Remember a guy named Donald Trump? He was President of the United States between 2017 and 2021. And every once in a while, he still pops up at some fairgrounds or a local airport, talks for an hour about how the Fake News is the enemy of the people, sells his MAGA hats, plays some patriotic country music and mentions ‘crazy’ Nancy Pelosi’ at least six times in his speech.
I watched his performance yesterday in Mendon, IL a small town about midway between Chicago and Kansas City with a population which is, according to the Census, 99.6% White. I suspect that just about every resident in Mendon is also a member of one of the town’s five Evangelical congregations. A town with less than one thousand residents with five, separate Evangelical congregations? Not bad.
Who else showed up at this rally to entertain the crowd? The pillow guy Lindell, who no doubt hands out coupons to get a discount when you buy something on his website. And then there was Lauren Boebert from Colorado who forgot to bring along her AR-15.
In case you didn’t know it, for all his bullshit about protecting the 2nd Amendment, you can’t bring a gun into a Trump event.
Trump went through his usual shtick about how terrible things have become, how all the news about a strong economy is a fake, how the ‘unselect’ committee is just telling lie after lie, how border security has collapsed, how the judges he got onto the Supreme Court were protecting life and 2d-Amendment rights, so on and so forth.
But what I found new and different in this speech was a long and rambling spiel about the threat not from critical race theory but – ready? – from the crazies promoting transgender ‘rights.’ He went on and on about how women are being forced to compete in sports against men in women’s bodies and why this is just another example of how the ‘radical Left’ and the Democrat party wants to ‘control you and everything you think and do.’
Now I can understand why someone would get up in front of a political rally in a town with five Evangelical churches and talk about 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’ I can also understand someone getting up in front of the same audience and ranting about defunding the police or trying to push critical race theory in public schools.
But spending five of forty-five minutes complaining about letting men compete in women’s sports after they have ‘changed their bodies’ as an assault on women’s ‘rights?’ This is how Trump thinks he can overcome polls which show that two-thirds of suburban women support the right to choose?
The blue team has a very simple task ahead of them for the upcoming November vote. We need to make sure that everyone understands that the pro-choice issue is a decision that can only be made by a woman and her physician and shouldn’t be left up to politicians or political ideologues. Stacey Abrams, who is from a religious, pro-life family background, announced this position last week and it’s a perfect response to Trump and the MAGA crazies who show up at his rallies wearing those stupid hats.
Trump made one other statement that I found not just interesting but even bizarre. He told the crowd that being a Republican meant that you were a member of the political party which gave America Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln and -ready? – Charlton Heston! Trump couldn’t have really said that, but he did.
And the POS/GOP is still saying that Biden’s the demented one?