OR IS IT MORE MAGICAL THINKING?
Get ready for it! Restock your bunkers! Donald J. Trump will return to the Presidency this coming August. That’s what he says, according to his close enablers who say he really believes his kingship will be restored and he will be back at his old desk doing more of the same. Wait a minute! Where is Joe Biden going to sit? Will there be a fist-fight in the Oval Office? Will there be blood?
Hoping to find out how Trump was going to pull off his return to power, I searched all my 500-plus TV channels to hear him last Saturday night, when, in his first public address since inciting the January 6 Insurrection, he spoke to some 1,200 North Carolina cult members as they dined. Couldn’t find a single channel carrying it.
So I did the next best thing. In the days following I read the online press coverage, which seemed to agree that those diners were a bit restive through the hour-plus lamentation on how many wrongs were done to the former president while in office. The audience apparently was less interested in their hero’s past tribulations than in what the GOP had planned for the future. Which seems a ridiculous question. There are only two things Republicans ever do when in power: they cut taxes for the rich, and appoint conservative judges to guard their profits. Anyway, there was no mention of how the Orange Menace was going to overthrow the Biden government.
Still in your service and searching for an answer, and at great risk to my heart health, I tracked down the text of Trump’s speech online and read it. Foiled again! There was nothing about the imminent coup. All it really did was try to transmute what we call the “Big Lie” into what he calls the “Crime of the Century.” How’s that for doubling down on Magical Thinking?
In the speech there was one section (it may have been a lousy translation from the Urdu or Swahili) that you might help me understand. It reads thusly:
Biden is openly mocked by China’s negotiators and Russian President Putin. And they’re taunting him and they’re laughing at him and they’re humiliating our country. And do you ever notice when he had a hard time going up the stairs on the plane, nobody talks about that. Nobody talks. The news didn’t cover. Not one network covered it. Now, when I made the best speech I’ve ever made, they said it was at West Point and it was pouring, and I a ramp that was an ice skating rink. And I called, I said to the general, I said, “General, I may have to grab you, because the last thing I’m doing is going down. So I walked gingerly down. That was on every newscast in the world, and I never went down. I never went on my ass, I’ll tell you. I wasn’t going to fall. I think that was a booby trap. I’ll never forget that ramp. That was like a sheet of ice. It was cold, rainy, and that ramp was long and steep. I said, “General, I might have to grab you, but I’m not going down under.” And unfortunately, I wasn’t wearing American shoes. I had Italian shoes, nice leather. Leather. It’s like an ice skating rink, but they made that a big story, but they didn’t make the Biden fall, the triple fall. I call it the triple fall.
Reading the passage over a third time, I’m left with these questions for anyone who has the answers. Will I lose my citizenship if I confess to kicking the habit of watching people deplane after a boring year of trying it? What’s the news value of nobody talking? Doesn’t rain melt ice? Are ramps really like lost loves you never forget? Is Ginger-Lee your latest fling? Why do you think your West Point speech was your best? Better than your nomination acceptance speech when you told us only you could fix our problems? And if they’re fixed, why are you coming back to occupy the White House? What do you have against Australia? Are you telling us to buy American when it comes to shoes? Who is suspected of planting the booby trap? How did they make Biden fall? What’s a triple fall? And was Biden wearing Italian shoes when he triple-falled? Finally, how do you skate on leather?
Maybe I can ask him to clear up these questions at his first news conference when he miraculously returns in August to take command. And thank you for thanking me for my participation and concern.