Brian Karem’s “Reporter’s Notebook” Trump's Circus of Horrors Continues Donnie the duffer trades his clubs for a ringmaster’s hat as the Republican National Convention showcases the party’s lapdogs, attack dogs and dog whistles Brian J Karem Oct 4 Originally published in Playboy 8/27/2020 Pee-Wee’s Big Top—or as some call it, the Republican National Convention—rolled into town this week featuring QAnon supporters, evangelicals, racists, misogynists and assorted nitwits more often seen working the Tilt-A-Whirl at church carnivals somewhere in the Deep South. In other words, the RNC kicked off its 2020 convention by serving up the same hypocrisy and lies that have been the main course of Trump’s administration since Day One. Children of the South, including those of us from Kentucky, grew up well-versed in this hypocrisy. Where else can you grow up having your parents and politicians teach you that alcohol and marijuana are tools of the devil, while your state leads the country in production of bourbon and “Kentucky Kush”? Thus it is with Donald Trump. He’s taken his cue from the evangelicals of the South who preach about family values while racing through multiple marriages as if they’re in a marathon. They moralize about how we should take care of the unborn and newborns but dispose of their own children like they’re wrappers on the McDonald’s hamburgers they overconsume. Questions? Ask Jerry Falwell Jr., a Trump supporter who likes to watch, or ask Ted Nugent, another infamous Trumper who once proudly sang, “When in doubt, I whip it out.” The first night of the RNC featured fire and brimstone that would make Old Scratch blush. The speakers, including Jim Jordan, who has the morals of a rabid hamster, spewed more lies in one night than the Democrats managed to tell us in four days. It was the night after yet another black man was gunned down by police, yet in her speech Nikki Haley calmly insisted, “America is not a racist country.” At the same time, Trump’s surrogates at the convention claimed he built the best economy in history before the Chinese Communist Party purposely poisoned us with the coronavirus—never fear, Trump will rebuild the economy. Those who wonder what the Republican Party stands for in 2020 had their question answered by the RNC. The party’s platform? Whatever the president wants. We live in “Trump’s America,” as Donald Trump Jr. told us Monday. Anger, hatred and divisiveness ruled the day. Trump stands for free speech, RNC speakers said, but peaceful protests won’t be tolerated. And if you ask President Trump a question he doesn’t like, he has a right to ban you from asking anything else, or even being present before his exalted flatulence. Watching the RNC to try to find anything to change your mind? Perhaps First Amendment attorney Ted Boutrous (the lawyer who beat the White House to restore my press hard pass) had the most apt tweet on what to expect: “Not one single person with even the faintest hint of a modicum of credibility on any issue of public concern to this country is slated to speak at the Republican Party convention. Not one.” As for Trump, on the eve of the convention he tweeted, “The greatest Election Fraud in our history is about to happen.” He has no evidence to back this claim about an election that has yet to occur. He is laying the groundwork for refusing to leave if he loses. As Paul McCartney once sang, “Everybody’s talking about the president / We all chip in for a bag of cement.” The four-day fascist pep rally masquerading as a major political party’s national convention has made a mockery of equal rights and equal justice. As Democratic operative Adam Parkhomenko put it in his Today’s Big Stuff newsletter, “We tried to watch most of last night’s carnival of whining and mediocrity, but we frankly got tired of hearing how not-racist America is while we were waiting to hear if Jacob Blake lived after being shot in the back seven times.” The truth is Trump’s insane actions during the last three and a half years have painted him into a corner. His only remaining move is to energize his shrinking base with fear, to motivate them to vote by scaring them into thinking their lives are at stake if he loses. He’s trying to appeal to suburban housewives, but it’s a hard sell for a misogynist who has advocated grabbing women by the pussy. Trump extended his appeal to the suburban voter (that’s dog-whistle for “white”) by inviting Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the gun-toting St. Louis couple who brandished their weapons in public and then seemed shocked they could be charged with a crime, to speak at the RNC. Yet the entire convention fell short of what we’ve come to expect from a reality-television star. Why not have the McCloskeys speak from a shooting range while displaying their prowess with firearms? Kimberly Guilfoyle—Donald Trump Jr.’s crazed-cheerleader girlfriend, who spoke on the first night of the convention—was the closest to full-on nuts that the Trump show got. Still, she’d have been funnier in front of a tower of flames yelling, “Burn, baby! Burn!!” Don Junior? His speech wasn’t even that high-energy. Sure, he teared up and gesticulated like a ferret on Benzedrine. But if he had instead chugged a Red Bull and vodka while wearing shorts and a tank top that exposed a “Trump’s Amerika!” tattoo, he would have nailed it. Trump’s “crazy” is now just boring. It fails to motivate most of the electorate, playing only to those so far right they believe QAnon is part of the “deep state” and that eating babies and diddling pedophiles is how most people celebrate Christmas. A retired evangelical doctor I know is representative of this group. She refuses to wear a mask anywhere. She believes Dr. Anthony Fauci is a liar who helped manufacture the coronavirus—he was going to get a multimillion-dollar payoff from “his own miracle vaccine.” Bill Gates is in on it too and working with the Chinese Communists to insert microchip tracking into all of us without our knowledge. She swears she’ll vote for Trump “half a dozen times if I have to.” This brand of lunacy is all The Donald has left. Trump has gone so crazy even Kellyanne Conway, mistress of the alternative fact, threw in the towel just before the convention to deal with family matters. Her move, on the eve of destruction (the election), leaves press secretary Kayleigh “Barbie Bobblehead” McEnany and Peter “Never Never Land” Navarro taking up the daily duties of defending Trump. McEnany is neither as smart nor as obstreperous as Conway and comes across like a satanic imp on ether; Navarro leaves the impression of a sad little boy who won’t face reality. That’s the Trump “A” Team. On Saturday Trump tweeted, “The Democrats took the word GOD out of the Pledge of Allegiance at the Democrat National Convention. At first I thought they made a mistake, but it wasn’t. It was done on purpose. Remember Evangelical Christians, and ALL, this is where they are coming from-it’s done. Vote Nov 3!” Twenty minutes later he added: “Why would Suburban Women vote for Biden and the Democrats when Democrat run cities are now rampant with crime (and they aren’t asking the Federal Government for help) which could easily spread to the suburbs, and they will reconstitute, on steroids, their low income suburbs plan!” His lazy slide into insanity was evident last Wednesday in the White House briefing room. When asked about his support of GOP candidates who are QAnon conspiracy theorists, Trump said he didn’t know much about QAnon and its backers—but since they liked him, it was okay. He’s used that rationale for white supremacists as well. This is a guy desperate for love—so desperate that while he was busy searching for a lost golf ball on the back nine of his Virginia golf club this Sunday, he tweeted “Happy Sunday! We want GOD!” Things are looking grim for the aging presidential duffer. His favorite nihilist, Steve Bannon, got popped for fraud. His older sister was surreptitiously taped telling people he’s a pathological liar and unfit for office. Wildfires that have consumed more than a million acres are raging in California. (Apparently residents didn’t get Trump’s memo about raking forests.) More than 180,000 people in the U.S. have died of coronavirus; the Postal Service has become about as effective as the Pony Express without horses; and Kimberly Guilfoyle shouted to an empty stage at the top of her lungs as if hundreds of thousands of people were sitting in front of her that “the best is yet to come.” Trump’s recent trajectory suggests he’s a low-velocity firecracker fizzling out. He’s not even alarming anymore. He’s lost the ability to surprise. He’s merely a banal snore fest. But the RNC cannot change that 2020 is all about Trump. True Republicans long ago abandoned the stage, and some conservatives once considered relatively far right, including former Sen. Jeff Flake, have endorsed Joe Biden. Trump is the ringmaster of his own cancerous political circus, and after three and a half years on the road he is running out of steam. He’s lost his mojo. He’s mentally and physically unable to function, and those left defending him are as vapid and as empty as the king they worship. It isn’t “Trump’s America” no matter how often he preaches it. It is ours. On November 3, we have the chance to reclaim it and close down the Trump traveling circus. Brian Karem Reporter's Notebook is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.