“I took a cognitive test. And, I don't know what to tell you other than I got every answer right...."
Free column today. Hasn’t been one in a while. So have at it. I sure would love if you became a paid subscriber though. It’s those who make my world go ‘round. And help me pay my bills.
We live in a country where the President says he’s 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 224 pounds. He procured a (presumably real) doctor to release these numbers with a straight face, as if he was announcing the results of the Kentucky Derby. For the most part the press refrained from rolling their eyes and simply resumed their dictation. They have become used to bizarro world, and stopped fact-checking Trump years ago, not because it was too much work, but because it was like putting up a fence to keep the rain out of the yard. Trump also bragged that he once again aced a cognitive test, saying “I took a cognitive test. And, I don't know what to tell you other than I got every answer right.”
I mean, has the man ever gotten a single answer wrong?
Notwithstanding the fact that he also claimed that he just won yet another “club championship” at one of his golf courses, this is both fucking hilarious and gives off terrifying Kim Jong Un / North Korea vibes. Kim has been known to wear platform shoes that make him look like a member of KISS, lest anybody think that he’s a fucking dwarf. Trump is 6’ 3’’ despite standing next to guys who are that height and having to look up at them. And let’s not even go near the 224 pounds…..which means Trump is about the same size as the average NFL wide receiver.
I’m not a shrink, so I don’t know what is wrong with the head of somebody who is incapable of telling the truth about ANYTHING. Wires are crossed. Perhaps he was dropped on his head as a child. Maybe bone spurs can spread upwards and affect the melon? Studies should probably be conducted by actual doctors who aren’t either in love with his MAGA manliness, or terrified of spending the rest of their days in an El Salvadoran prison. This probably won’t happen until the autopsy…..assuming of course that Vance doesn’t order Trump stuffed and put on display in the front lobby of Mar-A-Lago. Or perhaps he’ll just move JFK out of Arlington and put Trump in his place. That would own the libs, eh?
Look, I get it. Who among us doesn’t want to shave a few pounds here and there? It must be irresistible for somebody who once redrew the border of Alabama with a sharpie to change the middle number of his actual weight from a 9 to a 2. And for once he’s not hurting anybody. Pretending to be the same size as Patrick Mahomes is as harmless as pretending that you win all of your golf club’s championships, despite entire BOOKS being written on how you may be the most flagrant cheater the game of golf has ever seen……actually using your secret service detail to kick your ball out of the woods back into the fairway. I mean…..if a President can openly defy the Supreme Court, who’s gonna stop him from dropping a golf ball down his pant leg and yelling out “I found it!” A man who can whisk American citizens off to foreign gulags is surely gonna take some liberties both with his golf score, and with his BMI, right?
But still, it’s just weird.
We all know that one guy though. The one who, as the British so daintily put it, “gilds the lily”. Their stories grow with each telling, until even the ones who have heard them 100 times don’t recognize them anymore. Most of the time this type of thing happens in barrooms. Add some booze to a bullshitter and things turn into science fiction. But Trump is a lifelong teetotaler. Other than the drunken fool he’s placed in charge of the military, his closest advisors seem much more interested in the nuts and bolts of fascism than they do knocking back cold ones. Don Jr might be a coke fiend, but everybody treats him and Eric like they are “special” so he doesn’t really count. Lord knows what type of bad reaction Elon Musk’s ketamine would have if he was washing it down with Miller Lite cans. Everybody knew Nixon was a drunk, which is why nobody took his late night orders to blow up the Brookings Institute seriously. But Trump is as sober as the proverbial judges he ignores. What gives?
Eventually guys wearing masks are gonna show up at my door. They are gonna show up at your door too but probably mine first. And that’s the thing about all of this. In the same way he’s able to find endless doctors willing to debase themselves and their profession on his behalf, there are countless men and women who swore to uphold the law currently living out their hidden Third Reich fantasies……trolling the streets for brown people to deport. Dare I say, each of them is “following orders”.
Trump is a clown. A buffoon. A cartoonish “strongman”. A sociopath. In isolation he’s about as dangerous as a child playing with blocks….which is about the summit of his intellectual capabilities. The man cannot spell. He cannot read. He kicks down and kisses up. He needs 2 hands to drink water. He looks into solar eclipses. His hatreds are born out of his own herculean stupidity. The fact that he has somehow become the figurehead of a Stalinesque cult is surprising only if you don’t factor in how dumb much of America has become. The fucking WRESTLING LADY is in charge of public education. She makes Betsy DeVos look like Marie Curie. I could go on and on but why bother. We’re doomed.
Don’t get distracted. It’s the “good Germans” doing the heavy lifting. Trump is playing fucking golf. He isn’t out there on the street disappearing people.
Our neighbors are the ones doing that. And that is more terrifying still.
In a bit…
—tf