Amateur Hour at Mar-a-Lago
I can’t be the only person whose jaw hit the floor when I read the news about Donald Trump playing host to two anti-Semitic bigots this week. If this is the kind of unforced error we can expect going forward then Trump’s 2024 campaign is going to be one long, drawn-out amateur hour.
Do the Trump people want their guy to look like the next Lyndon LaRouche?
Yeah, yeah. I know. The readers from the ever-shrinking bubble of Trump fans are already skipping the rest of this column and rushing down to the comments section to declare me an anti-American traitor with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I don’t suffer from TDS, but I am old-fashioned. Seem I like presidential candidates who don’t break bread with pipsqueak cosplaying Neo-Nazis like Nick Fuentes or mentally unstable bigots like Kanye West.
How was someone like Fuentes permitted to place one goose-stepping jackboot through the front door, let alone dine with Trump? Taxpayers pay handsomely to ensure former presidents have competent staff and secret service protection. And yet at Mar-a-Lago, it’s Amateur Hour.
And here I thought the Biden people sucked at optics. The optics from “My Dinner with Bigots” make the Biden team look like PR geniuses.
But rather than recognize this disaster for what it is, the die-hard Trump supporters snapped into excuse-making mode.
I’ve been reading with a growing sense of dismay the replies from the Trump Super Fans on Twitter as they twist themselves into knots trying to make excuses for such an abject failure.
“Trump didn’t know who Nick Fuentes was!!!”
Okay, but isn’t it the job of competent staff and security to vet people before they sit down for dinner with a former president?
“But, but, but TRUMP DIDN’T INVITE FUENTES!! He only invited Kanye!”
I don’t think “He didn’t invite that bigot. He only invited the other bigot” is the winning argument they think it is.
“Trump was set up! His people betrayed him! He would never have let Fuentes in if Kanye hadn’t played him!!!”
Ah, all right. Trump, the genius 4-D Chess master who is always ten steps ahead of everyone, got outsmarted by a raging anti-Semite, and apparently, all it took was the anti-Semite saying nice things about him on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Of course, none of the excuses change the fact that it’s Amateur Hour at Mar-a-Lago.
Let’s presume for a moment that Trump was set up and got outsmarted by Kanye and his crew. The fact that not one person in Trump’s orbit stopped this train wreck from happening doesn’t leave me brimming with optimism about Trump’s presidential campaign team.
A competent presidential candidate and a competent team would never inadvertently allow a white supremacist troll like Nick Fuentes or an anti-Semitic bigot like Kanye anywhere within a ten-mile radius, let alone through the front door.
I’m thinking a lot of the people who consistently defended Trump against the slanderous lie that he called Neo-Nazis “very fine people” are watching Amateur Hour at Mar-a-Lago with a growing sense of disgust.
I know I am.
I mean, for crying out loud, why the hell did we bother?
Why bother defending a guy who surrounds himself with incompetent clowns who can’t stop him from stepping on his own dick?
Why should we keep running to Trump’s defense when Donald Trump and his team are going to place him in indefensible situations?
And for those of you who argue that Trump should be able to dine with whomever he chooses, you’re right. We all have the right to associate with whomever we want. But we also have the right not to want to vote for a Republican primary candidate who hobnobs with bigots and Neo-Nazis just because they said nice things about him.
And the die-hard Trump fans are completely free to continue defending this Amateur Hour.
If you want to call my not wanting to deal with two years of this crap “Trump Derangement Syndrome” then go ahead. Spitting out terms like “RINO,” “GOPe,” “Uniparty,” and “TDS” is probably a lot easier than having to face the fact that Trump’s behavior is causing him to lose the support of people who voted for him.
If I’m honest, I think “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is a more fitting label for the people who cling to this Amateur Hour no matter how many times Donald Trump shoots himself in the face.
Like the anti-Trump ResistanceLOL, the die-hard Trump fans have let Donald Trump consume every aspect of their lives to the point where they are losing all sense of proportion and any ability to step back and objectively assess the situation.
And to justify their intransigence, they seem to have convinced themselves that Trump’s supporters are legion and the only people walking away from this Amateur Hour are the un-American turncoats and traitors in cahoots with Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush who are too blind to “trust the plan.”
But there is no plan. No 4-D Chess.
It isn’t brilliant strategy and political savvy that is steering this ship.
It’s incompetence.
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