Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune :: [Scott Horton]
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A tale of two speeches.
Last Thursday, President Biden gave a speech identifying Trump and MAGA Republicans as a threat to democracy. Two days later, Trump gave a speech in Pennsylvania that proved Biden’s words to be true. Trump is incapable of self-control and the direct attacks by Biden have put him over the edge—which is exactly where Democrats want Trump in the run-up to the midterms. Biden responded on Monday by attacking Trump again by name.
There are many ways to describe the dynamic of the dueling speeches, but David Frum summed it up best in his Atlantic article, Biden Laid the Trap. Trump Walked Into It.
For the 2022 election cycle, smart Republicans had a clear and simple plan: Don’t let the election be about Trump. Make it about gas prices, or crime, or the border, or race, or sex education, or anything—anything but Trump. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost control of the House in 2018. He lost the presidency in 2020. He lost both Senate seats in Georgia in 2021. Republicans had good reason to dread the havoc he’d create if he joined the fight in 2022.
Biden came to Philadelphia to deliver a wound to Trump’s boundless yet fragile ego. Trump obliged with a monstrously self-involved meltdown 48 hours later. And now his party has nowhere to hide. Trump has overwritten his name on every Republican line of every ballot in 2022.
Frum’s description of a “monstrously self-involved meltdown” does justice to Trump’s two-hour narcissistic orgy that left only minutes for remarks from Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano. But they probably wanted to exit the stage as quickly as possible after Trump attacked Pennsylvania’s largest city—Philadelphia—for its “all-time murder record” in 2022.
Trump said many truly bizarre things during the speech—including reprising the “Pocahontas” attack on Elizabeth Warren, claiming that the FBI planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago, calling for the death penalty for drug dealers, and calling for a ban on electric vehicles. But perhaps the most bizarre was his claim that he “met with Mark Zuckerberg last week at the White House.” See Upprox, Trump Was So Amped Up And Said So Many Wacky Things In His Speech Last Night That ‘Adderall’ Was Trending For Hours Afterwards.
And Trump saved special bile for the FBI and DOJ, saying:
The FBI and the Justice Department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.
Joe Biden shows no signs of letting up against Trump. See President Biden Lambasts Republicans in Labor Day Speech Ahead of Midterms (yahoo.com). That tactic is both the right thing for our democracy and the right thing for Democrats heading into 2022.
Trump has not hit bottom—and has signaled that he is willing to go to a very dark place in his war with Joe Biden. Other speakers at Trump’s speech on Saturday had family connections to January 6th defendants, some of whom espoused neo-Nazi propaganda. See The Independent, Speakers at Pennsylvania Trump rally tied to January 6 rioters and neo-Nazi.
If Republicans hoped Trump would not be on the ballot in 2022, Trump is doing everything he can to dash their hopes. As Biden said in response to a heckler on Monday, “Look, everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.” Trump is proving that in spades. As I said last week, we are lucky to have Joe Biden leading the column at this challenging moment in our history.
Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter
