Overly Celebrated New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd had a column Saturday about how her siblings are even more determined to vote for Trump after his guilty verdict.
A quick aside, Dowd managed to fit many things that’s wrong with her employer in one column on Saturday. This includes an odd claim that her one sister might support Trump because she “pays over 100 dollars for 10 items at the grocery store.” It reminded me a little of David Brooks’ 78-dollar burger and fries at the airport, which apparently didn’t include multiple double scotches. And it ends with a “Biden is in deep trouble” line. You know, gotta keep the company narrative going.
But anyway, back to the subject at hand. In her column, Dowd attempts to claim her sister is voting for Trump over his guilty verdict and but sis is not MAGA:
My sister is not MAGA; she voted for J.F.K. in 1960, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Barack Obama in 2008 and wrote in Joe Biden’s name in 2012. But she thinks President Biden has declined significantly and should step aside for a fresh choice. She’s upset about paying over $100 for 10 items at the grocery store. And she is irked by the Democratic fervor to throw Trump in the clink.
Maureen…your sister is MAGA. Anyone who would vote for Trump over Biden is MAGA. This is “my brother is not an addict he just does heroin several times a day” type stuff.
And here’s why. This might be tough for some people to think about, especially if it involves a loved one’s support for Trump. Maybe you still cling to the notion that all people are inherently good, despite the idea losing ground over the last decade (see protests against masks during COVID).
But the reality is this…voting for Trump means supporting:
A man who is a serial rapist. My First Draft colleague Cassandra has been banging the drum on this, which is good because it is sadly under-discussed and practically normalized.
A man who mocked disabled people and never expressed remorse for it. To be honest, this was the moment when supporting Trump became a reflection of character because this should have been the end of his political career in a nation full of decent people.
A man who uses violent rhetoric against political opponents nonstop. You can twist yourself into intellectual thought pretzels all you want about what his “bloodbath” comments really meant but the man never stops inciting political violence.
A man who says this violent rhetoric to people who demonstrate a tendency to violence. Before anyone wants to say “yeah but left people can be violent too” I want you to find me Dem bumper stickers that express violence like this. Just imagine if supporters of any of our Muslim politicians slathered their vehicles with crazed stickers like this? And speaking of violence, actual violence…
A man who plays the national anthem at his rallies…sung by convicted January 6 rioters. Yes, a choir of domestic terrorists who beat police with chair legs and rubbed feces on the walls of the U.S. Capitol, is number one on Trump’s playlist.
A man who rarely lives up to promises to better average American’s lives. Despite many voters believing that Trump did more for infrastructure than Biden is doing, Trump’s Infrastructure Weeks were big nothingburgers. Biden hasn’t done anything, you know, other than PASSING THE INFRASTRUCTURE BILL.
A man who treats elections like a five-year-old playing Chutes and Ladders. Trump (and now most Republicans) are repeatedly saying that they will only accept the outcome of an election if he wins. You know, like a little kid flipping the game board in a sore-loser rage, except in this case “flipping the game board” could mean another January 6 riot or worse.
And last but not least…found guilty on 34 felony counts. ‘Nuff said.
Look, I have touched on a small part of the stuff that Trump has done that makes voting for him damaging to one’s personal character. Covering all of it would create a 100,000-word blog post. It gets to the point where story-time fairy tale wishes that even hard-core Trump voters are good people (dare I say, “very fine people”) wither away in the glaring reality that supporting a man like Trump reflects poorly on that person. This is not to say that such a person is beyond saving, but no one became a good person by making someone like Trump their hero.
As Adrastos reminds us, Vote Against the Crook.
PS Comedian Marc Maron, in his weekly blog post, wrote in the first five paragraphs here one of the best pieces of writing about Trump voters I’ve ever seen, so I thought I’d add it.
The last word goes to Paramore.
