Trump on a stump

The stump speech is a fixture of politics, the same words repeated at every stop by barnstorming office-seekers who haven't the time or the energy to craft one for every audience.  When Robert Kennedy ran for president in 1968, so the story goes, he joked about it.  He used to end his speech with a slight mis-quotation of a line in Back To Methuselah:  "You see things and say 'Why?'  I dream things that never were, and I say 'Why not?'"  When the weary reporters heard this coming, they would gather their belongings and prepare to leave.  At a rally in East Someplace, in a steady rain, Kennedy neared his climax:  "As George Bernard Shaw once said...run for the buses."

Trump has been raising funds and running for re-election ever since his incredible, unparalleled Electoral College victory over two years ago, and his stump speech is so predictable that it resembles a Greatest Hits album:  No collusion, Crooked Hillary, "many people have told me," witch hunt, world's greatest expert on _____, lying media, Obama's mess, glorious economy, no collusion.  As an encore, he usually gives them Build WALL To Save America From Murderous Hordes/Terrorists.  Now, at every occasion (like a speech to agribusiness), the encore has become the whole show.  And frankly, it's creepy.

It's creepy because it bubbles up from the deep well of psychosexual disorder that has often been glimpsed, though never in this much lurid detail.  I think he's talking about coyotes, people who charge the desperate a lot of money to bring them into the United States:

"They come in through our southern border, into our country.  And they'll have women taped -- their mouths with duct tape, with electrical tape.  They tape their face, their hair, their hands behind their back, their legs..."  It sounds like Stormy Daniels got off easy, just having to spank him with a magazine and endure some boring vanilla sex.  And every time he brings it up, there's more tape involved.

Do I exaggerate?  I don't think so, because we've had other looks at his twisted mind, what's left of it.  Remember "I could show you one hundred pictures of [Mueller and Comey] hugging and kissing each other"?  Remember "[Kim Jong-un] wrote me beautiful letters...we fell in love"?  Remember the many stomach-turning descriptions of Ivanka's body?

Yesterday Nancy Pelosi showed why she's Speaker of the House and you aren't, Rep. Fudge.  She brought the lightning.  She "suggested" that Trump postpone his State of the Union speech until he finds the nerve to stand up to Rush Limbaugh and sign the continuing resolution and quit dicking over thousands of government workers and millions of others.  For security reasons -- the Secret Service agents charged with getting between his bloated body and a bullet aren't getting paid either.  The dotard was too enraged to tweet.  There was only ominous silence.

For SOTU is our State Opening of Parliament without the horse-drawn carriage and the fancy dress.  (Sensing this, Jefferson initiated the custom of sending a written message to be read out by a clerk, a custom which prevailed until the time of Woodrow Wilson.)  SOTU is on every network, soberly analyzed by capital-J Journalists, with Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather wheeled in from the Old Anchors' Home.  It's when someone gamely says, "Tonight Trump became presidential," meaning he read some words off a screen, stumbled and slurred only a few times, and didn't shit his pants.  He walked all the way down the aisle while some members applauded, he shook hands with a lucky few, he grinned and waved and introduced some widow or grieving mother in the gallery (Parkland and Sandy Hook parents need not apply), and he gave up a whole night of Fox News and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, what a leader.  And even though nobody is wearing a "Grab My Pussy" shirt or yelling "Lock her up!" dear God he loves it so.

Disinvited?  You're disinvited!  About an hour before scheduled departure, Pelosi got a letter from the White House, with random words disturbingly capitalized, suggesting that she cancel a trip to Afghanistan or "fly commercial."  Hah!  That'll show her.  Also, now they know she's coming.  Very good.  Donnie didn't get a chance to regale the Congress in person with his bondage fantasies, so Nasty Pelosi (I anticipate a future tweet) doesn't get military security when she visits the troops.  Who's the big dog now?  Who pees higher on the tree, bitch?

I was looking forward to the response from Rashida Tlaib.  Maybe next year.