When I think of Donald J Trump, I see Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, or Frank Sinatra singing “My Way” or Don Quixote, tilting at all those windmills.
POTUS 45 is outsized, a unicorn, whose principal attraction — to foes and any who might call themselves friends — is to disrupt the accepted narrative held dear by the establishment. Brash, arrogant, sure. Also patriotic. Sometimes I just want to look away, as you might from a solar eclipse. His energy is just too intense.
Last night he became something else — the 800-pound guerrilla not in the room. His absence stalked the stage of the GOP debate like a Greek Colossus. Was he a ghost, a symbol of elections past? A premonition of the one to come? When Fox moderator Bret Baier asked the eight GOP candidates to raise their hands if they would support a convicted Trump, two refused — Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson. But they were never in play. The candidate most hurt by the question was Ron DeSantis, who looked around to see how others were voting before raising his hand. Not presidential.
In a bit of counter-programming, Tucker Carlson released a Trump interview during the debate. Newsweek claimed it drew 100 million views in four hours. Whatever the number, it likely outpaced viewership on Fox News, to my mind the big loser of the evening. The first hour, moderators focused on the environment, abortion and other issues of more interest to MSNBC viewers, presumably where Fox News is seeking its new audience. There were no questions in the first hour on the border, a key issue for voters of many stripes. Also Baier admonished the audience to stop booing Christie for attacking Trump, saying, without realizing the irony, that if they kept interrupting, moderators would have less time to “talk about issues you want to talk about.”
In the end, Fox News did not talk about Biden’s political and personal flaws, and it was left to Trump, in his interview with Tucker, to call Biden a corrupt, and incompetent “Manchurian candidate.” A political thriller by Richard Condon, the Manchurian Candidate was about a leader who is a puppet to foreign interests.
In the Tucker interview, Trump was hilarious, prompting Breitbart’s Mike Slater to proclaim that the former president still has his fast ball. He complained about Biden’s green alarmist curbs on energy in household appliances, saying, “You want to wash your beautiful hair, and you’re standing under the shower, then the water comes out very slowly.” And his riff on Kamala Harris’ awkward speaking style was memorable.
At 77, Trump is still in fighting mode. On that debate stage was a portrait of what the Republican Party will look like after Trump. My friend Ron thought tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy was “the new Trump” — taking slings from all sides, articulate, quick-witted — and the only one challenging Ukraine spending and climate hoaxes. But Rep. Byron Donalds, (R-FL), who endorsed Trump over DeSantis, worked the spin room after the debate saying, “In the grand scheme, Donald Trump’s the winner of this debate. Nobody on that stage, from what I saw, really galvanized Republicans.” Rep. Mike Waltz, another Florida Republican for Trump, called the debate “an audition for 2028.”
Today Trump turns himself at Rice Jail, for fingerprinting on racketeering charges that he tried to steal the 2020 election in Georgia. The persecution of Trump by Soros-backed radical prosecutors has only inflamed his base, and skyrocketed his poll numbers. All of it calls to mind that line from the Rocky, where Rocky Balboa says,
“The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much can you take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!”
My wife and I watched about an hour of the "debate" last night. In my opinion, the Fox team was far from impressive-- poorly crafted questions, that several candidates rightly ignored, mixed with silly "raise your hand" questions --treating the candidates like grade schoolers. Even in his absence, Trump won that debate. On the bright side, maybe the audience reactions to some of Cristy's answers will convince him to drop out of the race and spare us his vitriol.
Beautifully stated!!!!