They are contrasting cultures and different sociology but three Yoruba sayings may well capture former US President Donald Trump’s January 6 assault on the US Capitol.
Trump wishes January 6 would go away, with more lies and renewed bluster. But his opposers, in the liberal press, would be damned to allow that.
Which takes the matter back to the tri-Yoruba sayings. One declares: he who steals a chick from the poor condemns himself to ceaseless grumbles. The other: if you do what no one has done you’re fated to seeing what no one has seen.
The third may well be the most lethal for Trump, as he manoeuvres his zombie base and fiddles the legal process to escape fair sanctions for his power rascality: Tortoise was asked when he’d come back. He snapped: when I’m thoroughly disgraced!
What have all these, you’d ask Hardball, got to do with America, its politics and its problem adult former president? Plenty — except, of course, you have not seen the latest CNN special report: Trumping Democracy: An American coup, by CNN popular anchor, Jake Tapper.
For starters, “Trumping democracy” is a devastating pun on the Trump name, in that negative context of Trump supporters storming the US Capitol, in a daft move to roll back an election already lost and won.
Remember the first quip about stealing a fowl from the poor? Trump and brood try to divert attention from January 6. But CNN and co-liberal media, The New York Times, Washington Post, et al won’t just stop digging up new angles, to keep the outrage on the front burner.
Trump on January 6 snatched their liberal fowl. He’s therefore condemned to constant reportage and commentaries from them! CNN’s Trumping Democracy is the latest — but hardly the last — of such ugly reminders.
Read Also: Democrats: Capitol Building attackers were answering Trump’s call
Well, Trump did what no American president — at least of the modern era — has never done before. So, he’s fated to comeuppance no American president has ever got: for starters, the “coup” blight to his name — hardly unfair!
Besides, Liz Cheney, Republican blue blood, daughter of former VP Dick Cheney but Trump’s No. 1 nemesis in this crusade, put it with icy chill: “No president has done this before,” she told Tapper in the documentary, “we’ll make sure no president does it again.”
Tapper himself tapped into an open secret which nevertheless could have escaped the not-so-attentive viewer: everyone interviewed in the documentary — Ms Cheney (Wyoming), Adam Kinzinger (Illinois) and Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio), were no Democrats but puritanical Republicans, who pride long-term Republican wellness above Trump’s fair-weather demagoguery; and are determined to push Trump’s nose out of joint, to clear the GOP from Trump’s January 6 outrage.
But Trump, the ultimate rabble rouser and perhaps America’s answer to Adolf Hitler in peddling race grudges and culture clashes, is hardly folding his arms and tumbling over. He’s busy mobilizing and energizing his gullible and excitable base to a probable fight-to-finish.
He had better triumph! Already, Ms Cheney is headed for a testy primary to retain her House seat, to which Trump is sponsoring a lackey. Cheney feels she’ll win but even if she loses, punishing Trump is far worthier than retaining her seat under Trump’s lies.
Kinzinger had already ruled himself out but warned it’s only a tactical “stepping aside”, to borrow IBB’s infamous post-June 12 debacle lingo. Gonzalez has also dropped out after two terms, declaring Trumpian fumes too noxious for his political health.
So, Trump had better triumph! If he fails, then he’s condemned to the Tortoise’s voluntary fate: not to return until he’s utterly disgraced! That remains a looming possibility.
If President Biden gets his domestic agenda right, by 2024 Trump might just have become a blundering, blustering relic who no one touches — even with the proverbial six-foot pole!
Hardball, God willing, would be at the ringside to report which is which!
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