Our president held another festival of resentment in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday night, in which he attempted to convince his attendant supporters that, “our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage. They want to destroy you. And they want to destroy our country as we know it.” Truly, a president for all Americans. Donald Trump also successfully convinced the attendant media—from cable news to The New York Times—that this was his 2020 campaign “launch,” despite the fact that he actually launched his campaign on Inauguration Day in 2017 and has held these campaign rallies fairly constantly since. No matter: everybody just accepted his characterization. What a great sign for the future.
But an even better sign came from the other prominent Republicans in attendance. Our president brought along his veep, Mike Pence, whose participation in the 2020 election is not assured. (The Trump folks have made noises about defenestrating Pence in favor of someone like Nikki Haley.) Mr. Pence has always been a hardliner on social issues—he has consistently opposed equal rights for LGBT citizens and signed a number of anti-abortion bills into law as governor of Indiana—but he seems to have embraced a new level of vitriol in service to Trump. It’s a familiar story: if you stick around the guy long enough, you’re going to end up saying and defending some intergalactic shit…
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…Graham used to say Trump was a “kook” who’s “crazy” and “unfit for office.” Rubio used to call Trump a “con artist”and slammed him for refusing to repudiate David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.
But then Trump won, and now they can both be found at the rally in Orlando, offering their public support for the same guy. Maybe they think Trump has been reformed—although, when the C-SPAN camera panned to the senators unbeknownst to them, it seems they might be a bit concerned about which train they jumped on.
The Two Stooges
Despicable toads.