Change the channel on
'The Trump Show'
Most normal people are
sick and tired of “The Trump Show.” In the real world, people are sent to
psychiatric wards for expressing the kind of delusions Donald Trump utters.
By Gene
Lyons
Sept 6, 2024, 6:10am CDT
More than it’s anything
else, an American presidential election is a TV series. And all the available
evidence appears to show the nation is ready to change the channel.
To put it bluntly, The
Trump Show has worn people out.
Pretty much like “The
Apprentice” eventually did. That’s the scripted “reality TV” show in which
Donald Trump portrayed a brilliant business tycoon, despite his real-world
history of multiple bankruptcies and tax fraud convictions. Naïve viewers
bought the hype, just as many of the same people mistake professional wrestling
for a real sport.
(His own involvement in
WWE wrestling taught Trump a great deal about the fathomless gullibility of a
large segment of the public.)
So anyway, what it’s
come down to, in TV terms, is a beautiful, highly intelligent woman with a
killer smile versus a grumpy old braggart who actually boasted he’s better
looking than she is — among the silliest of his many absurd claims.
On a real sitcom, it
would play with a prerecorded laugh track. Even Ted Baxter, the pompous
anchorman on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” wouldn’t have said anything so
fatuous.
Technically, Harris is
an incumbent. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels as if The Trump Show has
been looming over American politics since 2016, and most normal people are sick
and tired of it. The boasting, the whining, the witless name-calling — “Little
George Slopadopoulous,” for heaven’s sake — and the never-ending lies.
Here’s something the
candidate told the Junior Anti-Sex League just last week. OK, that’s stolen
from Orwell’s “1984.” Trump actually spoke to Moms For Liberty, an organization
of suburban book-banners. “Emotional support cougars,” somebody has called them.
“The transgender thing
is incredible,” Trump said. “Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes
home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to
happen with your child, and you know many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say,
‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’ They say, ‘Who did this to me?’
It’s incredible.”
Actually, it’s worse
than incredible. It’s insane. Downright psychotic. In the real world, people
are sent to psychiatric wards for expressing such delusions. Except few think
the former president actually believes that gender-reassignment surgery is being
forced upon American children in public schools. It’s just Trump being Trump.
But what if he does
believe it? He also told the “Moms” group that in blue states, newborn infants
are put to death by doctors as an abortion method. How crazy is that?
Oddly, The New York
Times covered the gathering without quoting either pronouncement. The rest of
the “mainstream” media pretty much followed along. True, the Times ran a story
with this headline: “Trump Keeps Turning Up the Dial on Vulgarity. Will He Alienate
the Voters He Needs?”
But editors buried it:
The article ran in the Saturday paper on page A12, as Bob Somerby noted at his
Daily Howler website.
True, the Times report
did mention the photo of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris that Trump posted on
his Truth Social website referencing “blowjobs” as crucial to their respective
careers. Is that vulgar enough for the very holy Moms For Liberty?
No mention of the
hallucinatory claims, however. After months of stories devoted to Joe Biden’s
age, cognition, supposed gaffes and fitness to serve, the national press now
covers the race between Harris and Trump as if it were a normal presidential
campaign with normal candidates. Bush vs. Gore, say.
Horse-race coverage,
it’s called, with updates about rallies, swing states, opinion polls and the
like. The collective unwillingness of our esteemed national news media to cope
with the reality of the Trump campaign constitutes a profound failure of responsibility
— an elaborate game of “let’s pretend.”
We’re not supposed to
notice that one of the horses has thrown its jockey and is running loose on the
track.
So it falls to Harris
herself. Only she — and, to a lesser extent, Tim Walz — can deal with this
madness in a way that can force the news media to report it and the great
lowing herd of “low-information voters” to absorb it.
On the campaign trail,
the Democratic nominee boasts that as a prosecutor, she convicted fraudsters
and sex offenders of all kinds. So she knows Trump’s type.
But can she say it to
his face and make it stick?
Maybe, assuming Trump
actually shows up for their scheduled debate next week. For all his calling the
vice president a slut and a communist — “Comrade Kamala,” indeed — the two have
never actually met. Never been in the same room together, apparently.
But Harris has long
dealt with bullies and delusional people of every description. At this point,
the contest is hers to lose.
The Trump Show is past
ready to be canceled.
Gene Lyons is a National
Magazine Award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President.”
