26 June 20
FOCUS: Frank Rich | The Trump Campaign's Gross Political Malpractice
Frank Rich, New York Magazine
Rich writes: "Perhaps the most important thing we learned from Trump's Tulsa fiasco is that there is no Trump campaign."
Frank Rich, New York Magazine
Rich writes: "Perhaps the most important thing we learned from Trump's Tulsa fiasco is that there is no Trump campaign."
EXCERPTS:
Perhaps the most important thing we learned from Trump’s Tulsa fiasco is that there is no Trump campaign. No real political campaign, even for City Council, would let the candidate and his minions repeatedly promise a million attendees at a rally that missed that mark by some 993,800. No real campaign would demolish its unused outdoor stage for that rally’s “overflow” in broad daylight, on camera, as cable news scrounged for images while waiting for the rally to start, rather than wait until after dark to whisk away the humiliating ruins of defeat. No real campaign would let its candidate be seen returning to the White House that night, all alone, his tie undone, his MAGA cap crushed in his hand, a dinner-theater Willy Loman in visible disarray on a walk of shame.
Wasn’t bravura showmanship, especially when appearing on television, supposed to be Trump’s one unassailable gift as a politician? Coming after the ramp embarrassment at West Point — further evidence of the failure of a political advance team to manage the most basic performative elements of election-year stagecraft — Tulsa suggests the wheels are coming off the Trump show.
Someone will get fired, presumably, but as we all know, it doesn’t matter. Now, as in 2016, Trump sees himself as the bearer of the golden gut who always knows best and will override the “experts” who think they know better. But physically and mentally, he’s not the guy he was four years ago, he’s not facing the same opponent he did four years ago, and only the truest of believers can ignore what’s happened in America on his watch.
Those true believers will never betray him. “Give me liberty or give me corona,” one middle-age MAGA fan in Tulsa told the Times. These people are literally willing to die for their dear leader. They were happy to camp out much of a week in punishing heat and torrential rain, to expose themselves to a deadly disease, to be sure to get good seats Saturday night. But this loyal hard core represents roughly a third of the country — the same percentage of seats they filled in the 19,000-seat BOK Center.
“Botched” doesn’t begin to describe Barr’s sub-Machiavellian move at the SDNY. It takes a certain amount of idiocy to stage a Saturday Night Massacre on Friday night. Richard Nixon knew that by staging a coup on Saturday night, you catch the Sunday television talk shows and newspapers off-guard, whereas, if you do it Friday night, you tee up the media for a full weekend of frenzy.
Not for the first time — or the thousandth, perhaps — America has been rescued from complete authoritarian rule by the sheer incompetence of Trump and his lieutenants, who are rarely better at executing their extralegal maneuvers than they are at their rare forays into legal governance. But Nadler’s threats will go nowhere. Barr will continue to serve his master in any way he can, assuring get-out-of-jail-free cards for the likes of Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Rudy Giuliani while continuing to hollow out civil-rights enforcement at Justice even as law-enforcement criminality is given a pass. America has an attorney general who seems far more at home in a bunker with a lawless leader than in any Washington edifice that stands for our Constitution.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.