Orange Becomes Him
What started out as a certain tragedy for the world is turning out to be a farce. And I couldn’t be more pleased.
In the wind down to this interminable election, like most pundits I have been casting about trying to decide what my closing arguments should be. I cannot tell you just how frustrating a process it has been, simply because one earth-shaking development or factor after another keeps arising, each of which is a mini-firestorm of its own.
But that’s the problem with this eyes-glazing-over, vertigo-inducing circus we call the last nine years of the Trump era. The man is such a firehose of lies, such an avalanche of scandal, threats, false accusation, spectacle, ignorance, indifference to policy and detail, and so much, much more, that one hardly knows what to focus on. Smearing other people, making up false accusations, exaggerating what they say or stand for—this is Donald Trump’s day job. He’s like a walking one-man Ninth Commandment violation (Ex 20:16), spreading clamor, controversy and division wherever he goes.
What would have tanked any other politician’s career are but piffles in the vast, fraudulent criminal and now political career of one Donald John Trump. Barely noticed in the news this past week was the coming forward of two new women alleging sexual assault by him in the past (numbers 27 and 28). Trump, who once said sleeping with your friends’ wives “makes life worth living,” used to bring friends into his office and ply sex cheating confessions out of them while their wives were listening on the speaker phone. What kind of a human being does things like that?
As has been noted many times about this man, we need to stop holding him to a non-standard that has become a double standard. Anthony Weiner’s time in Congress was over when he got caught sending dick pics over the net. Al Franken’s time in the Senate was over when a picture of him pranking a female colleague years ago surfaced.
But that’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans. When a Democrat is caught in a morals charge, they are often pressured to resign or drop out, because they feel they ought to at least try to practice what they preach.
Not Republicans. When it’s one of theirs, their fellow gang bangers circle the wagons. Why? Because as I have argued, they’ve become an organized crime ring. That’s why a corrupt, blatantly-partisan Supreme Court can play with the idea that the President has the right to use his power to arrest or even assassinate his political opponents, because they know that a Democratic President like Joe Biden would never use that power against Donald Trump.
Trump on the other hand would not hesitate. While he lied to the public recently that he never had Hillary Clinton arrested, he left out that it wasn’t for want of trying. He pressured two of his attorney generals to do so, but they said they had nothing to charge her with. He even tried to get Barr to have the entire Biden family arrested, just weeks before the 2020 election.
And it’s not just Trump now. When a reporter asked the brand-new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson about his role as the initiator of the Congressional challenge of the results of the 2020 election, Johnson’s colleagues surrounding him tried to shame the pesky reporter by shouting him down. After all, they were wanting to look like the proverbial cat that landed on his feet, in spite of the spectacle everyone was just dragged through after forcing Kevin McCarthy out.
By his own party. For “working too much with” the Democratic enemy.
This is the poisonous level of cynicism Donald Trump has infected us with. Even for a boy scout, faux-devout man like Mike Johnson.
Again, it took them a whole year to bring themselves to expel George Santos, the stench becoming just too unbearable even for them. Santos was shown to be an imposter within six weeks of his being seated, but it took them that long to pull the trigger. If morals wasn’t enough of a motivation, perhaps expediency eventually became sufficient. Bad optics after all. Republicans have perfected hypocrisy to an art form now, and George Santos is the post-Trumpian picture of the future of the Republican Party.
Decisions, Decisions
As I went through the deer-in-the-headlights experience of figuring out just which controversy to focus on as this election started to wind down, every idea was eclipsed by some new breaking news. Fresh concerns about Trump’s cognitive decline arose after he turned a town hall into a 40-minute music and dancing event. I thought of pointing out that his perhaps all-time favorite number at his rallies, the Village People’s YMCA, was the gayest of all gay anthems ever penned. I’ve wondered if it’s just his way of dumping on his clueless Evangelical supporters.
The other day, new revelations of just how deeply Donald and Jeffrey Epstein worked together in sex trafficking underaged girls was in the news. Epstein, along with his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the notorious Mossad spy, was alleged to have had a contract with Israeli intelligence, to videotape as many prominent Western men as possible in kompromat sex sessions with underaged girls, because that was like, so much more blackmailable. Some ally.
I even considered writing about the former friendship between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The Clintons were invited to Mar-a-Lago for Donald and Melania’s wedding in 2005. I thought of focusing on that because of what I mentioned above, that he pressured two of his Attorney Generals (Sessions and Barr) to have her arrested.
They refused, simply because they could not come up with any charges against her. But the point is, what kind of a man would seek to have his own friend arrested for the “crime” of being the other party’s nominee? How do you think such a ruthless predator would treat his enemies?
The Big Picture
I cannot tell you the reams of article copy I have “left on the cutting room floor,” not just with this article, but all year now, simply because there’s so much there, the reader would lose focus. As a result, I decided to limit myself to the ones that were “bigger” and more important in the vast scheme of things, in a desperate attempt to remind people that this is an election of the President of the United States, putatively the most powerful single position in the world.
As such, you have to remember the big picture. And this time, it’s not just about any candidate, but one that nearly wrecked the Constitution his first time in there, and is now vowing to be a full-blown dictator on Day One. But even there my writings would start devolving into rants, roaming around from one thing to another in an out-of-control stream of consciousness pattern, similar to Trump’s ridiculous “Weave,” his pathetic attempt to explain away his ADD-addled brain.
This effect is but one more parallel to how Donald Trump is the ultimate false messiah of our time, and on his way to fulfilling the prophecies about the character this site is dedicated to unveiling. As it was said of Jesus Christ before him (Jn 21:25), “the whole world could not contain the books that could be written” about this professional scoundrel. He is such a compendium of evil, such a word cloud of vile traits as I said in a recent article, with a rap sheet a mile long that you could go on forever about just how awful a person he is.
So, OK, something big, like foreign policy, war and peace, economic issues. One thought was to focus on the revelation in Bob Woodward’s latest book, that during the early days of the Pandemic, when Americans could not get precious COVID test machines, Trump sent several to Putin, the murderous Russian dictator, and has had seven illegal phone calls to him since he left office.[1] This I wanted to tie into one of my most foundational “bottom lines” on this man, that he is an utter traitor, a literal Russian Agent of Chaos, and has been since 1987.
Then came the New York Times taped interviews with four-star Marine General John Kelly, former Homeland Security Secretary, then Trump’s longest-serving Chief-of-Staff. You don’t get any closer to working with the President than that position. Kelly carefully defined what a fascist is, then said Donald Trump “met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”
“[Kelly] discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as “losers” and “suckers” — comments first reported in 2020 by The Atlantic.”
He went on to say that Trump often longed to have “the kind of generals that Hitler had,” meaning obedient ones. (There was a name for them at Nuremberg—“good Germans,” yet they still hung.) Kelly was joining the chorus of half of Donald Trump’s top former officials and aides [2] who refuse to endorse him this time around.
General Mark Milley, Trump-appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had already referred to him as a “wannabe dictator,” and “fascist to his core.” Trump for his part said Milley ought to be executed for treason. As for Kelly, he tweeted that he was a “degenerate” and a “lowlife” in his typical, classy and oh-so-Presidential style. Why does this guy always remind me of the bramble bush who’s forever threatening to burn down the cedars of Lebanon (Judges 9:15)?[3]
Going Back To Gotham
Yes, Gotham. Have you ever gotten the impression Donald Trump thinks he’s billionaire genius Bruce Wayne, fighting the gangsters of Gotham as the Caped Crusader? That Roger Stone is his Joker and Rudy Giuliani the Penguin?
Trump certainly does seem to live the life of a fantasist, or at least tries to keep declaring a false reality until it becomes true, Word of Faith style. Maybe Paula White taught him that, but I suspect it’s his misconstrued interpretation of mind science philosophy.
Speaking of Paula White, she recently interviewed Trump in front of a huge gathering of Evangelical “leaders.” One of the questions was about his personal faith and what “faith” means to him. He of course had no answer since he has none, but he did manage to ramble on about how he helped her with real estate advice and referred to her ministry as a business.[4] The ending of this embarrassing display of pastoral cluelessness is especially worth watching, because after they finish praying for him, they play YMCA in his honor.
I’ve wondered at times if Trump has this song at all his rallies as a way of mocking his religious followers (which it is well known he despises). He does, after all, pride himself on being a pop culture hipster, up on all the zeitgeist of the times, certainly the club scene of the 70s and 80s when this song was such a gay world insider joke. The whole clip is worth watching. It features Gary Bauer, one-time Evangelical aspirant to the Presidency, complaining from the audience about Biden administration indifference to transgender men competing in women’s sports. This is their amateur hour idea of political priorities. From tragedy to farce.
But back to Gotham. I could parlay this back shift as my version of “The Weave,” but but candor and humility compel me to admit that I’m just rambling and venting now, and I’m too exhausted at this point to bother to make it any smoother.
I concede I could have done an interesting deep dive into the long-standing track record of Trumpian admiration for Adolph Hitler alone.[5] But then came the Madison Square Garden rally of Sunday, Oct. 27. Trump, you see, just couldn’t resist dragging us down even further into a cultural “shithole” by replicating the 1939 literal Nazi rally that filled the Garden in the lead up to World War II.[6]
At that “let the racism rip” night, speakers couldn’t hold back demonstrating what they call their “love fest”:
Dana White: “She is some sick bastard that Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a bitch! The whole fucking party a bunch of degenerates…Jew haters and low lifes.”
Rudy Giuliani: “They are on the side of the terrorists!…It’s kind of funny, they tried everything else, and now they’re trying to kill him. They better not try again,” implying that Trump’s two right-wing assassins were somehow hired by the Democrats.[7] Very responsible.
Grant Cardone, real estate mogul, referencing Kamala Harris: “Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country.”
Trump friend David Rem: “She is the Devil, whoever screamed that out. She is the Antichrist,” holding up a crucifix, as if to ward off the demons that accompany the mention of her name.[8]
But what proved to be the (finally!, possible!) bridge too far, even for Donald Trump, that just might move the needle a bit, was standup roast comic Tony Hinchcliffe, who said point blank that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage,” and mentioned a black guy carving up a watermelon for Halloween. It was a faux pas that may yet prove to swing many states, given the firestorm of outrage that erupted from the Puerto Rican community the next day.
Yet when Sean Hannity lobbed Trump some softballs the next day to give him a chance to apologize, he of course refused to do so. Being infallible, he never has to. Besides, it’s what Roy Cohn drove into his head—“admit nothing/ deny everything.” Ever since then, his excuse consistently has been that he “doesn’t know who let him out there,” that “I didn’t hear the joke,” “I don’t know who this guy is,” etc.
But meaning just what? That he can’t be bothered to find out? That this control freak extraordinaire is not in charge of anything now? He even had the gall to mutter something about some guy that just “went out there and did a set,” as if he invited himself. Does the buck ever stop here with this guy? So Presidential.
The campaign of course tried to pretend that they didn’t properly vet the guy, yet he had tested out the joke the night before in an appearance. Plus, it came out that there was a joke even more vile that was too much, even for this campaign, and was censored out. No. This was vintage Trump, racist and in your face about it to the end. It’s right in line with his refusal to help Puerto Rico during a hurricane, then going down there to toss paper towel rolls at them.
Blessed False Equivalency
As luck (or Divine Intervention) would have it for them, Joe Biden made two unforced errors thereafter that they immediately pounced on to distract from the damage done. One, Biden waded into the controversy when he should have stayed out of it, and two, he made a garbled statement that sounded like he was saying “Trump’s MAGA followers are the real garbage.” And since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are joined at the hip in Trumpian alternate universe logic, she was to blame too.
These are the kinds of moments MAGA world lives for. When Hillary Clinton made the mistake of telling the truth in 2016 by calling them as a “basket of deplorables,” they enthusiastically wore it like a badge of honor. (More “libtard condescension”). So, the campaign swung into action with a cheap effort at satire, dressing up The Great One in an orange reflector vest to pretend he was a sanitation worker hauling off the garbage.
Too Good To Pass Up
It was here where I thought of doing a pounce myself, dispensing with all the heavy-duty subjects, and having a change of strategy. After all, what is there left about Donald Trump for the public to figure out anyhow? Besides, this incident and another, so perfectly summed up how much of a farce this man’s political career had sunk to.
The first was a week or two earlier. Trump, in his typically obsessed and myopic way, has had “a thing” about Kamala Harris’ claim to have once worked at McDonald’s. Since it wasn’t listed on her law school application, he assumes she must have just made it up. After all, that’s what he would have done. So they cooked up (if you’ll forgive the pun) a stunt whereby this guy, who wouldn’t know what it’s like to have a minimum wage job if his life depended on it, would pretend he was a McDonald’s worker.
To pull it off they needed to literally stage the whole thing. A Trump donor, Derek Giacomantonio, shut down his store in…wait for it, Feasterville, PA, north of Philadelphia. All the drive-through customers were MAGA extras and vetted by the Secret Service. In the script, Trump walks through the door claiming to want a job as a fry man. Sure he does. A teenager then has to show him how to lower the fries into the oil, take them out, salt them, and shake them into bags.
Takes some “real expertise,” noted the ex-Prez. Sure it does. “I wouldn’t mind this job,” he oh-so sincerely offered up. Mind it? He can barely tolerate lowering himself to do these phony stunts pretending he a working class hero let alone have such an actual job. And who can blame him? But he puts up with it because his campaign staff sometimes wear him down enough to get him to humiliate himself this way. At least he sure whines about it often enough in his speeches.
Trump later tweeted that “Lyin’ Kamala Harris is now a CONFIRMED LIAR IN THAT SHE NEVER WORKED FOR McDonald’s…SHE IS A LIAR, NOT A PRESIDENT!” “‘I’ve now worked 15 minutes more than Kamala,’ Trump told reporters out of the drive-thru window on Sunday.”
Well, I’m glad that’s settled. Thus saith The Donald, who is claiming Divine confirmation of such, by virtue of not being struck down by lightning afterwards. I feel reassured.
The event inspired a number of reviews on the local Yelp page, like “Senile old man got bronzer on my fries, didn’t wear gloves,” said a person who left a one-star rating. “Went to this McDonalds to try the new chicken big Mac and was stunned to see a convicted felon operating the drive through. Your company hires felons?”
Such hatred, such disrespect. What’s becoming of our children nowadays? Yelp temporarily shut down the comments to chide that all reviews must be from genuine and not fake customers. OK.
What I found impressive here is how he wore a white dress shirt with a silk tie to the oil vat. And that cute little apron. In this picture, the orange is an accent color. A real man of the people. If you want to read more from a working-class guy on this, you could do worse than this essay.
What I also found so inspirational about all this is the recent pitch from the Trump campaign about how he is going to eliminate all taxes on tips from now on. What they don’t tell you is that when he was President, he tried to get a law passed making it legal for employers to do what they often do anyhow—confiscate employees’ tips.
You see? Presto, problem solved! If there’s no income from tips, you don’t have to pay tax on it! Unless of course, Donald Trump or surrogates accuse you of hiding tips, in which case you may go bankrupt having to prove you didn’t. And be left making $2-3 an hour to balance out tax cuts for billionaires like him.
That attempt never became law because Democrats deleted it from the bill. Why they don’t crow about such things to the rooftops, I don’t know. Trump never wastes an opportunity to take credit for things he never even did.
Yet More Cosplay
The second was this Puerto Rican garbage flap. The Trump campaign, to deflect from the Hinchcliffe disaster and the Dear Leader’s refusal to apologize, went on and got a new garbage truck and plastered “Trump” on the side, naturally. It’s like he just can’t help himself, he’s been doing it for so many decades now. You would think they might put “Biden-Harris” on the side since it’s supposedly full of garbage and they’re hauling it off, or just resist the temptation altogether since all it did was reinsert the Madison Square Garden controversy back into the news cycle.
They then rode around in circles on the tarmac of an airport. As one news organization put it, This is what the Trump campaign has come down to in the home stretch.
What I found most endearing though, was how much more adorable this second outfit was compared to the first. I mean, a garbage man—I’m sorry, “sanitation worker,” I’m so old school—wearing a white shirt and a tie is even more authentic, certain to make that subliminal connection to the average working stiff. And that orange vest, oh so clean, coordinates just perfectly with the bronzer. It even makes that big mouth of his look even whiter.
Please Dear God!
People who have followed my articles this past year may have wondered how I can be so convinced of the prophecies, and yet be trying so hard to dissuade people from voting for this man again. The answer to that dilemma is that, though I’m fascinated by the prophecies, I’m also a human being, and I wouldn’t wish the hell on earth this guy is capable of unleashing on anyone.
I’ve been telling everyone around me how much I’ve never been more hoping to be wrong about something in my life. And truth be told, it seems as of yesterday, Saturday, November 2, there may be a glimmer of hope that Kamala Harris and company may be able to pull this off, maybe even walk away with it. If so, the one slim chance this could work is if they can win so resoundingly that even Trump, Mike Johnson and all their MAGA men can’t put him back together again.
That dirty “Little Secret” Trump alluded to at the MSG rally refers to a procedure whereby Republicans, zealous hypocrites to the end, will try to throw the electoral college process into a fog of uncertainty on December 18. This will be their excuse to leave the real outcome to the House of Representatives where they control more state delegations. Even if the Democrats win back Congress and reverse the process, that will lead to a Supreme Court decision, and we all know how that will turn out.
We’ll have to see how that goes. I’ll write on it if it comes to that. In the meantime, Donald Trump’s sentencing for those 34 felonies is coming up soon. If he gets trounced, maybe our legal system will feel emboldened enough to actually fit him for an orange jump suit. After all, orange is really becoming him lately.
Notes:
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/08/trump-putin-covid-test-machines-bob-woodward The Logan Act makes it a felony for an American citizen or politician to have direct dealings with foreign governments when not a seated public official.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_oppose_the_Donald_Trump_2024_presidential_campaign
[3] Runnerup nominations bouncing around in my head included his threats to use the National Guard or military to arrest the enemy within (apparently the entire Democratic Party), specifically mentioning Nancy Pelosi, her husband and Adam Schiff. Or the suggestion Liz Cheney should die by firing squad of “nine rifles” because she’s a “radical war hawk.” Or Speaker Mike Johnson bragging on video that the first thing they’re going to do when they get back in power is a “massive reform” of Obamacare and “taking a blowtorch” to the regulatory state.
[4] He’s actually right about that.
[5] An admiration that apparently goes back a long way. His wife Ivana once said Donald kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by their bedside.
[6] His campaign of course offered up faux outrage at the comparison, but one who “understands [the power of] riddles” is yet another clue about the Antichrist (Dan 8:23 ESV). It shows you just how close we came to going in that direction if it weren’t for the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt, usually considered the third greatest President in US history behind Washington and Lincoln.
[7] He also implied that Democrats were “not allowing us to pray to God anymore!”
[8] Actually, the best way to avoid the coming of the Antichrist is to vote for a woman, since “he” definitely means a man (Dan 7:25, e.g.).
