The Witness Chronicles, June 16, 2024

The crazy talk is adding up

Photo by Chase Baker on Unsplash

This is a reader supported newsletter. Please consider helping out by upgrading to a paid subscription or donating a small amount through Buy Me A Coffee, a site for small financial contributions. Thanks, ME

Trump Crazy Talk

I’m trying to collect it but mainstream media barely touches it

I read a lot of news and I try to parse the legitimacy of the sources I get served up to me, avoiding those with overt bias like The Washington Review (far right) and DailyKos (wacky left). Donald Trump has been talking a lot this week but try to find complete transcripts anywhere.

Instead we get teasers. For example, when Trump met privately with Republican Congress members this week in Washington they expected policy and strategy. By most reports they got a rambling shopping list of grievances, threats, and pure off the wall weirdness and some of the faithful were shaken by what they witnessed. Or so the media implies.

One tidbit was Trump talking about Taylor Swift, who he seems to have some kind of fetish over: “ “Why would she endorse this dope,” Trump wondered, per CNN. “He doesn’t know how to get off a stage.”

And:

“In one bizarre moment, Trump called Pelosi’s daughter a “wacko” and then claimed her daughter once told him that he and the former House speaker would have had a “great romance” in another life, according to a lawmaker in the room..”

~ CNN reporting on Trump’s closed door conversation with Congressional Republicans, 6/13/24

And the Post today seems to have ignored a similar story of Trump meeting with 80 corporate CEOs from the largest companies in America. It was an attempt to mend bridges going back to his 2017 remarks about the Charlottesville fascist rally when he called neo Nazis decent people. And a lot of those CEOs backed away as fast as they could.

But Trump apparently continued his theme of victimhood, couldn’t speak about policy, and generally freaked out attendees who were shocked by his inarticulate rambling, with the general consensus being that he ‘doesn’t know anything’.

When a room full of men and women who basically control much of our economy are disturbed by the Republican Candidate’s inability to articulate anything, something bad is obviously going on here. That should have been a friendly crowd, like the GOP Congress members he met with.

And then there was this from a rally in Las Vegas when his teleprompter failed, an example of him improvising which gives us a glimpse into…something:

‘As he was talking about how much he dislikes electric boats, he said he'd asked someone at a boat company, "What would happen if the boat sank, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater and there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over [...] Do I get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark?" via YouTube.’

And then there was this about a major city in a state he must win and the location of the Republican National Convention next month:

““Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city,” Trump is reported to have said on Thursday.”

~ Punchbowl News, 6/13/24

I apologize for the hodge-podge nature of this piece but while these events were covered by multiple news outlets, we only get snippets of what seems to be going on. I don’t have the resources but if I did I think I’d be trying to catalog as much of this as possible. I’m certain someone must be but I haven’t found it yet.

When you consider these samplings are just the products of a single week, we have a real problem here and it is not mere speculation by a biased writer. The man who would be President is either severely disturbed or past the early stage of dementia. Electrocution, sharks, Taylor Swift?

If Trump is cognitively failing, as it appears, we should feel sorry for him and hope he gets help. But if his Party continues to turn a blind eye to his decline, they should be severely punished at the polls in November.

Now, there is an event coming up that may bring this all into focus, the debate on June 27, which as of today is still on, though I will be shocked if Trump shows up. I have to believe that his handlers are struggling to get him to call it off, but it sounds like their ability to rein him in is extremely limited.

Unpredictability in a political candidate is a major problem for his campaign and party in a tight race. But it looks like we are far beyond unpredictability and venturing into territory never before seen in a major election, not to mention the next Presidency.

I don’t know about you but this scares the hell out of me, all of it, not only Trump but his enablers in his Party who seem determined to commit political suicide in his name.

~ I write The Grasshopper, an occasional letter on the creative life and it’s sister, mostly daily publication The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate. They share a free and paid subscription. I also write The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. I don’t paywall any content in these, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your support with a paid subscription helps make that happen.

If you want to show support but don’t want to commit to a subscription, you can always buy me a coffee!

Believe me, it makes my day. M