One of the most illuminating moments of Donald Trump\u2019s increasingly lengthy career in national politics came during his third debate with Hillary Clinton back in 2016. (This was back when presidential campaigns had three debates coordinated by the Commission on Presidential Debates, itself a reminder of how the Trump era has diverted the political process.)<\/p>\n
Clinton raised Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s then-already-obvious interest in affecting the outcome of the race, prompting Trump to comment that Putin \u201chas no respect\u201d for Clinton.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d Clinton replied, \u201cthat\u2019s because he would rather have a puppet as president of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo puppet,\u201d Trump replied, clearly flustered. \u201cYou\u2019re the puppet.\u201d<\/p>\n
When faced with criticism \u2014 particularly when that criticism is potent or well-aimed \u2014 Trump\u2019s instinct is to try to turn it back on his critic. There are any number of examples littering the past nine years of political discourse, though few are as obvious and succinct as \u201cyou\u2019re the puppet,\u201d a very weird and very obvious effort. But things such as Trump\u2019s recent insistence that Vice President Kamala Harris needs to complete a mental fitness evaluation certainly qualify.<\/p>\n
So does his effort to redirect the criticism that his reelection poses a unique threat to American democracy \u2014 an argument that has an obvious through-line back to that \u201cno puppet\u201d moment. Critics, including from within his own party, have highlighted his effort to subvert the 2020 results and his plans to overhaul the federal bureaucracy to align with his political ideology. In response, Trump insists that it is Democrats who are trying to undermine the country, in part because of censorship \u2014 the evidence for which is generally centered on the government\u2019s effort to limit the spread on social media of misinformation about coronavirus vaccines.<\/p>\n
(This has been so inflated with gusts of hot air and is treated so seriously within the right\u2019s conversational bubble that Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), believed it to be a viable response to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz\u2019s question about the legitimacy of the 2020 election during the vice-presidential debate. It was not.)<\/p>\n
After Trump told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo in an interview that aired Sunday that he believes that the \u201cenemy from within\u201d is as potent a threat to the nation as foreign enemies such as China and Russia \u2014 and when he further suggested that this internal enemy poses a risk to the election that should be combated with an armed response \u2014 some of those critics began more openly describing Trump as a fascist. (This was in part because retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump\u2019s presidency, used the term when speaking to The Washington Post\u2019s Bob Woodward.) And so, in another interview that aired Wednesday, again on Fox News, Trump insisted that the term applies instead to his opponents.<\/p>\n
No fascist. You\u2019re the fascist.<\/p>\n
Host Harris Faulkner played the snippet of Trump\u2019s Bartiromo interview in which he explained that the \u201cenemy from within\u201d included \u201clunatics\u201d such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the loudest voices during Trump\u2019s first impeachment. Faulkner noted that Harris had suggested Trump is \u201cunhinged.\u201d (The crowd, heavily constituted of Republicans and Trump supporters, tittered at the very idea.)<\/p>\n
Trump, predictably, denied that he is, calling Democrats \u201cthe party of sound bites.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody asked me, \u2018Can they be brought together?\u2019\u201d he said, apparently meaning that he was asked whether Democrats could work with Republicans. He suggested that he said he doesn\u2019t think they could \u201cbecause they are \u2014 they\u2019re very different. And it is the enemy from within and they\u2019re very dangerous. They are Marxists and communists and fascists.\u201d<\/p>\n
He returned to his criticism of Schiff, suggesting that Schiff is among those who \u201cmade up the Russia hoax\u201d \u2014 that is, the investigation into whether Trump\u2019s 2016 campaign had knowingly worked with the Russian effort to swing the results to his advantage. (A lengthy probe into the matter identified several members of Trump\u2019s campaign who had been in contact with Russian agents and determined that the campaign had at least welcomed the Russian effort.)<\/p>\n
And again Trump shrugged at the threat posed by foreign countries (including Russia) as easy to handle \u2014 more so than the threat from his political opponents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more difficult are, you know, the Pelosis,\u201d he said, referring to former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and, apparently, her husband, Paul.<\/p>\n
Shortly before the 2022 election, a deranged man broke into the Pelosis\u2019 San Francisco house in an apparent effort to force Nancy Pelosi to admit that the Russia probe was contrived. Paul Pelosi, who doesn\u2019t work in politics, was struck with a hammer in the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people, they\u2019re so sick, and they\u2019re so evil,\u201d Trump continued. \u201cIf they would spend their time trying to make America great again, we would have \u2014 it would be so easy to make this country great.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of this, all of Trump\u2019s response to the criticism of his initial comments Sunday, serves to bolster that criticism. Saying that Democrats are evil and sick and incapable of working with Republicans is commentary aimed at suggesting that no political agreement can be practically or morally achieved. Comparing the opposition of Democrats to that of foreign adversaries \u2014 casting it as worse than that of those adversaries, in fact \u2014 elevates the idea that internal enemies should be dealt with in the way we might deal with an invasion force from a foreign power.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the bigger problem are the people from within,\u201d he\u2019d told Bartiromo after she\u2019d asked about unrest on Election Day. \u201cWe have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical-left lunatics. And I think they\u2019re the \u2014 and it should be very easily handled by \u2014 if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can\u2019t let that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump had an answer ready for critiques of his comments: No threatening. You\u2019re the ones who are threatening.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were saying I was, like, threatening,\u201d Trump continued. \u201cI\u2019m not threatening anybody. They\u2019re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations\u201d \u2014 again a reference in part to the Russia probe but also to the criminal investigations he has faced. Two of them, of course, center on his obvious effort to subvert the results of the democratic election in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s called weaponization of government. It\u2019s a terrible thing,\u201d Trump concluded. \u201cThey\u2019re the threat to democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
In much the same way that Hillary Clinton was Vladimir Putin\u2019s puppet.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
One of the most illuminating moments of Donald Trump\u2019s increasingly lengthy career in national politics came during his third debate with Hillary Clinton back in 2016. (This was back when presidential campaigns had three debates coordinated by the Commission on Presidential Debates, itself a reminder of how the Trump era has diverted the political process.) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}