Even before Donald Trump rode down the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 and announced he wanted to be president, there were precisely15,326 moments that disqualified being within a zip code of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Since then, well, Stormy bar the door. We all have our favorites, and while I think colluding with a foreign power, strong-arming an ally, mocking disable reporters and veterans, stealing from charities, paying hush money to an adult film star, and boasting about his ability to shoot a defenseless man on 5th Avenue are all grounds for keeping sharp objects (not to mention nuclear weapons) away from him, announcing, as he did on several occasions, he wouldn’t accept the results of an election unless he won should have been the ballgame.
Why Republicans didn’t spit him out like the phlegm that comes with the flu is the unanswered question of our time.
No matter how outraged I am, though, it’s never enough to keep up. He corrodes, unravels, rails, and lies faster than I write.
(A little Inside Baseball. I started this piece before he promised to trash the Constitution. It was also before Ye wore pantyhose on his head and expressed his affection for Adolf Hitler on Infowars, which made Alex Jones uneasy — quite the thing, actually, as massacred school children lying dead in an elementary school classroom didn’t even do that.)
As keeping up with never-ending Trumpian horror is futile, let’s then pick a recent offense — his Nov. 22nd pre-Thanksgiving Dinner with avowed-racist Nick Fuentes and the unmoored, though at the time unmasked, Ye.
Trump said in his own defense that he only invited Ye to dinner, and it was Ye who brought Fuentes.
Ohhhhh
Note to all Nazi sympathizers headed to Mar-a-Lago for a nosh — read your invitations carefully. If it doesn’t say “+1,” don’t assume.
Ye and Fuentes weren’t the only ones dining who have a peculiar fascination for the way of the Nazi, though. In Peter Baker and Susan Glasser book, “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” Trump complained to then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that American generals were not as loyal to him as he believed German generals had been to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
“You f—-ing generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
But her emails and his laptop.
The bigger story (it’s always been the bigger story) is how the GOP has always met Trump’s decades-long fascination with the untenable with one eye closed and both hands in fluffy gloves.
About the dinner, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said, “Just a bad idea on every level. I don’t know who was advising him on his staff but I hope that whoever that person was got fired.”
Thune didn’t mention Trump by name.
Senator Tommy Tubberville (R-Ala.) said, “There’s a lot of other people I think he could have met with to help the country be stronger and go more in the right direction, there’s no doubt about that.”
Tubberville didn’t mention Trump by name.
The Republican Jewish Coalition released a statement: “We strongly condemn the virulent antisemitism of Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and call on all political leaders to reject their messages of hate and refuse to meet with them.”
The organization didn’t mention Trump by name.
While denouncing the dinner, Republicans Mitch McConnell also didn’t mention Trump by name — and neither did Kevin McCarthy or Lindsey Graham.
PBS News Hour asked 57 elected GOP officials if they would condemn Trump.
Most didn’t respond. Of those who did, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said, “Clearly it’s not our view, it’s not my view,” said Cramer, “I don’t think it’s his view.”
All evidence to the contrary.
“But, as you know, Cramer continued. “President Trump doesn’t condemn a lot of people who support him.”
Lovely.
Even when Republicans did call out Trump, they whiffed on the central point.
“There’s no bottom to the degree to which he’s willing to degrade himself, and the country for that matter,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who called the dinner “Disgusting.”
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who may run against Trump, said, “This is just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, combined with his past poor judgments, make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican Party in 2024.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said, “President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites. These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence said, “President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and Holocaust denier, a seat at the table and I think he should apologize for it. And he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”
Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, who’s being challenged by My Pillow’s Mike Lindell to lead the RNC (tough to know who not to root for), while not mentioning Trump’s name, said, “As I had repeatedly said, White supremacy, neo-Nazism, hate speech and bigotry are disgusting and do not have a home in the Republican Party.”
You see what’s missing, right? No one called on the former president to drop out of the 2024 race. No one said he or she would leave a party that would nominate Trump to be its presidential standard-bearer.
No one.
Nazis may not have a home in the GOP, but those who invite them to dinner aways will — and the today’s GOP will find a seat at that table.
15,327 … 15,328 … 15, 329 …
Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. In addition to “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Road Comic,” “Four Days and a Year Later” and “The Joke Was On Me,” his first novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages,” a book about the worst love story ever, was published by Balkan Press in February. See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2023
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