Trump delivers a speech in Philadelphia on Saturday (YouTube)
If there was any question about Donald Trump's fitness to serve as president, the candidate conveniently opened his mouth over the weekend and erased any doubt. During a Saturday campaign swing through Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, Trump must have set a record for most inane, ignorant, and insipid remarks by a major-party presidential candidate. If you are a serious voter who believes America needs a president with serious credentials and ideas, you will come away from an account of Trump's most recent utterances convinced that he is NOT that guy.
Let's turn to Owen Levine, of The Daily Beast, whose account offers proof that Trump suffers from Foot In Mouth Disease -- perhaps the most outrageous case of it to ever appear on the American political stage. Under the headline "Trump’s New Promises: ‘Immunity’ for Cops, an Iron Dome, Cheaper Bacon," Levine writes of a candidate, one who has a habit of talking too much, watching his rhetoric veer wildly off the rails.
Trump's "promises" are based on serious issues, but his remarks on them are about as unserious as the mind can imagine. It would have been like a comedy routine gone horribly awry had Trump not made it clear he was offering up ideas as part of an attempt at legitimate political discourse. Levine provides details on campaign stops that must have left audiences -- assuming they were paying attention -- scratching their heads. From The Daily Beast report:
Police will have “immunity” to be rough with suspects, migrants may or may not be herded into a “fighting league” akin to the UFC, and bacon will be cheaper if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election—according to him.
The former president work-shopped some new lines during two campaign events on Saturday. “I’m giving immunity to police all over the country,” he said, a pledge that he repeated to supporters in both Washington, D.C. , and Philadelphia.
He lamented that police officers are “treated so badly” that they lose their jobs and their pensions “if they do something that’s harsh to stop a crime.”
Trump did not elaborate on what his “immunity” would cover.
He also vowed to ensure that America gets its own “Iron Dome.”
“Israel has it, why don’t we have it?” Trump asked the crowd before telling them he would build a “great Iron Dome” in the U.S. if he is elected. He promised that the construction of the missile-defense system would “create jobs,” though he offered no specifics whatsoever.
That last paragraph involves important matters of domestic and international defense. It would be nice to have a president who knows a thing or two about such matters. But Trump makes it clear he does not have a clue. (How do we know Trump doesn't know what he's talking about? We will address that question, and others related to Trump's promises, shortly.) Trump then turns to his usual tactic of simply lying, blaming Democratic incumbent Joe Biden for a crime rate that supposedly is soaring, when in fact, violent crime is at a near 50-year low. Levine writes:
Elsewhere in his speech, Trump blamed his Democratic opponents for rising crime that he claimed had forced stores to lock up all their soap.
“The pharmacies have to lock up the soap. The soap. You want to buy a little bar of soap? You got to go through a big deal. Open up the glass. Open up the steel. You can’t keep a bar of soap,” he complained.
Bacon, too, has become off-limits for many Americans, he claimed, telling the crowd: “Even I won’t buy bacon anymore, it’s too expensive!”
He said he had presented an idea to UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) President Dana White for a “migrant fighting league,” an idea which Trump said White did not like. Trump then joked, “It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had.” (Trump probably is right about that, although the migrant fighting idea is depraved, in keeping with Trump's tendency to view immigrants as sub-human; it also suggests Dana White would make a better president than Donald Trump/)
The nuttiness in Trump's presentations was just getting started. Levine writes:
Trump also bizarrely told the crowd that he has “wounds all over my body,” assuring them that if he “took this shirt off, you'd see a beautiful, beautiful person but you’d see wounds all over me.”
“I’ve taken a lot of wounds. More than, I suspect, any president ever,” Trump added. Evidently, he has not heard of John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan or William McKinley.
He also assured his audience he will “shut down the Federal Department of Education,” before promising to spend less than “half” of what President Biden is currently spending on education.
“There will be two people in Washington, the two people will make sure that, we will have to guarantee that they are teaching a little English,” Trump said of his plan for the Department of Education.
Trump was not concerned about voter turnout, telling the audience, “we don’t need the votes, we have the votes. I don’t care, all we need to do is guard the votes... I want the steal stopped.”
Why do we know Trump is resorting to word salads -- with little intellectual value for his listeners -- and how do we know his comments make him unfit to be president? We will address those questions and more in an upcoming post.
(To be continued)
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