We are now just a week away from the election, but the Toteboard is taking a brief break, sort of, from the usual analysis. Instead, we have a handful of questions.
These are questions for Donald Trump, questions that reporters and interviewers and town hall participants never quite ask him directly. But these questions matter, and the American public is entitled to hear clear, unambiguous answers.
Now more than ever, it is absolutely crucial that responsible members of the fourth estate ask him these questions. And if he dodges and weaves and evades and gaslights, they should repeat them, and hammer him with them, and leave him no breath and no daylight until he addresses them directly.
Question 1: Why do you lie?
That Trump lies, incessantly, is not really a matter of debate. Anyone who hasn’t been lobotomized can recognize that much of what he says consists of one lie after another. And any Trump voters who claim that he doesn’t lie are simply in a massive state of collective denial. He lies about the size of his financial portfolio, he lies about the size of his campaign crowds, he lies about the size of his dick. And he lies almost reflexively, like a bad-guy “heel” wrestler, who as a matter of habit both denies his own cheating and falsely accuses his opponent of the same. But we’re not just talking here about an inflated resume or an exaggerated biography. Trump also lies about things of real consequence in the real world, and these lies frequently fuck up people’s lives, or serve to deny responsibility for fucking up people’s lives. Of course, should Trump ever actually answer this question, we can be pretty certain that his answer would be another lie.
Question 2: Why do you abuse people?
If dishonesty is Trump’s habit, abuse is Trump’s brand. He abuses every type of person, every which way. He abuses people verbally, he abuses them financially, he abuses them sexually. He abuses employees, he abuses colleagues, he abuses journalists, he abuses political opponents, he abuses people he meets in random encounters. And what’s more, his abuse flouts even the most basic rules of human decency. He makes fun of people with disabilities, he disparages people who endured torture as prisoners of war, he invokes disgusting stereotypes of immigrants and people who don’t happen to be white. Yes, there is a place in the world for comic villains, like Danny DeVito’s Louie De Palma on Taxi, or Carl Reiner’s Alan Brady on The Dick Van Dyke Show, or all those heel wrestlers that Trump cozies up to and frequently emulates. But this is reality, and a reality where a past, and possibly future, president of the United States normalizes abuse is a very sad reality indeed.
Question 3: Do You have any idea how much damage you have caused, and continue to cause?
From an ethical standpoint, Trump personifies a reckless nihilism, one that somehow combines all of our most censorious and scornful metaphors. He’s a bloodsucker and a schoolyard bully, a ticking time bomb and and a bull in a china shop. And his actions have consequences. When he trashes immigrants, he turns neighbor against neighbor, and sets whole communities on edge. When he concocts bogus yarns about election fraud, he provokes widespread mistrust of crucial institutions, incites his brain-damaged followers to violence, and threatens longstanding democratic norms, like the peaceful transfer of power. When he kisses the asses of vicious despots who are responsible for brutal crackdowns on free speech, religion, and the press, he enables anti-democratic forces around the globe. And this doesn’t even include Trump’s massive legacy of micro-destructions, i.e., all the adversaries he’s defamed, all the former colleagues he’s back-stabbed, all the employees and creditors he’s stiffed, all the ethnic groups he’s maligned, and yes, all the pussies he’s grabbed. And so, the lingering question that most perplexes the Toteboard is whether or not Trump gets it, whether or not he truly understands the injuries that he has caused to people, to families, to communities, to our country, and to our planet?
Question 4: Why . . . . . why . . . .?
Actually, the truly perplexing question is why tens of millions of Americans are okay with all of this, why tens of millions of Americans think it is, in fact, a good thing that a lying sociopath who has brought so much destruction may once again become president. Is the Toteboard missing something?
Postscript: Toteboard reader BF suggested one more question for Trump: "You said Hitler did some good things. What were they?"
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