The last couple of weeks of a presidential campaign are a time for candidates to make their closing arguments to the voters, to say to any of those who remain undecided, “This is why you should vote for me.” From the evidence of the rally at Madison Square Gardens, the closing argument of the Republicans is: “We hate you. Vote for us.”
Tony “They’ll Let Anybody Call Themselves a Comedian These Days, So I Are One” Hinchcliffe hates Puerto Ricans. He abhors Blacks. He detests Palestinians. And if we’re being honest, he isn’t entirely thrilled by Jews, either. Now, the Republicans can afford to lose the Black vote, and they would only be mildly inconvenienced by losing the Jewish vote. But Puerto Ricans? Alienating them makes you wonder if the Republicans are serious about winning this election!
Tucker Carlson and Rudy Guiliana hate Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Hate her! Hate her! Hate her! Hate her! She thinks that just because she was a DA who brought crime lords to justice that she can stop imaginary Haitian invaders from eating pets in heartland cities? That just shows how out of touch with Americans’ paranoid delusions she is! And does she really believe she has an understanding of the issues facing Americans just because she grew up in the middle class to become a Senator and a Vice President? Everybody knows that she is the least qualified most qualified presidential candidate in American history!
(Rudy gets a special shout out because of his obvious hatred of the middle class. He may have been disbarred, but he’s never far from a bar, our Rudy!)
Most of the speakers at the six hour rally were theoretical haters; it was left to Stephen Miller to be a practical hater. A hater with a plan. To ensure you knew where he was coming from, he started with a Nazi quote where he substituted the word “American” for “German.” He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get a copyright infringement notice soon. Then, Miller outlined how the next Trump administration would deport millions of immigrants. You can almost hear historians who wrote about the Japanese internment during WWII groan, “We didn’t intend our scholarship to be a how-to manual!
Given the level of hate in the room, it’s a bit rich for Hulk Hogan to say, “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here.” I guess decades of steroid use affects your eyesight. Hogan added: “The only thing I see here are a bunch of hard-working men and women that are real Americans, brother.” Oh, yeah, there’s definitely something wrong with his eyes.
But for sheer comic value, nobody beats Dr. Phil McGraw’s assertion that Donald Trump won his debate with Kamala Harris. Anybody with working eyes (sorry, HH) could tell that by the end of the debate, Trump was a puddle of goo in front of his podium. But people like McGraw would have you believe that he was more effective as a puddle of goo than Harris was as non-goo.
He followed that joke with one denying that he’s a celebrity. I guess it’s too late for his millions of fans to return his books, and god only knows how they’ll be able to erase the memory of all of those hours watching his television show. Maybe Hulk Hogan could hook them up with somebody who could give them – ahem – medications that would help remove those memories.
The denial was meant to bolster his common person cred, as was his assertion that, like celebrities, he knew nothing about politics and policies. He was a little…confused. But he got back on track with the assertion that regular Americans – like Dr. Phil, who will be signing copies of his new book, I’m OK, You’re a Fascist Democratic Commie Bastard!, by the concession stand next to exit G7 after the rally – were being cancelled by censorious lefties. Like Jeff Bezos, who would rather the Washington Post not run an editorial endorsing a candidate in the election than support Kamala Harris. Like Elon Musk, who has turned TwitterX into a cesspool of fascist hate. Or Fox News. Or rabid right-wing talk radio. Or fanatical right-wing blogs. Or zealous right-wing podcasts. Where, oh, where can right-wing Americans find representations of their points of view?
The evening culminated with Donald Trump, the would be kommandant-in-chief who is really the hater-in-chief. The crowd of 20,000 cheered as he warned that 75% of people who used the New York subway system ended up dead. Most of them wearily side-eyed the people in seats next to them, wondering if they were the ones who were going to die on the way home after the rally.
People wonder why Trump would go to Democratic strongholds like New York or Detroit and insult the people who live there. Stay naive, you beautiful, bastard people. In the minds of MAGAts, New York is the lion’s den and Trump is Daniel. When he isn’t Jesus. Or Rambo. It’s manna for the base.
The rest was a mix of lies, racism and grievance – a standard Trump stump speech, then. His closing message to the American people seemed to be: “See you in January at the next insurrection.” It may not be a winning argument, but winning doesn’t seem to be the point…