President Donald Trump and members of the political party he has transformed into a cult spent much of the Republican National Convention violating the laws of time and fiercely criticizing the current administration of Joe Biden.
“Hold on,” you say. “Biden isn’t president, Trump is.”
Let me help you out. Trump’s main campaign argument is this: “You see all this horrible stuff going on right now? If you elect Joe Biden, the horrible things happening in America right now will happen.”
Granted, people who grasp concepts like chronology and object permanence will struggle with the logic behind that argument. It sounds like Trump and his groupies are saying the country is a mess right now, but that mess isn’t Trump’s fault, it’s the fault of Biden if he wins the election three months from now.
Gosh, this isn’t getting any easier to explain.
Let me just show you an excerpt from Trump’s speech accepting the GOP nomination at the Republican National Convention:
“Our Convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.
“Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally, some have even been its victims.
“I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th, 2017, safety will be restored.”
OK, I’m guess the “January 20th, 2017” bit might have thrown you for a loop. That because I forgot to mention the excerpt is from Trump’s RNC acceptance speech in 2016, not from the speech he gave Thursday night on the White House lawn.
What’s funny is that all the stuff he said in 2016, shortly before he got the job of president, is effectively the same stuff he’s saying now, in 2020, after four years on the job.
Another thing he said in that 2016 speech was this: “I alone can fix it.”
Apparently Trump has not fixed it. Because, according to present-day Trump and a parade of others at the 2020 convention, there are still “images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities.”
The only difference is that in 2016, the violence and chaos was President Barack Obama’s fault, and in 2020 the violence and chaos is the fault of Joe Biden, assuming he becomes president.
Make sense?
There’s another part of Trump’s 2016 acceptance speech that attempts to paint Biden — who is not yet president but is to blame for all terrible things happening now — in a bad light: “The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead.”
So, to clarify, defending the lives of citizens is the “most basic duty of government,” and any government that fails to do so is “unworthy to lead.”
That’s why Biden’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the loss of more than 180,000 American lives makes him unworthy to lead. As a person who in three months could become president, Biden has proactively failed in his most basic duty as president right now.
Shame on him.
It’s also disgraceful that Biden has demolished the norms of presidential power and used the White House — the people’s house! — as a backdrop for his reelection campaign. Many people accused Trump of doing that Thursday night, simply because that’s exactly what he did.
But those people are wrong. If we elect Biden as president, he will be the one who demolishes the norms of presidential power and uses the White House — the people’s house! — as a backdrop for his reelection campaign. You can bank on it.
He’ll also have a wife who slaps his hand away every time he tries to hold it and have an inordinate number of associates end up in prison.
So to be clear, President Trump’s straightforward reelection message to voters is this: America, if Joe Biden is elected, will be exactly the kind of crime-ridden cesspool America is right now thanks to the current administration of Joe Biden.
Any questions?
Rex Huppke is a Chicago Tribune columnist. Email: rhuppke@chicagotribune.com.
