If this election campaign were an episode of “Star Trek”—we should be so lucky—we’d be hearing from Scotty pretty soon: “I dannea if she can take any more, Captain!”
Eleven days ago one of the candidates released a campaign photo of himself doing something that no normal, sane person would ever do.
If some normal sane person were somehow tricked into pulling this stunt—standing among the graves at Arlington National Cemetery, grinning like an ape, with his diminutive thumb raised—and was photographed in the act, they’d probably assume it was for blackmail purposes, and hire a gumshoe to deep-six the evidence.
We are talking, however, about the presidential standard bearer of the Party of Lincoln. To paraphrase Mr. Praline speaking of the Norwegian Blue, sane and normal don’t enter into it.
This particular farce began eleven days ago, a near eternity in today’s politics. Since then the perpetrator has thrown out enough red herrings to choke a school of orcas.
We can say this: first, according to the campaign, nothing happened. The something happened, but it wasn’t their fault: some employee of the Arlington National Cemetery had a mental health episode. Then the campaign was going to release a video of the incident. Then, the last we heard, or paid any attention to, there would be no video release because there had been no incident.
It might be possible, if one had the time, to reconstruct from available accounts, a reasonably accurate narrative of what actually went on. With that established, one could then compare that narrative with the shifting account given out by the campaign. Then that entire effort could be filed under the heading, “Wasted Time”—which the campaign could then rightly chalk up as a win.
By parlaying an invitation from a bereaved family into a plausibly-deniable campaign ad, the campaign reaped a headline blizzard. Political opponents sputtered impotently, as usual, which reminded the base to hate them all the more. The ensuing cloud of dust further obscured the GOP candidate’s role in the Afghan withdrawal. In 2020, he forced the Afghan government to agree to turn loose 5,000 Taliban prisoners, many of whom were known terrorists.
The benefits of such hullabaloos go on spreading across the political landscape. The more time the press spends covering the slapstick, they less time they have for following the pickpockets wandering out amongst the marks.
Fortunately there are some among us—even a few in Congress!—sharp-eyed enough to track under which shell lies the pea. On Tuesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability sent the candidate a letter which began,
“Dear Mr. Trump:
“A recent report from the Washington Post has created renewed suspicion that you collected a $10 million cash bribe from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. This detailed news report has also triggered serious speculation that your handpicked political appointees at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), including Attorney General William Barr, subsequently blocked efforts by career prosecutors and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate the political and financial corruption that has been described.
“Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president—and a current candidate for president—took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator. Accordingly, we request that you immediately provide the Committee with information and documents necessary to assure the Committee and the American public that you never, directly or indirectly, politically or personally, received any funds from the Egyptian President or government. …”
The GOP candidate got more bad news on Wednesday: The Justice Department announced it was going after of his biggest backers. Russia is accused of making a sustained effort to influence the 2024 election.
Ever since the Democratic ticket began laughing at him and his sidekick, shillbilly JD Vance, reports have been coming in saying that Trump is in a funk. Disqualify us if you like, Pulitzer Committee, but we’re filing that factoid under “Hilarious If True.”
Is he rattled? Or just insane? Probably both, like Schrödinger’s cat. He went on Fox News again over the weekend, and he confessed to one of the felonies for which he’s under indictment:
“Who ever heard, you get indicted for interfering in a presidential election where you have every right to do it, you get indicted and your poll numbers go up?”
This mishegoss might just be entertaining, were it not for a couple of things. The election may come down to a few thousand people who as yet are not paying any attention; and—here comes that damned cat again—the election may not be the end of the campaign. It ain’t over ’till it’s over, and that may require getting the lunatics to agree.