Trump Goes Ape Over the Obamas

This is a picture of Barack and Michelle Obama. 

A lot of people have been posting pictures of the Obamas over the weekend.  And I am posting on here on my blog.  We're posting such pictures to get back at Donald Trump for posting an unfunny, inappropriate, just plain sick video meme showing the Obamas as apes in the jungle.  Which he did for . . . no apparent reason.

Well, actually, I think there was a reason.  Trump is tanking in the polls so badly that even his supporters are abandoning him.  The economy is tanking.  American arrogance toward the rest of the planet, long a leitmotif of U.S. foreign policy, has become officially enshrined as doctrine by Trump with the blessing of Marco Rubio's State Department.  ICE is committing crimes against humanity and getting away with it.  MAGA acolytes are still waking free despite their mentions in the Epstein files - and Trump is mentioned in them at least 38,000 times.  All Trump had to do to regain his base, or so he figured, was to remind supporters whom they hate more than anyone else - black people.

What Trump forgot, apparently, was that while all racists are Trump supporters, not all Trump supporters are racist.  And while non-racist Trump supporters may have disliked Trump's bigotry but still voted for him because their dislike for the Democrats was even greater, this stunt was too much for them to bear.

Which is unfortunate, because Trump's previous racist social-media stunts - not to mention his racist  policies, his racist statements, and his racist behavior, as well as his chief of staff Susie Wiles' racist attitude (she said that a mixed-race First Couple, as Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff would have been had Harris won the 2024 election, was "too much" for some people) - should have soured non-racist Trump supporters on the MAGA movement long ago.  The mainstream media are framing the reaction to the Obamas video meme from Republicans in Congress as a sign that Trump has gone too far this time.  Oh, really - after Trump had gone too far too many times to count, they're suddenly offended now?  Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY) expressed his disgust over the Obamas video meme and added that, since Trump took the meme down (but not before Trump-haters took screenshots of the evidence), we should just move on from it and go forward.  But go forward to what? A video meme from Trump depicting the Obama sisters as a chained pair of orangutangs?  (I know, I shouldn't give Trump ideas - but if I could think of something so offensive, Trump may be able to think of something far more so.)  Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), who is black, said he is appalled by Trump's racism.  Even though Scott once said that America is not a racist country and apparently never noticed Trump's previous racism . . . or never noticed the racism of other Republicans, such as when ancient white woman and U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) once told black ABC-TV reporter Rachel Scott (no relation to Tim) to "shut up" after Rachel Scott asked a question that Foxx didn't like. 

Trump supporters who say they now have seen the light and do not support him anymore in fact have thrice voted for Trump and had simply preferred to overlook his bigotry and his other unsavory qualities.  Vote for him once, in 2016?  Okay, Hillary Clinton was no prize, and no one knew how Trump would fare as Chief Executive.  Vote for him a second time, in 2020?  Okay, Trump made a lot of unforced errors handling COVID, but so did other countries, like Sweden, the failing economy wasn't his fault, and not even President Martin O'Malley - 😉 - could have handled the pandemic without a few stumbles, though he, Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders certainly would have done better.  But vote for Trump again in 2024 - after all of the top-secret files he took back to Florida, after he was convicted for business fraud, after he was indicted for election interference in Georgia, after all of the continuing racism - and after January freakin' Sixth??  Now you're appalled by him?  

Another reason  these Trump supporters are deserting him is because his policies didn't personally affect them in any adverse way.  It's like the independent feminist women who supported President Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984, which John Belushi's brother Jim parodied with a "Saturday Night Live" white woman's rap he wrote for a skit - "I'm liberated, I joined NOW, I voted for Reagan anyhow, because his tax and budget cuts will hurt other people - but not us!"

I don't doubt the sincerity of those who voted for Trump and say they turned against him because of his racist attitudes.  But another reason they turned against him is because Trump's tax and budget cuts, which had hurt other people, now hurt them.  And Trump supporters who are racist are deserting him for that reason alone.  I wouldn't buy a used car from any of them.  But then they probably would only have a used SUV to sell anyway. 

Knickerbonkers

There was a "red wave" in one part of the United States - ultra-Democratic New York, where bad decisions and plain damn hubris may have been instrumental in giving control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans.  The two top Katzenjammers responsible for the Empire State Screw-Up were former governor Andrew Cuomo and future former U.S. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney.

Cuomo (above) set the stage by appointing justices to the state Supreme Court in a transactional move to reward those who had done favors for him or who had been loyal to him.  Many of these judges were center-right, appointed by Cuomo in an effort in get back at progressives in the state legislature.  It was these same justices who ruled a redistricting map for the 2022 midterm elections unconstitutional because it created gerrymandered districts favorable to Democrats - but liberal justices might have ruled it constitutional for correcting excesses of Republican gerrymandering from the previous redistricting.

Even worse, Cuomo allowed a U.S. House district to be eliminated when the 2020 census count came of 89 people short - 89 people! - of the minimum number of residents needed to preserve that seat.  The governor could have asked for a recheck on that count that could have saved that district, but he couldn't be bothered. 

Maloney screwed things up just as much - if not more so, in part because he pushed for the gerrymandered House district map that got overruled.  Stingy with his support for Democratic House candidates as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (the name suggests a committee aimed at all of Congress, but it just concentrates on the House), he was generous to his own campaign while collaborating with New York Republicans to further his own political career.  (Alexis Grenell explains it in The Nation better than I could.)   

To hold on to power, he chose to run in another district rather than his own, forcing Democratic Representative Mondaire Jones out of the way.  Alessandra Biaggi, a New York state senator who is the granddaughter of a revered New York congressman, challenged Maloney as a progressive but lost to the dyed-in-the-wool centrist incumbent.  Maloney had hoped to take advantage of liberal voters in counties east of the Hudson River.  The problem was the district's constituents who live west of the Hudson River - in Rockland County.  To give you an idea of how conservative Rockland County is, I have a friend who lives there and grows her own vegetables, has supported the Green Party, sent her kids to a Waldorf school, and keeps chickens for fresh eggs.  She's practically an organic-farm hippie.  She's also a Trump fan.  

Oh, yeah, Rockland County is also known for being home to New York City police officers and ultra-Orthodox Jews.  It was this conservative bloc that helped Republican House candidate Mike Lawler defeat Maloney in the general election by a narrow margin.  By all accounts, Biaggi - who was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - could have saved the seat for the Democrats by arousing their base, but the Democratic base in this district was clearly cool to (to, not with) voting for Maloney for his past conniving.

Andrew Cuomo and Sean Patrick Maloney lied and cheated to get to the top.  They now know what a downfall looks like.  Hopefully a certain developer from Queens will find out as well.