When The Trump Act Stopped

 

By Baxter

"That summer [of 1923] another President took a train trip west.

"Haunted and frightened and muttering to himself and asking what you should do when your friends betray you, President Harding went across the country playing cards twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. Cabinet officers spelled each other at the table. The President said he was off liquor, but he needed it now, and his aides collected bottles from the reporters.

"He was distraught, gray, collapsing, trying to fight off the fear by dealing cards hand after hand. He fell sick and in San Francisco he was sicker. He died in a room of a hotel where his predecessor spoke for the League of Nations in 1919."

Reading Gene Smith's brilliant 1964 book about Woodrow Wilson, When the Cheering Stopped, we cats realized for the first time that a President — in this case, Warren G. Harding — could be nuts. Or that a President, like Wilson, could hide illness and debilitation from the nation. It was a novel concept until, of course, 1974, when Richard Nixon ended up placing squiffy calls to Henry Kissinger and talking to Presidential portraits in the White House late at night.

Now, Donald Trump has clearly bought a one-way ticket on the Crazy Train. He's seen the polls, so he's calling up FOX Business anchors, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh — ranting for hours, dropping the "F" word and threatening to arrest Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. It got so bad that Limbaugh basically hung up on him today. Trump's campaign is unraveling under the weight of his nutsiness, no money and lots of COVID, and now the Commission on Presidential Debates has officially canceled the October 15 meetup in Miami.

Things will change a hundred times between now and Election Day — but we can't help feeling that Benedict Donald is hurtling toward some sort of Harding-Nixon ending. He might not die in San Francisco or lift off in a helicopter from the South Lawn, but he will end nevertheless. The only question is whether his right-wing, white supremacist, so-called "militia" boys will try to tear the country apart either before or after he does. We cats wait and worry, and we HISS.