Who Is America’s Idiot?
Creative Commons Licensed Caricature "Donald Trump - Drum Major Clown" by Donkey Hotey. Some rights reserved.
Hispanics love me.
Black Americans love me,
Muslims love me.
Physically-challenged journalists love me.
Idiots love me.
PROLOGUE
Early in the 2016 Republican presidential campaign, the most exciting since Alf Landon beat out nobody in 1936, I proposed the media take what I called the Trumpocratic Oath, a solemn pledge to stop covering Donald Trump as if he was the greatest thing to happen to Western Civilization since the invention of sliced bread. My colleagues in the media were going ape over this King Kong of the golf courses and other things with his name on them every time he said something often totally idiotic. It turned out I may have been the only one to take the pledge. At the risk of losing circulation, I had become a Trump-free zone. Today I am about to break my vow, reporting on late-breaking developments in the race for the coveted title of America’s Idiot.
I couldn’t believe how many idiots were in the Republican presidential nomination race this season. It must have had something to do with the water the John Birch Society warned us about a few decades back. The dangerous mind-bending fluorides had finally kicked in.
Rick Perry, a prime example of the prophecy bearing fruit, was the first of the America’s Idiot contestants to go back to his village, followed by the Wisconsin cheesehead, Scott Walker.
Rafael (Ted) Cruz was a serious contender back in the days when he was down on his knees in Congress asking God to end Obamacare, and promising, if elected, he would close down the IRS and send all its people to guard the Mexican border.
The only candidate who looks and sounds like that late great defender of the American political system, Sen. Joe McCarthy; the firebrand who helped orchestrate a strategy that ultimately shutdown the federal government for 16 days in 2013; a potential Veep selection who makes Sarah Palin seem like Queen Elizabeth —that Cruz still can not be ruled out. God may be on his side, if not Dr. Ben Carson’s.
The only pediatric neurosurgeon in the race, Doc Carson is a gentle Miser Magoo-like character that seems to be sedated and has only two weaknesses for a potential president: his knowledge of foreign and domestic issues. He scored points early by saying he was worried about China’s involvement in Syria. The Affordable Care Act, he explained, is the worse thing since slavery. Obama’s America is comparable to Nazi Germany. The Pyramids were built to store grain. His autobiography, the Book of Fibs as it has been called, is making him look like a total idiot. But that is only because of the unprecedented level of scrutiny about the veracity of his life story by the media that is out to get him, he argues.
Doc Carson is awesome in the race for the booby prize in American politics. But these are all baby steps compared to work being done by the leading candidate. I don’t give out prizes easily, but every day it seems front-runner Donald Trump is adding to his laurels as America’s Idiot.
Some people can be idiots from time to time. But Trump has no down time. It’s as if the fluorides in the water are having a field day every time he opens his mouth, giving us insight into his mind, such as it is.
Now I admit that during the period of my self-enforced embargo on writing about Trump’s amazing race for the presidency, I haven’t memorized for posterity, or even watched, all of his performances. I stand, or sit, guilty of turning off the news whenever a cable network like MSNBC presents him live delivering the latest imbecilic rant that may have occurred to him while he was doing his hair. But as a great editor once said, “I don’t have to eat a whole egg to know it’s rotten.”
Still I was impressed by my leading candidate’s performance on the Syrian crisis.
First, he attacked President Obama for opening our doors for 250,000 Syrians. Any mind that magically could turn 10,000 into 250,000 will be something to watch when given the keys to the U.S. Treasury.
The facts say of the 765,000 refugees admitted to the country since 9/11 only three were suspected terrorists. Remember, as Trump is calculating, it only takes one dedicated fanatic with a Hydrogen bomb to blow up the Empire State Building.
Then he claimed to have seen “thousands and thousands” of Muslims dancing in the streets of Jersey City, cheering the fall of the Twin Towers. When questioned by the fact-checkers, including a New York Times reporter with a physical handicap, the presidential candidate swears it did happen. “I saw it. It was on television.”
The fact checkers couldn’t find evidence. Trump’s argument:
Well, they didn’t look hard enough.
My candidate for the encomium America’s Idiot further validated the credibility of his statement with an Emmy-winning rendition of the reporter’s handicap.
I don’t have enough ink today to continue heaping praise on Trump’s campaign for the America’s Idiot bauble. Suffice it to say, there are two kinds of idiots in public life today: blithering idiots and real idiots. Trump is both.
Even preliminary research shows my candidate is a man of vision. With his visions about walls across borders, hordes of dancing immigrants make him more worthy of being sent to the National Institute of Mental Health for further study than the White House.
Before I return to my policy of not giving Trump the coverage he does not deserve, my advice to anybody who still believes he is the answer to what the country needs as a national leader: hold on to your wallets.
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Marvin Kitman
December 1, 2015