Alan Zendell, August 2, 2024

We’ve watched Donald Trump’s antics long enough to know that he thinks he’s wonderfully subtle. The master wordsmith who can barely put an English sentence together does have one talent in that area. He has decades of experience, thanks to his disgraced former attorney and mentor, Roy Cohn, who taught him how to say things without quite saying them. The idea was to always leave the door open for another possible interpretation so he could avoid being sued. How many times have we heard Trump say something outrageously crass and slanderous and then disavow it like a kid who just pulled his hand out of the cookie jar?

Another of his disgraced former attorneys, Michael Cohen, explained how that works during his testimony when he was on trial and ultimately convicted of fraud. Trump would give him benign-sounding instructions like, “fix this,” and Cohen would be expected to read between the lines and understand that that meant, “destroy so-and-so,” or “make sure the books are fixed.” A rhetorical wink.

These days, Trump dispenses with the wink. He has become so desperate, he no longer masks his intentions. When his handlers and the Republicans who remain true to their basic principles begged Trump to tone down his lies and slanders, he did so for about thirty minutes during his nomination acceptance speech. Then, he told the delirious crowd, “they want me to be nice, but if you don’t mind, I don’t want to be,” and he launched into flinging insults, childish taunts, and of course, more lies and invented nonsense.

Trump touted his hand-picked running mate, J. D. Vance, as a great boon to his ticket, a true MAGA Koolaid drinker. But since then, most of America has decided that Vance is too weird to take seriously. Yesterday, Trump told reporters that Vance is insignificant because vice presidential candidates historically have no effect on the outcome of presidential elections. It was one of those moments when I couldn’t decide whether Trump was purposefully lying or so ignorant he didn’t know he was lying.

2008 wasn’t that long ago, Donald. Is your memory slipping? That summer, Barrack Obama was in a horse race with John McCain. The polls had them virtually tied. McCain was a centrist Conservative who was highly respected by most Americans, including me. Obama was a wonderfully charismatic campaigner, but we knew very little else about him; that is, he was the kind of candidate who scared me, not because he was black, but because charisma in the hands of a skilled unscrupulous politician is dangerous.

I gradually warmed to Obama, largely because of America’s love affair with his wife, Michelle, but I was still on the fence…until McCain was forced to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate. That sealed my vote for Obama, and many strategists believe Palin put Obama over the top. Think about it. If Trump had a stroke the day after he was inaugurated, how would you feel about having Vance as president for four years?

When Kamala Harris labeled Vance “just plain weird,” her audience laughed. She hadn’t intended to be funny, but her description was so apt it stuck. Vance was instantly nullified as a positive force for Trump. It must be driving those remaining principled Republicans crazy. Not only has Trump gotten worse, but Vance doubles down on the worst things Trump says, and where Trump lies and flings insults, most of us shake our heads in wonder when Vance speaks.

Take yesterday, when the multi-nation prisoner exchange was announced. President Biden and Kamala Harris had been working the delicate diplomacy of getting all the countries involved in the deal on the same page for more than three years. Harris was tasked with the trickiest part, convincing Germany to release an assassin they were dead set on keeping in prison. Yet, Goofy Vance claimed the deal happened because Putin was preparing for a second Trump presidency. That’s so far-fetched it defies the imagination. I can’t see how millions of voters laughing at Vance will have no effect on the election.

Picking a running mate like Vance was pure Trump, whose massive ego has him convinced he knows more about everything than anyone else, including generals, physicians, economists, and scientists. All Trump cares about is personal loyalty. There’s no doubt Vance passed that test, but all he brings to the ticket is ridicule and the impossibility of ever calming Trump’s rhetoric.

The difference between 2016, when Trump’s outrageous style worked against both his own party and his Democratic opponent, and 2020, when he angered enough people to lose the election by eight million votes, is that in 2024, Trump might as well be Donald Duck, quacking away incoherently. Wait a couple of weeks, and you’ll see the numbers show Trump starting his long slide into oblivion.

Quack, quack.