We’ve gone from Trump being skeptical of Obama’s citizenship to musing about “very fine” neo-Nazis to a Twitter version of “Go back to Africa.” In Cincinnati, even his most hardcore supporters talk about wanting him to shut up. He then characteristically blamed the mess on Democrats. Trump launched his 2020 re-election campaign on June 18th in Orlando. Few politicians in history have revealed what they are to voters more than Trump. They didn’t want to talk about it. Trump in this way is more all-American than Mark Spitz, Liberace, Oprah, Audie Murphy, and Marilyn Monroe. For all this, every time Trump seems headed for the dustbin of history, he bounces up again off the messageless paralysis of his Democratic opposition. You met union members, veterans, and where it got weird was the stream of people who appeared to be neither traditional Republicans nor, seemingly, interested in politics at all. Introducing Trends: visualize news in real-time and discover top authors or outlets. The news media rate somewhere between herpes and ISIS in much of the country. This byline is mine, but I want my name removed. We elected the man, and are poised to do it again. Trump’s political strategy is primitive but effective. The pope driving monster trucks might get this much attention. Middle Americans got so used to getting nothing out of elections, they started treating national politics for what it had become to them, a distant, pretentious sitcom. Donald Trump, Election 2020, long reads, Matt Taibbi, Trump, White House. Walls and his friend James Monroe drove in from Kentucky. A step forward meant welcoming the boils-and-all embrace of Donald Trump. America is messed up, sure, but are we this messed up? A normal, self-aware politician, meaning one who is not Donald Trump, would have waited for Pelosi to step off this land mine. His innovation was making systematic the separation of families in custody, a move that seemed to have no practical purpose except as a deterrent of the Game of Thrones heads-on-spikes variety. The astonishing thing about Trump is that he wasn’t foisted on us by a council of Bourbons, or by succession law. This is where Trump makes his living, getting people who should know better to rise to his bait. “You came from the mountains and the valleys and the rivers, and, uh, you came for —” He seems to not know what comes after rivers. Which Is the Real 'Working Class Party' Now? Republicans split the primary vote, Democrats nominated a high-negatives insider, and the media not only tossed to Trump billions of dollars in free coverage, but also constantly validated his mockery with snooty mis-predictions. — Trump finally signed an executive order reversing the policy. Author Archive. The anguish of the lefty protesters is the best part. America is the first country to ever elect a Mad King, and the way things are going, we may be dumb enough to do it twice, Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone. Matt Taibbi. Matt Taibbi: Well, this is going to continue for years and years and years, so it’s a little early to be doing a touchdown spike, I think. “Don the con . Matt Taibbi writes a lengthy column calling out his colleagues for abandoning all pretense of civil liberties in an effort to 'resist' President Trump. Trump is 50 years behind the worst elements of the Republican Party, which spent decades carefully stuffing race under bromides like “states’ rights” and “free stuff.” The GOP now is in an all-out bucket brigade to rescue the dog whistle. Progressives who have called for the entire border-enforcement machinery to be reformed freaked. Russians under Ivan the Terrible used to watch dogs being hurled over the Kremlin walls when the tsar’s mood was bad. S--t Public Defenders See: Innocent, But Fined, For What Are America's Wealthy Thankful? “I wish,” says one fan, “he would edit himself a little bit.”. Among both young and old, people turned out who had no conception of Trump as anything but a TV star. Republicans who used to complain about liberals “apologizing for America” were being silly, but 2020 Democrats sound like escapees from the Killing Fields. Christ, we even know what the man’s penis looks like. This cycle has led to more alienation and made the 2020 election a gruesome, exhausting black comedy.