As much as Donald Trump may insist that he is “smart,” the English language sometimes seems to elude him entirely.
Characteristically capitalizing on tragedy in a New Hampshire press appearance, following the horrific mass shooting at an Orlando gay club, Trump doubled down on the self-congratulation that had been his instinctual first reaction; then ruptured his syntax trying to claim that he is a “friend” to the LGBT community. So unfamiliar are the best interests of that minority to Mr.Trump that he couldn’t even master the identifying acronym and melted down to complete incoherence at the end of the ‘money’ sentence:’
I could hardly believe my ears so I located the video replay online to capture the moment. There’s a long wait until Trump begins his speech, but at 41:10 into the recording my patience was rewarded. After attempting to posit the question of who is the better friend of the LGBT community, he or Hillary Clinton, but failing twice to nail the acronym, this is what he actually said:
I kid you not. He actually invented the word, “bigly.” I don’t even know how to spell it!
Not that very much of the speech was better articulated than were those words, since Trump has the vocabulary of a slow middle schooler, and roughly the same sense of self; but the complete abandonment of the English language at that moment was astonishing. He didn’t hesitate for a minute but just went right on with his schtick, like a carnival barker on speed.
No wonder that yesterday, when it occured, I couldn’t find any reference to the blunder in the blogosphere, which usually seizes upon such word-salad from a public figure like a dog on a dropped hamburger. There’s just too much to keep up with when Trump is on the podium telling outlandish whoppers and calling people names. They’ve just given up on him, and he knows that. In fact, that is what he counts on.
If he talks really fast and doesn’t allow anyone to get a word in edgewise, he can simply ignore inconvenient questions and challenges to his veracity and steamroll on. He creates a wall of whines and snarls that simply exhausts the will to probe it. As a bonus, the angry ignorant go absolutely wild for such caveman antics.
That’s how he managed to crawl over sixteen bodies to grab the brass ring. If you look at any establishment Republican trying to field a question about Donald Trump, they look and act kind of like they are in a daze. They don’t really understand how they find themselves in this situation, even thought it’s their own damned fault.
His complete misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the takeaway from Orlando is mind-boggling. Not only did he run with the idea that the shooter was a recent immigrant from “Afghan,” (not even close); he all but accused the sitting President of being complicit in the crime and in league with terrorists.
Ignoring the obvious takeaway that this was a hate crime, no doubt inspired by endless inflammatory rhetoric not entirely dissimilar to his own, he has even suggested that what happened in the nightclub could have been prevented if every one there was also packing heat.
Let’s see how that might go down. A darkened nightclub, multiple shots ring out and everybody in the place pulls out a gun and begins firing at whomever they think might have started it. Is there one nefarious shooter or two, or twelve? Nobody knows for sure and everyone is operating in panic mode. What could possibly go further wrong ?
But suddenly he sees himself as the best friend of “the gays.” Hillary Clinton, he insists, wants to take away your Second Amendment rights; again, a total lie, but he’s said it so many times, and so many Republicans want to believe it, that it has become an urban myth.
Nobody gets particularly exercised about his lies anymore. They are an integral part of who he is and if you accept all the other baggage he carries, you have already entered an alternative universe.
His pattern of lying and conning are so familiar now that it is almost discounted from consideration, and everyone goes on with the discussion as if he hasn’t already completely disqualified himself from any elected office, let alone the highest office in the land.
Move over Sara Palin, there’s a new champion of incoherent double-talk in town.