The least of it

 

"Now if I don't get elected, it's gonna be a bloodbath for the whole -- that's going to be the least of it.  It's going to be a bloodbath for the country, that'll be the least of it."

Close your eyes.  Imagine Joe Biden inserting that sentence into his "angry, partisan" State of the Union message.  Half the Congress would be howling for the 25th Amendment, the other half would be furiously scribbling articles of impeachment.  Including many Democrats.  

It was, of course, politics as usual 2024 as Trump raged, stumbled, lied and ranted in Vandalia, Ohio, a name that could have been invented by Philip Roth or Sinclair Lewis for a satirical novel.  Even the Vandals were confused when he described how "Joe Biden won against Barack Hussein Obama, has anyone ever heard of him?  Every swing state, Biden beat Obama, but in every other state he got killed."  What the fuck?  They were more comfortable with his description of migrants:  "I don't know if you call them people, in some cases they're not people, in my opinion, but I'm not allowed to say that because the radical left says that's a terrible thing to say..."  No, not the radical left, all sentient humans on this side of senile collapse.  "I'm not allowed to say that" is a favorite theme, although he said it, they heard it, the microphone was working fine.    

It led right into Self-Pitying Trump, the most persecuted president in history.  Worse than Jackson, whose poor wife "died of a broken heart" over his treatment.  Worse than Lincoln, "in all fairness, he did have a civil war" and was, if memory serves, shot in the head.  If this is the history they teach at New York Military Academy, its accreditation should be revoked.  It's surprising that he never invokes Nixon, driven from office after a "second-rate burglary." 

Anyway, migrants are no longer "poisoning the blood" of America -- maybe Stephen Miller or some other eminence convinced him that's a little too Hitler -- now "these are animals, OK? and we have to stop it."  It's acceptable to shoot animals if they pose a danger to you.  Greg Abbott is way ahead of him.

The Guardian charitably suggested that Teleprompters were "seemingly disabled by high winds," but that doesn't explain the climactic outburst.  In the midst of promising "a one hundred percent tariff" on every imported car (lots of auto workers in Ohio) he went on, "Now if I don't get elected it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole.  That's gonna be the least of it.  It's gonna be a bloodbath for the country."  This was the signal for the Trump explainers to step up:  "An extension of Trump's comments about imported cars."  (Steven Cheung) "You could also look at the definition of bloodbath and it could be an economic disaster."  (Senator Bill Cassidy, R-LA)  "...the impact of imports devastating the American automotive industry." (Mike Pence)  The New York Times encouraged this interpretation because of course they did.  Earlier this week, Pence declined to endorse Trump but said it was because of his refusal to address the deficit, etc., etc.  Even now he won't say, "He tried to get me killed!"

People who aren't desperate to appease Trump know "bloodbath" is not a metaphor for lost jobs at GM.  (Unimpressed, the UAW has endorsed Joe Biden.)  We can read, and we have read about the Heritage Foundation's 2025 Project for Making America Fascist Forever.  We can hear what Trump and his stooges have already promised about mass deportations, detention camps, martial law and being "a dictator on day one."  We know that if the Supreme Court, already stuffed with rightwing operatives, gives in to its instincts and creates "presidential immunity," Biden would never use it but Trump would never stop.  "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters," he proclaimed back in 2016 in a shrewd assessment of his idiot supporters.  Did anyone think that was a metaphor, too?  Does anyone think so now? 

The incarcerated January 6 criminals, now invariably called "hostages" and "martyrs," feature in every hate rally via their parody of "The Star-Spangled Banner."  It's called "Justice for All" and I refuse to link to it because I'm sure Trump has figured out how to collect royalties on every play.  You can hear it on iTunes if you have $1.29 to piss away.  Sadly the tune, an old English drinking song, is long in the public domain so there's no one to sue him, as virtually every artist or their estate is doing, most recently Sinead O'Connor.  Trump can't suppress his natural inclination to larceny.  When the Teleprompters stopped working last night he first blamed Biden (who controls the weather, as we know) and then suggested the organizers stiff the contractors, as if they were plumbers or carpenters or undocumented immigrants who had worked on one of his ugly buildings.

I don't know why Trump was in such an ugly mood.  He's had a pretty good week for a career criminal.  Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg agreed to delay the start of the Stormy Daniels bribe-money case for thirty days, which wasn't good enough.  Judge McAfee dressed down Fani Willis for "bad choices" before allowing her to continue as prosecutor in the RICO/election interference case minus three charges.  Despite credible testimony from Brian Butler about the stolen documents, Merrick Garland is moving as glacially as ever to find them.  Judge Cannon refused to dismiss the charges, but she's not speeding up the case either, and the Flying Alitos can't even start to hear arguments about "presidential immunity" until a month from never.  Robert K. Hur did his best to smear Biden before the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee served him up with a side of coleslaw.  I'm guessing he's no longer on Trump's attorney general shortlist.  

  Timothy Snyder has this to say today about "the strongman fantasy":

"Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.  He won't.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something.  But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it."

One more quote, from Dr. Mary Trump:  "Donald Trump does not deserve the benefit of the doubt and this isn't a fucking joke.  His statement is both a threat and a promise.  The corporate media needs to start acting accordingly."  

Trump's offers a dictatorship or a bloodbath.  There is a third choice:  four more years of this imperfect, exasperating, occasionally thrilling democracy.  You don't have to like everything Joe Biden has done or not done about Gaza, about climate change, about Haiti, immigration, student debt or fucking TikTok.  You just need to remember that with Biden we get to do this again in 2028.