He Said He Would

It’s real­ly shock­ing to me how many peo­ple on both sides think 47 is not going to do just EXACTLY what he says he’s going to do. They just keep think­ing THEIR water’s edge will be HIS water’s edge. And it won’t.

Both buy­er’s-remorse con­ser­v­a­tives get­ting their faces leop­ard-eat­en because they thought they were at the top of the social hier­ar­chy AND the “Stop over­re­act­ing” white dudes with sur­prised Pikachu faces every. sin­gle. fuck­ing. time. they are proven wrong about what they con­de­scend­ing­ly mansplain/whitesplain/cissplain to mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple he can’t or won’t. They ALL seem to labor under the same assump­tion. He can’t/won’t/wouldn’t/couldn’t do “that.”

Actu­al­ly, he telegraphs every sin­gle move.

Exact­ly. Pre­cise­ly.

I mean, he lies. So there’s that. If his mouth is mov­ing, he’s lying. This is a guy who says he’s taller than Oba­ma (he’s not), insist­ed that Kansas City is in Kansas (it’s in Mis­souri), and used a sharpie on a Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice info­graph­ic because he insist­ed a hur­ri­cane was going to make impact­ful land­fall in Alaba­ma (it was­n’t, and did­n’t). And, of course, he says he has­n’t even heard of the play­book lit­er­al­ly put for­ward by all of HIS peo­ple for exact­ly what THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH intends to do to keep lib­er­als from even being a road­block to oli­garchi­cal and big­ot­ed agen­das. 

Even though he only men­tioned his igno­rance of Project 2025 once he found out it was wild­ly unpop­u­lar even on the right, and despite the fact that to even REMOTELY believe that bull­shit, you would have to accept that a bunch of trust­ed advi­sors and aides sur­round­ing him dur­ing his cam­paign did­n’t run their GRAND plan past the ONE per­son that was absolute­ly inte­gral to its suc­cess with so much as a, “This cool with you?” But sure. He nev­er heard of it. Right.

But he IS a liar. That’s demon­stra­bly true with­out even break­ing a sweat. He said he’d build a wall and did­n’t. He says he’s got the most beau­ti­ful plan for health­care and does­n’t have the first clue where to even begin—not even a con­cept of a plan. He says he won golf tour­na­ments he did­n’t. That he near­ly board­ed heli­copters he did­n’t. That he saw things he did­n’t. He uses sharpies to try and trick the U.S. pub­lic about hur­ri­cane land­falls. That peo­ple said things to him who did­n’t. He lies about not real­ly know­ing Michael Cohen. His golf scores. The size of his…inauguration. He breaks promis­es. He claims he’s the smartest per­son on Earth and makes up peo­ple who think so. 

He’s just…a liar.

So I can see there being some con­fu­sion about what truth even MEANS to a per­son like this—if he even has enough of a sense of real­i­ty to express truth. I can see why some­one who had­n’t been through four years of Trump might believe he was full of piss and wind. Like maybe noth­ing he says can be trust­ed, so why trust his threats against mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties? 

But there are pat­terns to his “alter­na­tive facts.” He also floats polit­i­cal ideas as throw away state­ments and then starts bang­ing on them if he does­n’t get push­back. He has the “tells” of a shit­ty pok­er play­er. He uses not-at-all-slick cod­ed lan­guage to couch his racism and big­otry, most recent­ly say­ing DEI when he means non-white or women or dis­abled or non cishet. 

And it’s real­ly clear, after you watch him for a while, who he’s about to go after. 

He showed us exact­ly who he was nine years ago when he was run­ning. He told us who he want­ed to hurt. He told us who he hat­ed and who he was pissed off at. He told us how impor­tant it was to hurt them. He revealed his racism over and over again. Then for four years he nev­er wavered in being exact­ly the per­son he showed us he was. 

They said he would dis­close his finan­cial records. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t go after Roe v. Wade. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t have a major impact on the Supreme Court. They were wrong. (He got three appoint­ments.)
They said the CIA would nev­er “let” him do any REAL dam­age to nation­al secu­ri­ty. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t give mas­sive tax cuts to the rich. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t send the mil­i­tary into space. They were wrong.
They said he would take a glob­al pan­dem­ic seri­ous­ly. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t con­test the results of a demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t leak secrets to Rus­sia. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t run the pres­i­den­cy for his per­son­al prof­it. They were wrong.
They said he COULDN’T politi­cize the jus­tice depart­ment. They were wrong.
They said he could­n’t bla­tant­ly obstruct the Muller inves­ti­ga­tion. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t par­don peo­ple who had attacked police and staged an insur­rec­tion. They were wrong.
They said he COULDN’T par­don him­self. They were wrong (thanks to those three appoint­ments).
They said he would­n’t dan­gle the Ukraine mil­i­tary aid in exchange for a quid pro quo inves­ti­ga­tion into his polit­i­cal rivals. They were wrong.
They said some­one would stop him if he was found to be guilty of a quid pro quo with Ukraine. They were wrong.
They said he would nev­er open­ly work with neon­azis. They were wrong.

They said he respect­ed democ­ra­cy and would­n’t fire whistle­blow­ers or bar access to the media. They were wrong.

They said they did­n’t think he would start trade wars that raised the price of every­thing. They were wrong. 

They said they did­n’t think he would deport the law-abid­ing peo­ple doing menial jobs that no US cit­i­zen want­ed to do. They were wrong.

They said they did­n’t think he’d deport their undoc­u­ment­ed spous­es. Or the peo­ple that vot­ed for him. They were wrong.
They said his par­ty would stop him if he went TOO far and would­n’t enable his most out­landish bull­shit.

They. Were. Wrong.

And appar­ent­ly they aren’t yet tired yet of being so utter­ly com­plete­ly wrong.

Peo­ple just keep think­ing there’s some adult in the room that’s going to tell him no. Tell him how unpop­u­lar his poli­cies are. Slow his roll. Stand up with arms akim­bo and say, “Exec­u­tive orders can’t do that. You have over­reached! Stand down, ser­vant of the pub­lic. Stand DOWN!!”  There isn’t an adult in that room. He’s fired them all. He’s sur­round­ed him­self with lick­spit­tle syco­phant flunkies because those are the only peo­ple his nar­cis­sis­tic frag­ile ego can han­dle. 

His learn­ing curve is hard­ly Machi­avel­lian, but he will do what he said he would. He has hit some speed bumps because he’s com­i­cal­ly incom­pe­tent. He will need to fire some peo­ple who’ve said no to him…purge some agen­cies that inves­ti­gat­ed his allies…. Under­mine the pow­er of the judi­cial branch. Edge con­gress out of law­mak­ing. Put his peo­ple every­where..

But he will. He will do what he intends to and there’s no restrain­ing force out­side of resis­tance to talk him down. Project 2025. Pull out of treaties. End crit­i­cal aid to coun­tries rav­aged by colo­nial­ism. Trash NAFTA. Trade wars. Tar­get the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty. Assist in the geno­cide of Gaza. Let the world burn. Start wars. Go for a third term. 

Every­thing.