If you liked Trump in 2016, now you know who he really is
New Yorker writer Evan Osnos detailed Donald Trump’s first major rally of the 2024 campaign, in Waco, Texas. A siege and massacre happened there in 1993. Some 76 Branch Davidians were killed, including 26 children. Six federal agents were killed as well.
It was a perfect storm — government arrogance and incompetence meeting paranoid, far-right, armed extremists. It led, in part, to the Oklahoma City bombing. Waco is the mecca of the radical right.
Trump’s Waco legacy
And Mr. Trump embraced the legacy. At the rally, Jan. 6 rioters sang the national anthem into their phones — remotely, collectively, and from prison cells. A jumbo screen showed scenes of the rioters desecrating the Capitol and attacking Capitol police — to cheers.
This is what we are dealing with. We had better wake up.
Mr. Biden and his advisors, Mr. Osnos writes, are serenely confident that they will defeat Mr. Trump. They think the polls are wrong.
Really? Based on what? The country would never elect Trump? It would never do it again? Mr. Biden will seem younger by November? Mr. Trump will finally self-destruct or say something that really goes too far?
The press and public will shake off their desensitization? Mr. Trump will be wearing an ankle bracelet by the time of the election?
Wake up. Grow up.
Mr. Biden must give the people some straight talk about who he is and who Mr. Trump is. Face the age issue head on and make the case for democratic and Democratic values. “Look at my record. I deserve re-election,” is a good way to lose.
Democrats had better wake up, too. A new and heretofore unnoticed reincarnation of John F. Kennedy or Barack Obama is not about to gallop up on a white horse.
They need to make their case. Not the woke case, but the opportunity case.
Lefties had better get reality woke. Staying home will not get you justice for Palestine or a new generation of leaders. You will get Mr. Trump and a shredded government and Constitution.
Earnest third party types had better wake up. Your naivety will get you chaos and authoritarianism.
Born again Christians had better wake up. Your guy will not end abortion or get people back to church. He will multiply incivility and hate, likely increase poverty, and make us a far less Christian nation.
And by the way, he thinks you are all suckers and losers. Holding a Bible in front of a church is not a prayer.
People who still think Mr. Trump is harmless or can be held in check by our system had better wake up.
Posture and identity
If, in 2016, you thought that Donald Trump might represent the forgotten Appalachian worker, or fight for free trade, or that he might have some skills that could “drain the swamp,” you know better now.
There is a record: Four years of being on deck only when he could wreak havoc or serve himself, and the last three years, beginning with January 6, 2021, of menace and fomenting civil unrest.
If you knew that Trump would become this Trump, or that this was him all along, props for you. But don’t sit on your self-satisfaction. Tell a friend or neighbor about that Waco rally.
Salena Zito famously said that Trump supporters take him seriously, but not literally. In fact we should take Mr. Trump literally, but never again take his capacity for governing seriously.
Indeed, there is no pretense of a Trump plan or platform in 2024. There is no policy proposed for the border, coal, steel, jobs, trade or rural America.
There is a plan to dismantle the federal civil service. We should take that literally.
The Trump campaign is about posture and identity: Stick it to the man. Tear it all down. This is not politics. Or populism. Or Andrew Jackson redux.
Yes, Joe Biden is old. And he has made mistakes. Afghanistan was a mistake. Kamala Harris may have been (we shall see) a mistake. Ignoring the border for three years was an unfathomable mistake. Thinking he could exert leverage on Netanyahu and backing the Israeli government unconditionally was a horrible mistake.
But Biden’s mistakes pale in comparison with Trump’s contempt and recklessness. This is a man who says Mr. Putin should feel free to attack our NATO allies and that a former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a general Mr. Trump dislikes, should have been executed.
Biden is flawed and fragile. But he has given us peace, prosperity and progress and he is devoted to both the ideals of the Declaration and the practical work of government.
A serious job
The presidency, the military, and the federal government are serious things. As serious as a heart attack. You don’t pick a heart surgeon because he will stick it to the man.
We had better wake the heck up.
But not heck.