Donald Trump closed out his pointless two-day “midterm convention” in Nuremberg Dallas Thursday with another stupid speech in which he repeated his weird (and definitely never gonna happen) “promise” to give all American adults $5,000 if Republicans keep control of both houses of Congress in the November elections. He insisted that voters all need to know that the election is all about him, not anything else, urging everyone to vote as if he were on the ballot. This is fine with us.
Trump said there were at least 35 absolutely vital House and Senate races that’ll decide control of Congress, and promised to “go to every one of those states” without any intention of actually doing it, and everyone knew he was lying again. He also took the opportunity, yet again, to boost his buddy Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign by saying Paxton dresses like a slob and not being able to give a speech.
But the high point — or at least the high on his own supply moment — came when Trump led the crowd in pledging their allegiance to Trump, which was, even for him, really something.
“Please raise your right hand,” the Great Man began. “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us so much he can’t even breathe that I will go out with my family, my friends, I will do it any way — I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they do. There’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care. I am gonna go out and I’m going to get my friends and family and we are going to vote on November 3rd, or we are going to vote before that!”
Wait, “loves us so much he can’t even breathe”? Sigh. Yet another empty promise.
Oh yeah, and then there’s the call for people to cheat. Thank goodness it’s not a cult.
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The New York Times deadpanned, parenthetically (gift link), “Mr. Trump usually frowns on election fraud.”
This should be interesting. In previous elections — like, even going back before Trump! — more than a handful of rightwing nutters have been caught attempting voter fraud and claiming they were simply “testing” the system, or offsetting what they were sure is even worse cheating by Democrats.
Even assuming that most Trumpers will guffaw and say Trump was only joking again, Trump’s open insistence that cheating is fine “because they do it” sure does look like one of those “permission structures” for bad behavior.
Then again, Trump also called on his supporters to vote twice in 2020 (once by mail, then again in person, just to be sure), so the only new thing in this iteration was the “repeat after me” part.
After tossing in a “so help me God” to the litany, Trump added that his supporters should take that literally: “You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell,” he improvised. “You know that, OK? You go to hell, and I don’t want that to happen to you. So please go and vote, because together we will defeat the communists.”
Oh, those pesky communists again!
We’ll close with a tip of the hat to Atlantic columnist Tom Nichols (gift link), who observed that the “mindlessness of the thing” reminded him of an old Steve Martin comedy bit, where Martin had his crowd repeat the “Non-Conformist Oath”:
The oath goes, “I promise to be different! I promise to be unique! I promise not to repeat things other people say!” and of course everyone cracks up three words into the last line as they realize the silly trick Martin played on them. But in Dallas, Nichols added, “the GOP attendees did not seem to get that it’s creepy to uncritically repeat whatever someone else tells you to say.”
Or maybe that’s just the highest form of patriotism, did you ever think of that?
Then, to prove how much he loves America, Trump flew back to Washington so he could look super bored and fall asleep several times during the Pentagon’s 9/11 memorial ceremony today. One way to Never Forget is to simply not be conscious at all.
[AP / NYT (gift link) / Atlantic (gift link) / New Republic]
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Methinks “I love you so much, I can’t even breathe” is something he picked up from Natalie while she was changing his diaper.
I dunno, man, I'm starting to think maybe this guy might be a lunatic.