There is an old adage among lawyers that says,“If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table.” This seems to be the Republican strategy these days with respect to Trump.
The policy positions outlined in Project 2025 are extremely unpopular amongst a large segment of the electorate. Despite Trump trying to distance himself from that document, the simple fact is, a large number of former Trump staffers worked on it and J.D. Vance wrote the foreword for the book that is coming out later this year by one of the chief authors of Project 2025. So, to paraphrase the above adage, “If you have popular policy positions on your side, pound the policy positions; if you don’t have popular policy positions, engage in character assassination.”
Vance is attacking and mischaracterizing Walz’s military record when, in fact, Vance is hardly a military hero himself having spent his time in Iraq as a war correspondent, primarily sitting behind a desk. It also seems really rich that anyone on the Trump team would attack anyone’s military record given that Trump himself weaseled out of the draft because of ‘bone spurs.’ Nonetheless, they are trying to launch the same kind of ‘swift boat’ attack that sunk John Kerry’s bid for the presidency.
There have already been numerous attacks on Harris because of her race and her gender. They are also attacking Harris because she did not pass the bar on the first try. Statistically, 20 to 25 percent of people fail the bar on the first try and my guess is, that if you were to comb through the records of many people in Congress, you would find many of them now attacking Harris also did not pass the bar on their first try.
She was a prosecutor for 20 years and rose to become the Attorney General of California so the fact that she didn’t pass the bar on the first try is, quite frankly, irrelevant. It’s like saying that any doctor who did not pass the MCAT and get into medical school on the first try is incompetent. It’s nonsense. But that is what we are facing now. Trump and his Republican supplicants have so few policy positions that are widely popular, they are forced to try to create issues out of nonsense.
As you may recall, Rumpelstiltskin spun straw into gold in exchange for a woman’s first-born child. Trump and the Republicans are trying to spin nonsense into campaign issues in exchange for installing an authoritarian, convicted felon in the White House. Unfortunately, many Americans cannot seem to see through this fairytale. Trump and Rumpelstiltskin are exactly the same – they are both con men. In the end, Rumpelstiltskin self-destructed due to his own over sized ego. If you listen to Trump’s nonsensical and incoherent speeches these days, it certainly seems he is headed in the same direction. The real question is, “Can his handlers prop him up for the next three months before he self-destructs just like Rumpelstiltskin?”
Will this fairy tale have a happy ending? Will democracy live happily ever after? We can only hope the fairy tale does not turn into a nightmare.
