Donald Trump’s New Campaign Pitch: I Don’t Need Your Vote

Donald Trump has been telegraphing to the world how he and his collaborators are going to “win” this election, even if they don’t.

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt upon Donald Trump, he has been test-marketing a new absurdity: “I took a bullet for democracy!” In an increasingly-common pattern now of saying deliberately-vague, riddle-like things (Dan 8:23), it’s absurd on at least two levels.
 
One, at this point at least, no one knows what Thomas Matthew Crooks’ motive was in shooting at Donald Trump—(I have given my opinion)—but it’s nearly impossible it was for the purpose of “undermining democracy.”
 
And two, everything Trump and his merry minions of treason are doing right now virtually screams that they are actively in the process of doing that very thing—undermining democracy. They are doing everything in their power to undermine the upcoming election and make sure there are no future ones (i.e., a permanent dictatorship). This, while both Trump and his now fully-corrupted Republicans shamelessly accuse the Democrats of planning on overthrowing the Constitution after this next election, of course. Ergo, the great apocalyptic showdown at the end of the age. Spare me.

The Great Training

On Friday, July 26, Donald Trump addressed a horde of Christian youth at a Turning Point USA conference. Every leader in that group from Charlie Kirk on down, along with all the organizations supporting this aptly-named TPUSA, should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this. Subjecting young minds with the potential to become a Hitler youth group, to a man as psychotic as Donald Trump is tantamount to child abuse.

It’s not the first time they’ve done this. Back in June, Dream City Church in Phoenix, (pastored by the brother of my own church pastor)[1] hosted Trump yet again. At that time he said,  “I don’t like using the word ‘bullshit’ in front of these beautiful children,” at which point these “beautiful children” broke out into a spontaneous chant of “Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit!” In church!
 
This is what is known as “ritual humiliation,” what authoritarian expert Dr. Ruth Ben Ghiat terms a next level up of an autocrat’s training of his followers. Getting a person or institution to trample all over their professed ideals is both a source of great sadistic glee to them, as well as a reinforcement of justified contempt for such lesser beings. “If they’re that stupid and gullible enough to believe my bullshitery,  then they deserve what they get,” is how they think. This is Trump’s real attitude towards his victims…er, followers.
 
At yet another such TP conference last week, their “[True] Believers Summit” (held in Palm Beach where Trump lives), he offered up the following word salad:
 
We have to win this election. The most important election ever. We want a landslide that’s too big to rig…If you want to save America, get your friends, get your family, get everyone you know to vote. Vote early, vote absentee, vote on election day, I don’t care how, but you have to get out and vote. And again, CHRISTIANS, GET OUT AND VOTE! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I’m not Christian. I love you, get out. You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good, you won’t have to vote.
 
You’ll notice a couple of things here. First is, he quickly glosses over, “I love you Christians. I’m not Christian,” in a way that may cause people to think he said, “I’m a Christian,” if that’s what you want to hear. Either that or he’s just mocking them, or both.
 
Two, he emphasizes their need to get out and vote this election, but there’s no need to worry about four years later, because by then, elections will be suspended permanently, or they’ll have it to where Democrats can never win again because their votes won’t be counted. This is the guy who “took a bullet for democracy.”

There is also a third thought to add here that I will elaborate on in the next article, the fact that this speech was given just hours after Trump met with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, and it may have something to do with the greater-than-normal level of contempt he showed toward these young, gullible kids. 

The King of Doubletalk

But even the pep talk about getting out the vote this year is either just another throwaway line, or a “give them something to do” diversion for the “true believers.” The real agenda Trump is pursuing, even in this election, is telegraphing that it doesn’t matter if they lose in a landslide, they’re still going to win. The very day before his “get out the vote” pep talk to gullible youth, he was telling Fox “News,” “My instruction, we don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” something he has been repeating a lot in all his talks lately.
 
But what kind of strange campaign pitch is this? Isn’t it normal for a candidate to say, “Please vote for me, I want your vote”? Now Trump is telling people he doesn’t need their vote. Why? Because the Republican Party has been busy making sure there are hundreds of corrupt election officials in place this time around, that can be counted on to either “find” or listen to allegations of voter irregularities, giving them an excuse to refuse to certify the election. (Rolling Stone has discovered 70 such MAGA officials just in the swing states alone). That will give Mike Johnson the excuse to throw the election back to state legislatures where Republicans outnumber Democratic ones.
 
This is why all this pretense to a monopoly of patriotism by MAGA world is such treasonous treachery—they are using our “sacred election process” to get in power so they can destroy any future elections, while falsely accusing the Democrats of plotting to do the very thing they are doing. You can cut the cynicism with a knife. This is why CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) has been holding their conferences in Hungary lately, because this is how Orban got into power and used it to make himself a dictator over a faux democracy. Or the former Marxist Daniel Ortega in Venezuela. Or Putin in Russia. Or a long, long list of other dictators throughout history.

My Head Is Spinning

I’d say the vast majority of Americans are not paying close attention to politics right now, and they have a naïve faith that somehow their democracy will be here forever. Even people in the MAGA camp think somehow Trump is going to save it, not destroy it. That this election seems destined to be nullified no matter who wins may be a fate they are not prepared for, and I fear the atmosphere here will change so suddenly for the worse. It’s best to know now who’s causing all this.
 
Listening to psychopaths like Trump, their delusions, their deliberately-contradictory statements and endless gaslighting can leave you feeling quite disoriented. I know. It’s intended to do that. That’s why you need to listen to people who steadfastly refuse to surrender their brains. Like Rachel Maddow. You may not like the fact that she’s a gay woman and a liberal, but she makes it all so simple to understand:

Notes:

[1] For the moment at least.
[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-roy-cohn-relationship#:~:text=Cohn%20also%20had,pisses%20ice%20water.%E2%80%9D