That Sound You Hear Is Trumpworld Panicking
The old tricks aren’t working. The October Surprise surprised nobody. Junior says nobody’s dying. But like, a lot of people still are.
Madame Tussaud’s in Berlin dumped its wax version of America’s worst president in a dumpster in anticipation of Tuesday’s election. But it’s not just about getting rid of wax sculptures that oddly look more lifelike than the president himself. The world seems like it’s ready to toss Donald Trump and his terrible administration into the dustbin of history. His old tricks seem to no longer be working. The 2016 playbook isn’t even penetrating the mainstream media. Trump seems like he's malfunctioning, spreading lies about doctors during a pandemic. More and more it feels like Trump himself wants to lose.
There is a low whine of panic emanating from Trump, and his terrible surrogates, his children. If you’re quiet you can almost hear it. Friday, we heard about ANOTHER Hunter Biden laptop after Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon’s first October Surprise turned out to be a dud. In fact, Bannon and Rudy’s October Surprise managed to completely embarrass the almost unembarrassable New York Post and opinion side of The Wall Street Journal. No small feat to make the WSJ opinion page blush.
None of the old tricks are working. The Trump administration, which is really just the taxpayer-funded arm of the Trump campaign, decided to make Friday a “national day of remembrance for Americans killed by illegal aliens.” It was a typical Trumpian xenophobia play, likely cooked up by America’s favorite Jewish Santa Monica Nazi, but the problem was that we’re in the middle of a pandemic, so it immediately prompted the question of why hasn’t Trump made a day of remembrance for the more than 230,000 Americans who’ve died of coronavirus?
Well, according to Don Jr., that’s because the number of Americans dying of coronavirus is “almost nothing,” as he told Laura Ingraham on a day when the coronavirus killed more than one thousand Americans. “These people are truly morons," he continued, without a hint of irony while giving Eric a run for dad’s money as dumbest Trump kid.
“I put it up on my Instagram a couple days ago because I went through the CDC data because I kept hearing about new infections but I was like, why aren’t they talking about deaths—oh, oh, because the number is almost nothing. Because we’ve gotten control of this thing, we understand how it works, they have the therapeutics to be able to deal with this. If you look at that, look at my Instagram, it’s gone to almost nothing. We’re outperforming Europe in a positive way so well because we’ve gotten hold of this.”
America just passed 230,000 coronavirus deaths; 100,000 more than the country right behind us, India, which has about four times our population.
While Junior mansplains the pandemic, Ivanka has been having tea parties and trying to convince suburban women that daddy doesn’t want you to die, just everyone else. On Thursday she gave an interview with right-leaning Real Clear Politics where she announced that now she’s “unapologetically” against abortion rights. Ivanka was a Democrat like four years ago but now she’s remaking herself as Phyllis Schlafly, but one Phyllis Schlafly was enough. That said, I’m continually impressed that Junior and Ivanka seem to be play-acting two very different 1950s stereotypes.
But as the Trump kids keep play-acting, the Trump campaign sees the writing on the wall. Trump moved his “election day party” from his D.C. hotel to the White House. He said later, “But I know the mayor has shut down Washington, D.C. And if that’s the case, we’ll probably stay here or pick another location.” Maybe, or maybe he can see what the state, national and district-level polling is saying, and it’s saying shellacking.
Maybe he’ll get the wild reality television ending he dreams of. Or maybe Trump’s just done, ready to pack up all the White House china and head back to the omelet bar at Mar-a-Lago and slather some ketchup on top. Maybe years from now, Trump will take a break from selling grills on TV late at night to share with us what he was thinking during that last weekend of high-energy, no coherence campaigning, but for now his thought process is a mystery.
Look, Trump could still steal this election, or the polls could be significantly more off than they’ve ever been. Or we could be at the end of one of the darkest chapters in American life. We don’t know, and we’re about to find out. But it sure seems like Trump and his terrible surrogates are worried. Some might even say triggered.
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story said that The Washington Examiner had produced a second Hunter Biden laptop. In fact, that laptop, reportedly in the custody of the DEA, was first reported on by NBC.