Boaters for Trump, Tractors for Trump, Farmers for Trump: A Monologue

So these are all questions that are very, very big on the Internet.

Below are recent remarks by former president and current convicted felon and adjudicated rapist Donald Trump. Other than a few ellipses, I have not changed his words in any way:

Some of the comedians—I don’t think they’re comedians because comedians are supposed to be funny; they’re not funny, like, at all. They’re nasty. They’re mean. And they think they’re funny. And someday — hopefully, it’s in five years — but someday, when I’m not here, they’re going to be off television because their ratings, which aren’t very good anyway, but their ratings are going to go down like you’ve never seen before. That includes a lot of others also.

In fact, I’m sort of waiting for the New York Times and the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSDNC — I’m waiting for them to endorse me, because if they don’t, they’re going to drop with a thud like — you know, it was supposed to have happened long ago, and then we won a race, and it was a great — it was a great victory.

And our — I think we’ve never had a more energized base. I don’t think so. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. The rallies that we’re having are incredible; we call them “protests.” They’re friendly protests. We don’t want to call them “rallies,” but the friendly protest rallies are — have been incredible. People — I don’t think anybody has ever seen anything like it. And this is still long before an election. This isn’t like the evening before. These are long before an election.

The — the incredible crowd we had in Pennsylvania and Virginia — in every state, no matter where — in North Carolina, Florida — no matter where we go, we’re having crowds like nobody — I don’t think anybody has ever gotten before ever. Not even close.

There’s a level of enthusiasm — in Iowa today, with the tractors — thousands of tractors. In different states, the boats. You know, thousands and thousands of boats. Boaters for Trump, Tractors for Trump, Farmers for Trump — it’s really been very nice to see the level of enthusiasm. . . .

And again, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the Republican Party more unified. I think it was probably even more unified with the impeachment hoax, actually. When they did the impeachment hoax, I think that was — which really turned out to be a hoax, because now you look at what’s happening with the FBI and Justice Department; if you look at all of those text messages, emails that were sent, it — we have been totally proven right. They spied on our campaign, and everybody knew it. Biden knew it; Obama knew it. Everybody knew it. And the lamestream media just, you know, doesn’t want to pick it up, although some have. . .We appreciate that.

But this is a major scandal. This is a scandal, the likes of which nobody has ever seen. This is actually the biggest political scandal in the history of our country. And with the exception of a few, I mean, they just don’t want to write about it. You should read about that. . .You should write about it. You should write about it. You should do something on CNN about it, because it’s the biggest single scandal of our time; certainly the biggest political scandal, perhaps, in history.

They — they spied on our campaign, and then they tried for a coup. That didn’t work out too well. And it turned out that, if you read the — you read the texts that came out over the last three days, it turned out that they were really — it was reversed; it was the DNC and the Democrats that were using Russia. And related or unrelated, Hunter Biden got three and a half million dollars from the wife of the mayor of Moscow. Why did he get three and a half million dollars? And then he got millions more than we thought from Ukraine, and he got millions more than we heard about from China. Hunter Biden — “Where’s Hunter?”

So these are all questions that are very, very big on the Internet. The biggest thing going on the Internet is exactly this. And we’re going to have to see how that all turns out, but it turned out that we were right. So we went through two and a half years of ruining people’s lives, like General Flynn and many others — ruining their lives. And it turned out to be just the opposite. It was the Democrats that were dealing with Russia and other things. . .

Biden and the Democrats are desperate to distract from the real issues, which is that their party has been taken over by socialists, extremists, and probably communists. I think it’s beyond socialism; I think it’s a step beyond, and could be many steps beyond, if you take a look.

And if they win, they will nominate justices who will destroy the American way of life, the American Dream. They will destroy the American Dream. They’ll destroy America. They’ll destroy the United States of America. Your private right to own a firearm will be totally eliminated, your guns will be confiscated, your ability to live by your religious faith will be devastated. They’ll abolish America’s borders and give government healthcare to illegal aliens, which will destroy our healthcare system because so many people will pour into our country. That’s a tremendous incentive.

On voter fraud, as you know, hopefully there won’t be a very big movement because hopefully we’re going to be able to win. I think we have the massive movement. I think we’re going to have a tremendous, tremendous victory.

When I said “recent remarks,” I meant they were relatively recent—as opposed to say, Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address. Trump actually unleashed this toxic waste dump of words at a White House press briefing, on September 27, 2020, where he spoke about the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. It was three and a half months before the insurrection. But he could just as easily have been talking last week, at some tractor show in the Midwest.

It’s the same formula: false grievance, indignation, low-key insults, word salad. Indeed, this is typical of stuff Trump said back then. His monologues have not much changed, although his mental acuity has deteriorated, and I don’t think he was so concerned about sharks four years ago.

Trump is ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. That this criminal conman was our president is a national embarrassment. If it happens again, if Trump and his fascist underlings at Project 2025 assume power, they will—to quote this master of projection— “destroy the American way of life, the American Dream. They will destroy the American Dream. They’ll destroy America. They’ll destroy the United States of America.”

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NEWS & NOTES

• There is no new PREVAIL podcast today and no new Five 8. The Five 8 will return next week. The podcast will resume on Friday, July 5.

• Thanks for supporting my book, Rough Beast. Bookstores can now order it via Ingram Spark, so if you prefer to support your local bookseller and avoid the Amazon monster, all you have to do is call and ask them to order it for you—and suggest that they stock the book.

• The audiobook is almost done. The files have been mastered. It’s a matter of a few little tweaks and some uploads, and then we’ll be good to go. Hopefully it will be ready this week.

• Thanks to everyone who came out to the Daily Beans events this past weekend. It was great to meet Dahlia Lithwick, Jen Taub, Dave Aronberg, Sandi Bachom, and our readers and listeners who were in attendance in NYC and Boston.

• I was a guest on Cheri Jacobus’s podcast. This was a particularly good convo, I thought.

Finally, my friend Nina Burleigh’s debut novel, Zero Visibility Possible, is now available in e-book form. Paperback is on the way. I blew through this last weekend and it’s really really good. Here is my blurb:

“In her stick-of-dynamite of a debut novel, Nina Burleigh displays a journalist’s eye for detail, a filmmaker’s skill at world-building, a poet’s way with words, and a sibyl’s gift for unpleasant prophesy. Set in an alternate reality where Donald and Ivanka exist but Steve Bannon does not, Zero Visibility Possible is a riveting thriller about mass shooters, CIA pilots, crypto operatives, and journalists of all stripes: men and women, young and old, innocent and jaded, celibate and insatiable, corporate sellouts and those still speaking truth to power. Over the span of a few days, we witness a collision of old media and new, old money and new, old reporters and new, old spooks and new—and the resulting explosion goes all the way to Plattsburgh. It’s The Crying of Lot 49 meets Network, Slow Horses in the (virtual) newsroom: a brilliant and highly entertaining book that I’m told, and I hope, is the first in a trilogy. Zero Visibility Possible possesses the ineffable and rare quality summed up in six magic words: I can’t stop thinking about it.”

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Photo credit: Rob Pegararo.