Two generations ago, Richard Nixon was sweating to lose the first presidential debate on television to a young, fit and cool John F. Kennedy.
It was the kind of rookie mistake you could attribute to the novelty on television.
So how do you explain, 60 years later, the sweat dripping down the face of the reality star who now lives in the White House?
Of the few things that Donald Trump is supposed to know in a minimum of detail, television is right on top. There are more historical crises that challenge his presidency than cable news channels, but that doesn’t stop him from tweeting about all the television he’s watching all day.
For a man who still measures his manhood from his own television ratings, it was a curious choice to sit outside in the wet steam of a Washington summer, dressed in his bright orange makeup, to answer the annoying questions from the best interviewer on Fox News.
Hot enough for you here, Mr. President? Chris Wallace asked.
“It’s hot,” said Trump. “These are, well, things that almost broke records.”
“You know, we wanted to do it indoors,” replied Wallace. “It’s your choice.”
Trump has made far more consequential mistakes than not preparing for his double-sided grill because of the weather and Wallace. But this grilled interview exposed how the evil wizard from the west wing is melting before our eyes.
For four years we have been told that populist leaders, especially this one, are incomparable showmen: experts not in government but in kidnapping public attention.
His nicknames and key phrases allegedly destroyed his rivals in 2016. They came up with 12-point plans while he was going to make America great again. He threatened North Korea with his big nuclear button, then fell in love with the North Korean leader at a summit organized just for the cameras.
But now his repeated attempts to discredit Joe Biden have failed, and the great showman is reportedly asking attendees if he should try to find another nickname.
With each new poll showing he loses the election, both domestically and in every battlefield state, Trump’s despair trickled through all his pores in Sunday’s interview.
When asked if Biden was senile, Trump responded with the kind of half-and-half thoughts of a mind slowly cooking in the heat of the presidency. “I would say that he is not competent to be president,” he warms. “To be president, you have to be strong and tough and many other things.”
What are these many other things, tell me?
“It doesn’t even come out of its basement. They think, ‘Oh, this is a great campaign.’ Then he enters.
It was unclear who they were or what they were getting into. But it was totally clear to our strong and tough president, who is also so many other things.
“Then I will make a speech. It will be a great speech. And a young man begins to write: “Vice President Biden said this, this, this.” He didn’t say it. Joe doesn’t know he’s alive, okay? He does not know that he is alive.
It may be tempting to blame all this on the young man whose writing clearly leaves much to be desired.
But it is the old man from the Oval that should concern us. He doesn’t know he’s dying out there.
There have been some clues, of course. There was the disastrous riot of a photo shoot with a nice bible and lots of tear gas. There was a rally in Tulsa for a million people who did not show up. There was that strange Mount Rushmore speech about fascists saying bad things about racists.
On the other hand, as Chris Wallace pointed out, there are surveys showing that this desperate act is not working. And there’s all the endless video of our strong and tough president predicting that the pandemic would just go away, like a miracle, with a little bit of disinfectant injected into it. Or maybe some bright light.
“I will be right eventually,” Trump insisted when faced with his own shocking comments about the coronavirus. “I will be right eventually. You know I said, ‘It’s going to go away.’ I will say it again.
They say that a stopped clock is correct twice a day. But this broken watch will only be happy when all the watches have stopped.
At this point in Trump’s Twilight Zone, the public has a good idea of the plot twists to come in the next four months. It consists of as much invented chaos as is humanly possible.
There will be terrorist protesters in every major city, taken off the streets by Trump paramilitaries in rented minivans. Thank God we have thugs with machine guns to protect us from all that graffiti.
There will be coronavirus filled immigrant caravans scaling the freshly painted border wall, which has done a fantastic job of protecting us all from the pandemic.
After Nixon sweated to defeat Kennedy, he won the presidency again eight years later with a law and order campaign that promised to shut down civil rights protests and stop enforcing civil rights laws.
Our tricky version of Tricky Dick is a little less subtle than the original.
He claimed that the people flying the Confederate flag “were not talking about racism.” But when asked about removing the names of Confederate generals from American military bases, Trump could only think about race. And some weird stuff about a couple of world wars.
Are we going to name it after the Rev. Al Sharpton? What are you going to call him Chris? Tell me what you’re going to call it, “Trump spluttered.
“So there is everything here. We won two world wars, two world wars, beautiful world wars that were vicious and horrible. And we won them at Fort Bragg. We win from all these forts who now want to throw away those names. “
Ah yes, those beautiful world wars. So vicious and horrible. All at the same time. As the man says, there is actually something here.
“Let Biden sit in an interview like this,” Trump stated at another time. “He’ll be on the floor crying for mommy. He’ll say, ‘Mommy, Mommy, please take me home.’ “
In his childish way, Trump thought he was proving his point about senility, sharpness, and toughness. And so many other things.
But with each new interview, it seems like he’s just asking his mom to take him home.
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