One, two, buckle my shoe
The stonecutters at Mount Rushmore have been told to hold off on crafting that Trump head.
Impeached, one-term presidents who fell short in two, consecutive, popular votes don’t make the Mount Rushmore cut.
Meanwhile, the man who would be king, except in kingdoms controlled by voters and votes, is still seeking a second term.
That’s not going to happen.
“Boss Tweet” can tweet till he turns blue, but it won’t change the outcome of an election he lost by 6 million votes and 74 electors.
Until he realizes that he’d better pack up and head somewhere else on Jan.y 20, he’ll continue to drain dignity from the office of the presidency.
(I won’t even mention the dignity he’d already drained since the day he took office)
But here we are.
Donald Trump and his assembled ambulance chasers are flailing away at simple logic by filing lawsuit after lawsuit that assert armies of Trump devotees were prevented from having their votes counted.
On Sunday, Lara Trump, Eric’s wife and Donald’s daughter-in-law, appeared on Fox News, and she put on a curious defense of the president’s need to question the outcome of the election.
First, she resorted to the dubious argument: “There are 74 million people out there who do not feel like the result of this election as presented is accurate.”
Yeah. But what about the 80 million people who do feel the election is accurate?
She was advancing one of the sillier gambits advanced by Team Trump. They seem to feel that 74 million is more important than 80 million until they can make 80 million shrivel down to 73 million.
Mrs. Trump must’ve been absent from class the day they taught the lesson, “One, two, buckle my shoe; Three, four, shut the door …” and so on, and so forth.
But Lara Trump hadn’t completed her preposterous argument.
She dug up the ancient and meaningless fact that her father-in-law’s campaign rallies had been much bigger than Joe Biden’s.
She told the folks at Fox, “You saw there were tens of thousands of people that would come to Trump events, and like 12 to 20 people showing up to a Biden event.” (Note: That’s not true. Biden had at least 25 people at his rallies.)
But then she dove so deep into linguistic blarney that I think, someday, with that kind of serpentine logic, I just may hold her in high esteem.
“This is like if a guy on a street corner is trying to sell you a Gucci wallet for $12, you probably know it’s not a Gucci wallet,” she opined.
Gucci, by the way, is an Italian company.
So, I’m outraged.
If you’re going to make up a stupid metaphor, and you’re married to the offspring of a man who champions “America First,” then you should never, ever, use a product that comes from a country beyond the shores of the United States of America.
Perhaps, she should’ve said that a man on a street corner was selling Big Macs or hula hoops.
That’s just me.
There’s another odd defense Trump and his supporters use to justify the assembly line full of litigation that’s been filed, but later dismissed: that Democrats refused to accept Trump’s victory for four years.
Hillary Clinton called Trump on election night in 2016, and conceded the election to him.
Then, the following morning, she held a news conference, where she made that concession public.
There hadn’t been any handwringing or denials about the outcome of the election on the part of the person who had gotten 3 million more votes than the person who beat her.
She was resolutely gracious in defeat.
That can’t be said for Trump, for his supporters, and sadly, for the hierarchy of the Republican Party. And that includes the folks at Fox News. Whenever Trump even clears his throat, those folks call that a great speech!
All we’re getting is groveling and some strained logic about why we should wait for all of the legitimate votes to be counted.
They already have been.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.