Witnessing the total eclipse of Donald Trump
I have this recurring fantasy that Donald Trump will disappear, forever.
Monday’s total solar eclipse isn’t a perfect analogy because Trump doesn’t shine like the sun, and the moon blocked the sun only temporarily.
But for a few blissful minutes, anyone who happened to be in the path of the eclipse experienced an elation more intense than any other celestial experience. Stars emerged. The universe was visible. The Earth and all life on it came into sharper focus. The cosmos will felt complete.
It’s only a matter of time before we experience the same exhilaration when Trump is gone.
And he will be gone. Either he’ll lose the 2024 election or he’ll be sent to jail — or both. Or he’ll win and be president for a short time before becoming so blatantly and dangerously unhinged that even Republican lawmakers demand he step down.
Eventually, of course, he will depart the celestial realm altogether, as we all will. (He’ll be 78 in June and doesn’t look like he’s in the best of shape.)
But Trump will also go into total eclipse because con artists are able to keep their cons going only if the cons get larger and more audacious. Trump’s biggest con — his 2024 presidential campaign based on his big lie about the 2020 election — is about as big as a con can get.
His smaller cons aren’t doing well. Anyone who bought into Trump Media’s initial public offering when it peaked at $79.38 a share is now 43% poorer. After it went public, Trump Media had to report it lost $58.2 million in 2023 on sales of just $4.1 million. This makes Trump Media almost worthless.
Trump has also been selling copies of the King James Bible for $59.99 each. He’s calling it the “God Bless the USA Bible” and including the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights (both of which are already in the public domain). Apparently, he’s got few buyers.
He’s been hawking gold (chocolate) bars, wines, superhero NFTs, and “Never Surrender” sneakers, for $399 a pair.
None of these cons will do any better than Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Plaza, Trump Marina, or the Trump Taj Mahal.
Like all fraudsters, Trump is running out of suckers.
On Saturday night, Trump convinced 117 extraordinarily wealthy people to give him $50 million (he said) at a campaign fundraiser at the Palm Beach home of billionaire investor John Paulson. They believe that if Trump becomes president again, he’ll give them another big tax cut.
But the only way to finance another big tax cut without exploding the federal budget deficit would be to cut Social Security and Medicare, which Trump now promises he won’t do. So either Trump’s billionaire backers are being conned or the American people are.
So prepare eclipse.
(Oh, and if you watched the eclipse, I hope you wore protective glasses — unlike Trump did in 2017.) for Trump’s total
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of “The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It.” Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
As you might have noticed, the political class is in a bit of a frenzy, trying to intuit exactly whom Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s quixotic campaign for president will hurt the most — President Biden or former President Donald Trump.
I suppose it’s good news for the independent candidate and Democratic Party scion that both campaigns are taking him seriously enough to worry about him — after all, he’s only polling at 9.5% in an average of polls, and is only on the ballot in five states — so far.
But worried they are, and both Biden and Trump are trying to tie Kennedy to each other.
Team Biden has said they aren’t taking anything for granted, and the Democratic National Committee has built its first ever team to counter his run, bringing in several veteran operatives known for their aggressive approaches.
The DNC also placed billboards all over the state of Michigan declaring RFK was “powered by MAGA/Trump.”
And Trump, in his typically unhinged way, has been busy attacking Kennedy, too, posting on Truth Social that he is “the most Radical Left Candidate,” whose running mate Nicole Shanahan is “even more ‘Liberal’ than him,” and baselessly musing that Kennedy could somehow “be indicted any day now, probably for Environmental Fraud.”
In some confusing messages, Kennedy himself has denounced the idea that he’s running as a spoiler to either Biden or Trump but acknowledges that his “intention is to hurt both of them.”
But both parties seem to agree on something. Democrats believe — or are at least posturing like they believe — that RFK is a serious threat to Biden. In a DNC press cal l recently, several Biden surrogates called Kennedy’s campaign “disgusting.” “All he can do is take away votes from President Biden and make it easier for Donald Trump to win,” said Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis.
My dear friend and colleague Paul Begala enumerated the reasons why he believes RFK will take from Biden, all of which having to do with the fact that his last name is Kennedy.
As for Trump, he also believes — or is at least posturing like he believes — the same, saying Kennedy is “Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine. I love that he is running!”