talking about the late Congressman Lewis, Trump whined that  he never went to his inauguration or States of the Union and referring to Lewis in the present tense as if he was still a living adversary. But of course, that wasn't even the lowest point. Because, if nothing else, Donald Trump will never lose the ability to shock you by going even lower than you thought possible. He's like a verbal limbo dancer who, no matter how low you set the bar, he will slither under it.

     Because at some point, Swan inevitably addressed the coronavirus pandemic and how it would impact on his own rallies, starting with Tulsa. Trump responded that Tulsa had already seen a spike in COVID-19 cases before the rally, which is actually true, starting with the eight cases turned up within his own advance team and Secret Service protection. Then, like the notoriously doctored picture of the "crowd" awaiting him in Tampa Bay last week, Trump then arbitrarily decided to inflate the size of the Tulsa crowd by a factor of 100%. Who needs the Fire Marshal to estimate the crowd size? Don't believe your lyin' eyes that saw huge sections of empty seats of the arena. 6100? There were actually 12,000 there!

     But, no, that still wasn't the worst moment.

     The worst moment in the minds of a lot of people who'd seen the entire interview or, for the more squeamish, just a clip would agree the worst moment came when Swan presented Trump with the national fatality numbers from COVID-19. Swan gingerly reminded him that the national death toll from the disease had exceeded 150.000. Trump rolled his eyes, shrugged his shoulders and said, "It is what it is," before extolling his non-existent response to a virus that had the temerity to descend on real America during a general election year and denied him the Nazi hate rallies to which he'd grown addicted.

     During the entire interview, Trump, as usual, sat on the edge of his chair in his toilet seat posture and during the whole time archly knitted his eyebrows as if daring Swan to ask just the wrong question so he could make a show of getting up and prematurely terminating the interview. But he didn't. Commander Bone Spurs stuck it out to the bitter end and showed the world what a true sociopath he truly is, as if his niece Dr. Mary Trump's book had left any doubt.

     The Lincoln Project couldn't have made a more damning ad that Trump did at many points of that interview. Nobody but Trump could have laid out a better case as to why he does not deserve your vote this November. Because the Sociopath in Chief doesn't give a shit about your life beyond your ability to pull a lever for him at a polling place. Then you can drop dead at it, for all he cares.