10/22/24

Election countdown - 2 weeks left
TRUMP’S VULGAR FABLE ABOUT A GOLFER’S PENIS WON’T DEFEAT HIM. BUT AMERICAN VOTERS CAN.

I THOUGHT – STUPIDLY – that when Donald Trump told a political rally last Saturday that the late golf icon, Arnold Palmer, had a substantial penis, and, later, at the same event, he called his opponent a “shit,” those would be major developments in the campaign.
     Trump’s behavior was so awful and so unseemly that the rally story had to have implications for the election, and at the very least, it would have a longer than usual life in the news cycle.
      Because it was profane and vulgar.
      Because it showed Trump is continuing to lose his grip. (Or that he's not).
     Because it was one of those simple to understand parables that explains so much about why Trump should not be president.
     If Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, had done that sort of thing, it would have been the finale act of her campaign – Curtains for Kamala.
     As it was, I saw only one really good story about the rally,  in the Washington Post, although even in that paper, it never got top billing; the New York Times “explained” it academically as another Trumpian visit to the sewer. And NPR at one point mentioned that Trump had described Palmer’s “anatomy,” without saying which part.
     I am embarrassed to say I was surprised and genuinely shocked that he would discuss somebody’s dick and that he would describe his rival as poop.
     And at the very least, I expected that the story would be talk of the liberal press, the liberal blogs, the liberal podcasts. But it faded quickly in the ongoing blizzard of other “news.” Did you know, for example, that the next day Donald Trump dished out french fries at a staged visit to a McDonald’s restaurant?
      If you've read this far, you’re probably saying : “Where have you been the last nine years? Nothing that Donald John Trump does or says matters. Don’t you know that? By now?”
     Even worse, a remote part of my brain involuntarily continues to expect Donald Trump to self-extinguish, so that sooner than later he will go too far, and that suddenly there will be a national consensus that whatever the elusive “too far” is, Trump will reach that threshold, and that will be that.
     Of course, that's not going to happen. Donald Trump is not going to bring Donald Trump down. Which doesn’t mean that Donald Trump is invincible – only that Donald Trump won’t be the one to do himself in.

I’D LIKE TO LINGER in the Trump gutter briefly. Both his Long Schlong Story and his Harris-Is-A-Shit assessment tell us much about the man, who, according to the polls, has at least a 50-50 chance of becoming president – as we mark the two week point before Election Day.
    I would add this warning:  we should not take Trump at his word that Arnold Palmer had an outsized penis. Trump is a serial, pathological liar, and we should always presume he's making up stuff until we know otherwise.
     I’m not even sure  how you'd begin to fact-check this story, or whether PolitiFact or similar organizations have tried to.

ARNOLD PALMER, RIGHT, with Palmer statue at Laurel Valley Golf Course, Ligonier, PA, near Latrobe

     Palmer’s Wikipedia page makes no mention.
     I suppose someone could ask members of his family or other golfers, whom Trump claims were witnesses to the phenomenon.  
     It’s possible there are biographies that include a chapter or two. Or, maybe there’s an archival edition of Golf Digest with insights.
     But for our purposes, size is not the main issue; it’s the rudeness and Trump's obvious delight in telling the fable.          
     Trump’s rally was in Pennsylvania, the most important of the seven battleground states, specifically in the community of Latrobe, which was Palmer’s hometown. Palmer, who won 62 PGA Tour titles,  died in 2016 at age 87.

        Here’s how Trump's story played out, and you can see it yourself on a C-Span video by clicking on this link: 
     Trump spent a good 10 minutes extolling Palmer’s golfing career. But you could tell all of that background was just a long-winded introduction to the story that he really wanted to tell:

 So, you know, I've been here before and I've told the story before, not in this kind of detail, because, you know, you have these teleprompters. If I would read it off a teleprompter, it wouldn't be so good, right? And  it would be a lot shorter. It wouldn't be as good. And I didn't want to do that. I said when I come here, I'm going to tell the real story of Arnold, but Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women and I love women. (Crowd cheers)

But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all-man. This man was strong and tough, and I refused to say it; but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said: “Oh, my God, that's unbelievable.” (Laughter). I had to say it. I have to say we have women that are highly sophisticated here. But they used to look at Arnold (garbled). But he was really something special. Arnold was something special. So I just want to tell you, you're very lucky, the  people that live in Latrobe.

And it's an honor for me to be here, because of him. And he was actually, he was a great man, and I don't think there would be golf to this, to the extent that you have it today. It probably wouldn't be that way without the great Arnold Palmer. So enjoy it. Everybody enjoy it. And I had to tell you the shower part of it because it's, it's true. What can I tell? We want to be honest, we want to be upfront. It's true.

     Again, you and I don’t know that “it’s true.” What’s also not clear is why Trump or anyone else would want to tell this story in public (or private).
     Did he want the people of Latrobe to know an important historic detail? Certainly, the folks at the rally and maybe the nation watching on TV will never be able to “unhear” it. Did Trump want the world of golf to know? Did he want us to believe that long ago golfers took showers and that they made sure they checked out the size of other people's equipment?
     Maybe, it's just that an old man,  with the brain of a middle-schooler,  likes to talk to talk dirty,  so that he'll be noticed.

IT WOULD BE UNFAIR to say that Trump limited his remarks to a supposedly legendary body part. His rally went on for more than an hour, and as usual, Trump zigzagged from topic to topic. Immigrants are drug dealers, murderers and mental patients. Joe Biden has been a foreign policy failure. Recently, “Bibi” Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, phoned Trump. Elon Musk is a genius; tariffs will push the economy into high gear.
     At one point, Trump apparently caught a glimpse of himself in a TV monitor, prompting this remark:

  I’m looking at my hair up there. Let’s say, “Oh, I don’t like it. I don’t like it. Excuse me. I’m going to recomb my hair.” Do you mind? I’ll leave the stage for five minutes. I’m going to recomb my hair.”

      Trump apparently had second thoughts about ducking the spotlight for the recomb.
      Lest anyone forget that he has twice escaped assassination attempts, he noted that his Secret Service protection has increased – and he turned that point into another opportunity to reference Palmer.

 They give you a little extra security now. It has, you know, hey, I got more machine guns than I've ever seen in my. Look at these guys. Hey, yay, yay. I got more machine guns. I never saw guns like that. I said to my son, Don, he knows a lot about guns and Eric knows – they are great shots; they really understand. I said, “What kind of a gun is that?” They said, “Dad, you don't even want to know.” They are serious guns. We got more guys than … every one of them is like central casting, too. Holy. I'm looking -they look like Arnold Palmer. They look like Arnold; can't look better than Arnold.

AND, OF COURSE, TRUMP made many mentions of Kamala Harris. Here’s one, in which he compared her to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and managed to get in a barnyard word:

  Bernie is radical left and this one, Kamala, is further left than them. So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you've had enough, that you just can't take it anymore. We can't stand you. You're a shit vice president, the worst. You're the worst. Vice President Kamala, you're fired. Get the hell out of here, you're fired. Get out of here, get the hell out of here.

     If Harris had discussed a man's private parts, that would probably end her chances of becoming the first woman president.
     If she said that Trump had been “a shit President,” that would have been big news and reason for much worry, despair and critical editorials.
     I don’t know why Trump gets away with it all. He tried to overthrow an election. He’s been convicted of falsifying records to cover up payments to a porn star. He wants to let global warming destroy the planet. He’s a liar, a business cheat, a misogynist and a bigot. He proposes detaining and expelling millions of immigrants. He sent  Russia's Vladimir Putin Covid drug tests during the pandemic.
     Here’s the bottom line:
     The only way we are going to be free of Trump is to defeat him in the election, which ends just two weeks from now on Nov. 5.
     Donald Trump won’t rid America of Donald Trump.
     But American voters can.