So, today, for the second day in a row, we are treated to the faint stirrings from the political media about the possibility that Trump isn’t going to run in 2024 because he’s not quite God’s gift to the GOP that he would like to pretend to be.
This narrative, of course, isn’t yet being produced by the fake news media, like The ‘failing” New York Times or CNN. Those organizations are still devoted to the idea that Trump has a ‘base’ which is so strong and so devoted that nobody else in the GOP could ever compete with him.
Yesterday, the idea that Trump shouldn’t be the 2024 GOP standard-bearer was floated by The Hill, in an article that quoted ‘unnamed’ members of the GOP Senate caucus. Today’s article in the BBC, however, quoted and named several GOP influencers and party stalwarts in Iowa, who weren’t all that happy about Trump showing up and shooting his mouth off for nearly two hours on Saturday night.
Now compare the people interviewed by the BBC to the three idiots at the Iowa rally who were caught on video by CNN. We first had two teenagers who were too busy giggling to say anything at all. Then we had this crazy lady who repeated that she ‘wasn’t going to take it any more’ again and again.
This is the ‘base’ which CNN believes will stand behind Trump all the way to the bitter end? These are the kind of people who would fork over ten grand for a photo op with Trump’s son during his Magical Mystery – oops! – I mean American Freedom Tour?
And by the way, if you don’t mind me asking, exactly what is this ‘it’ that all these devoted fans of Donald Trump aren’t going to take any more? Is ‘it’ the vaccination mandate that Joe wants to impose on employers with companies that have payrolls with 100 employees or more? Is ‘it’ the refusal of the Biden Administration to stop building that good-for-nothing Mexican wall? Is ‘it’ the hordes of Taliban-trained terrorists that we have been airlifting into the United States?
Yesterday I received a note from a good friend who politely chastised me for raising negatives about the ten grand that someone can pay to get a VIP treatment on the American Freedom Tour. After all, this friend told me, he had received emails when Obama was President giving him the opportunity to meet and greet Obama, but the cost was more than the ten thousand bucks that someone would have to lay out on the American Freedom Tour.
But if you chipped in twenty-five thou or whatever you had to pay to get a selfie with Barack, at least you were standing next to a real, live President of the United States. What does ten thou get you on the Freedom Tour? A picture with Trump’s idiot son? Give me a friggin’ break.
The point is that people show up at Trump’s rallies because it’s something to do. They want to drive a few hours, maybe buy a t-shirt or a hat, certainly eat a hot dog and some fries, then go back home and say to the neighbors, “Guess where I’ve been?”
Because I’m in the gun business, I know a lot of guys who voted for Trump. Most of them voted for him the way I vote – they went into the booth and no matter whose name is on the ballot they pull the GOP lever and vote the whole line. I’ve been doing exactly the same thing with the Democratic lever since I voted in 1968 for the first time. Am I really that old?
But every once in a while, one of the gun guys will tell me that he voted for Trump both times because “he’s authentic,” or “he really means what he says.”
Those happen to be code words, and they are code words which are used by people who would like to say the word ‘nig*er’ in public, but you can’t do that anymore. You can’t even say that word in a gun shop, and if you say it at home, your kids, who have been brainwashed by the #MeToo gang who control the local school board, will tell you to ‘take it outside’ if you want to talk like that.
So, what you are left with is getting in your truck and riding around town with your Trump-2024 flag flapping in the breeze and proudly wearing your MAGA shirt.
Don’t worry. By next year at this time, you’ll be able to sell both of those items at the tag sale which you do every mid-October to clean the garage out of some of the junk.