Thursday, March 28, 2024 | 2 a.m.
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Remember when cable news got the blame for electing Donald Trump in 2016, because airing so many of his rallies in their entirety was seen as the gift of free advertising?
That was never completely fair, because it wasn’t CNN’s fault that so many voters loved what they saw — the violent threats, the fawning over dictators, the undemocratic promises to jail Hillary Clinton and other political opponents, the cruel mimicking of a physical disability and shocking denigration of John McCain’s military service.
His supporters have long since wished away this and all other evidence of psychopathy, either by claiming he never said or did any of these things or insisting that if he did then didn’t mean it. And even if he does keep saying and doing things that would make the most immature bully in your middle school look like a cross between Mister Rogers and Mahatma Gandhi, well how sad that you noticed. Or else they’ll say that if you must know, they never could stand the guy, but since “they’re all bad,” simply prefer him to any breathing Democrat.
The truly Trumpy kept right on lapping it up when he lavished praise on the “spirit” of the “unbelievable patriots” who literally and figuratively defecated on our democracy. Likewise when he made such clever fun of Fani Willis’ first name, said yet again that some immigrants aren’t even people and raged that Liz Cheney should go to jail. And that was just one day last week.
But then, those who see nothing too troubling about anything he does are not going to decide this election. Neither are those of us who see him as such a threat to the republic that we’d crawl bleeding to the polls to cast a ‘no’ vote.
Instead, it’s those who might or might not stay home who need persuading, along with the tiny but significant number of actual swing voters in key states.
And what both of those groups need to see is much more Trump, who in a media overreaction has all but disappeared from many channels.
Nothing he’s saying now is so different in tone, as he rants about “Gavin New-scum” and fondly recalls hitting his fellow Republican Ron DeSantis “just like we did to ISIS.” Nor is it different in substance, as he falsely fumes that migrants are responsible for a crime wave.
But independent voters need to be reminded about what that looks and sounds like, since many haven’t seen him in a while.
They also need to see for themselves that his stream-of-consciousness rambles are even less coherent now.
If the voters who will decide the fate of the country don’t see that, not in curated snippets but at length, how will they know how much more unhinged he’s become, or how few of his sentences track?
At a March 16 rally in Vandalia, Ohio, for instance, the same president who shared state secrets with strangers and is happy to let Russia “do whatever the hell it wants” said this: “You know, it was interesting, Joe Biden won against Barack Hussein Obama. Has anyone ever heard of him? Barack Hussein Obama, or as Rush Limbaugh would say Barack Hussein! Obama; he used to scream out the name Hussein. But he was — think of this. just think of this. Every swing state Biden beat Obama but every other state he got killed. You think that’s an honest election? I could give you a hundred different things.”
Oh, and he does, every time he opens his mouth. Trump has also said he beat Obama, and might even think he did.
After a lifetime of telling stories about events that never happened, like his recent tale of breaking Elvis’ attendance record at the Alabama State Fair, where neither man ever appeared, he may at this point believe that if he says it, then it’s true. You know, just as he argues that if he does it, then it’s not punishable under the law.
His crowds are no less approving now than they ever were, even when he says things like, “We want to take over the House!” which the GOP already narrowly controls. But those still capable of being alarmed by the casual cruelty of someone who makes such little sense ought to have that opportunity, easily and often.
Bring the rallies back to TV, I say, and not for the ratings.
Melinda Henneberger is a columnist for the Kansas City (Mo.) Star.
