What’s wrong, Skip? Is Old Man Trump cheating again?

DONALD Trump gets too much credit sometimes for his three-card-trick merchant’s ability to ‘distract’.

Last Thursday it was said he was distracting from the worst economic quarter on record by tweeting out the idea that November’s US presidential election might be postponed.

Yet if you’re trying to ‘distract’ people with what would be the official ending of democracy in the United States (it ended unofficially some time back), maybe you’re not on top of that whole distraction thing after all.

I mean, would it not work the other way round, too? If you’re trying to mess with an election for the first time in American history then wouldn’t it be a handy distraction to have these economic numbers that are no great surprise anyway?

Moreover, it was suggested his election tweet was helping to distract from the death of former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain from Covid-19 weeks after Cain attended the disastrous rally in Tulsa — and there was Barack Obama’s oration at the funeral of civil rights leader John Lewis, a real distraction for Trump.

Yes, maybe that’s what it was all about — the wrecked economy, the end of democracy and the insanely stupid deaths of his followers, all to put a hole in Barack Obama’s ratings?

It’s Distract-O-Mania over there, but the card to watch most closely is the election scam. Indeed, in that regard the only option that would have no appeal whatsoever for Trump is that of the free and fair election. Gangsters don’t do anything free and fair.

And there’s a game that comes into play here, one that Trump’s always been really good at: in his efforts to de-legitimise the election he’s doing a version of the game of going bankrupt and slithering away from the wreckage somehow.

Now he has bankrupted America itself, financially and morally and every other way, he is looking for his biggest ‘win’ yet in the old liquidation game — a ‘win’ in this case having none of the usual meanings of that word, but just the vision of Trump emerging unharmed again from the ruination which he has wrought.

It is what he does. And it is what he’s trying to do again, whatever it takes.

******* If anyone thinks remote learning is new they probably don’t know about Skippy The Bush Kangaroo.

The Australian TV series, which was also on RTE, featured an intelligent kangaroo and the boy Sonny Hammond and their adventures in Waratah Park. It also featured the School of the Air, which broadcast lessons to outback children. At a time when Irish children were enduring brutality in the classroom, it was quite a thing to watch Sonny receiving a perfectly good education by listening to the radio.

And, of course, by listening to Skippy.

Isn’t that right, Skip?