Opinion

In a test of character, Trump shows his true grift

Trump could win on various things: inflation, immigration, isolationism. But the notion that a felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who shouts barnyard obscenities and vulgar epithets at his rallies would return to the White House on the strength of his upstanding character? Well, let’s just say there are very fine people on both sides who would have trouble making that argument.

As though in answer to the suggestion that he can “win on character,” Trump responded over the next couple of days by:

• Holding a campaign event in front of graves at Arlington National Cemetery, where his staff reportedly pushed aside a cemetery official trying to enforce rules against politicizing the sacred ground. Trump posed graveside with a big grin and a thumbs-up, and his campaign set the Republican nominee’s cemetery visit to music and posted it as a TikTok video. When a Harris spokesman commented on the “sad” event, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, declared that Harris herself “can go to hell.” (Vance, after a cool reception last week at a doughnut shop in Georgia, got booed by firefighters this week in Boston.)
• Announcing that two of the nation’s most prominent conspiracy theorists — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard — would be co-chairs of his presidential transition if he wins the election, with influence over key appointments and policies. Gabbard’s trumpeting of Russian propaganda has been labeled “treasonous” by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Kennedy’s long-shot presidential campaign somehow fizzled after he acknowledged, among other things, having a brain worm and leaving a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park.
• Rolling out his latest attempt to cajole his supporters to line his own pockets. This time, he offered another round of “digital trading cards” featuring a Trump superhero. Supporters who parted with $1,485 or more in this Trump-enrichment scam would be sent a piece of the fabric cut from the “knockout suit” he wore during his June debate with President Joe Biden.
• Proclaiming that it was “Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault” that he was the victim of a failed assassination attempt, asserting without evidence that they prevented the Secret Service from protecting him and that he might have been shot “because of their rhetoric.” The FBI reported that the shooter, a Republican, had searched online for both Biden and Trump events and settled on the Trump rally as a “target of opportunity.”
• Sharing another fusillade of posts on social media that cited QAnon slogans, called for the imprisonment of his opponents and suggested that Harris used sex to advance her career.

On Thursday, Trump was in Michigan and as coarse as ever — referring twice to Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as “Tampon Tim”; preposterously claiming that in Democratic states “you’re allowed to kill the baby after the baby is born”; and saying of Harris: “Nobody knows who the hell she is. She does not give a damn about you.” While complaining that the Army had said he used the Arlington National Cemetery visit “to politic,” he went right on “politicking” about it. Referring to the families of the fallen he met with, Trump said Biden and Harris “killed their children as though they had a gun in their hand.”

Trump can win on character!

Trump isn’t a fan of military cemeteries, wherein rest those who died for their country and whom Trump regards as “suckers” and “losers.” (Trump denies voicing those sentiments, which his former chief of staff, retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly, attributes to him.) Trump canceled a visit to an American military cemetery in France in 2018, citing rain, and he skipped the presidential visit to Arlington on Veterans Day that same year. Just two weeks ago, he said the civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom is “much better” than the Medal of Honor for military valor because those receiving the latter “have been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”

So why did he visit Arlington this week? There was something in it for him. He would use the fallen as a backdrop for a political attack against the Biden administration — specifically, attacking Biden for his handling of the Afghanistan pullout three years ago.

Army National Military Cemeteries cannot be used for political activities, but when a cemetery official tried to “ensure adherence to these rules” she was “abruptly pushed aside,” an Army spokesman said. Trump’s campaign accused the official of “suffering from a mental health episode” and Chris LaCivita, who is co-managing Trump’s campaign, called her a “despicable” person who shouldn’t represent the “hollowed grounds” of Arlington.

LaCivita knows something about making the hallowed hollow. He led the “swiftboating” of John Kerry 20 years ago and is now attempting to do the same to Harris’s running mate by disparaging Walz’s honorable service. And here was the Trump campaign desecrating Arlington’s Section 60, where Iraq and Afghanistan war dead lie, and posting photos and video of it across social media, with a voice-over by Trump attacking his political opponents.

Of course, Trump is the one who set the Afghanistan withdrawal in motion. Now, he’s setting another calamity in motion by getting ready to force Ukraine to give up its fight against Russia’s invasion. “Look at what’s going on right now with Ukraine surging into Russia,” he complained this week, objecting to Ukraine’s recent success. “You’re going to end up in World War III, and it’s going to be a bad one.”

Openly condemning an American ally’s success? Vladimir Putin couldn’t have said it better.

What do the just-announced co-chairs of Trump’s transition team have in common? They both were witnesses before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — Rep. Jim Jordan’s attempt to prove the existence of the deep state, which has been panned even by sympathetic commentators for coming up empty.

Gabbard, a former Democratic representative from Hawaii, became a right-wing Fox News regular after a failed presidential bid in 2020. She complained to Jordan’s panel about being labeled a Russian asset. “Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused me ... of being ‘groomed by the Russians,’” she testified. “Sen. Mitt Romney recently accused me of treason — a crime punishable by death. No evidence. No basis. No explanation.”

One explanation: Gabbard endorsed Russian propaganda in falsely claiming the United States was funding biological laboratories in Ukraine that could spread dangerous pathogens. NATO had warned that the Kremlin-produced lie could give Russia a pretext to launch its own chemical-weapons attack.

RFK Jr. went before Jordan’s committee days after he alleged that covid-19 could be a “bioweapon” that was “ethnically targeted” to spare “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” He had previously suggested that public health restrictions during the pandemic were worse than life for Jews in Nazi Germany because “you could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did.”

Kennedy, at the hearing, labeled charges of bigotry against him “defamations and malignancies that are used to censor me.”

Kennedy’s crackpot ideas go well beyond covid to the debunked claim that childhood vaccines cause autism, that WiFi causes “leaky brain,” that chemicals in the water supply might turn children transgender, that AIDS might not be caused by HIV, that Republicans stole the 2004 election and that 5G networks are used for mass surveillance. And that was before the world learned about his brain worm and the bear cub.

Trump this week said Kennedy has “got some very good ideas” that “turned out to be right.” And he says he’d rely on the judgment of both Kennedy and Gabbard to staff up his administration.

Trump can win on character!

Hello, everyone. This is your favorite president, Donald J. Trump, with some very exciting news. By popular demand, I am doing a new series of Trump digital trading cards!

So begins the infomercial Trump posted on social media this week. For just $99 apiece, Trump supporters can pay with credit card or crypto to own digital cards showing a young and muscular Trump on a motorcycle, holding a lightning bolt and praying. (This third offering of cards, the America First Collection, follows the Mugshot Edition.) Those who cough up $24,750 or more will get two tickets to “a gala dinner at my beautiful country club in Jupiter, Fla.” — and a “bigger” piece of his debate suit.

Proceeds go not to Trump’s campaign but to a company he created for the racket.

Don’t care for the cards? “I have a FANTASTIC new Book coming out in two weeks, ‘SAVE AMERICA,’” Trump also posted this week. “I hand-selected every Photo.” This one is $99, or $499 signed; proceeds go to a company founded by Donald Trump Jr.

These follow other grifting ventures by Trump: sneakers, Bibles — you name it. But his biggest scheme by far has been persuading supporters to buy stock in Trump Media, the parent of Truth Social. Investors who bought at the peak have now lost about 75 percent of their money, as the market adjusts to the realization that the business is fundamentally worthless. (It loses millions of dollars and produces scant revenue.) But Trump’s 59 percent stake in the company is still valued at about $2.2 billion — and he can start dumping his shares on Sept. 20. Company executives have already begun cashing out. Loyal Trump supporters who bought in on his assurance that Trump Media was a “highly successful” company are left holding the bag.

Trump can win on character!

The former president is befuddled. “Kamala and her ‘handlers’ are trying to make it sound like I am the Incumbent President,” he protested on X. (His return to the platform is another acknowledgment of Truth Social’s failure.)

This is true: He’s no longer running against an incumbent president, and Harris has been skillful in making the campaign about Trump’s record. Trump keeps pining for Biden’s candidacy. At a stop in Detroit, he admitted that people were advising him “don’t waste your time” on Biden — even as he mentioned his former opponent five times.

In his disorientation, Trump retreats to his instincts.

He makes up stuff. He claims that the Biden administration is to blame for the assassination attempt, that the U.S. military has “no ammunition,” that his “administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”

He is outrageous. This week, he shared QAnon slogans online (“nothing can stop what is coming,” “where we go one we go all”); doctored images of Biden, Harris, Hillary Clinton, “crazy” Nancy Pelosi and others in orange jumpsuits; and proposals to indict members of the House select Jan. 6 committee for “sedition” and to prosecute Barack Obama in a “public military tribunal.” His country club in Bedminster, N.J., will host a fundraiser next week for participants in the 2021 attack on the Capitol.

And he’s obscene. This former president of the United States shared a photo of Harris and Clinton as part of a post associating both women with oral sex. This came as Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters, a Trump ally, fantasized on air about Harris “paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.” (Watters says he “wasn’t suggesting anything of a sexual nature.”) Also, former Trump official (and Republican convention speaker) Peter Navarro responded on X to special counsel Jack Smith’s revised indictment of Trump to conform to a recent Supreme Court ruling: “What the f--- is this Jacko? YOU are going to prison for election interference. You can have Merrick [Garland] as your bunkie.” (Navarro is just out of prison himself.)

“I always look for good words, highly sophisticated — I’m highly educated; I like sophisticated words,” Trump said in Detroit this week. But for his opponents, he went on, “there’s only one word I get. That’s stupid — they’re stupid people.”

In his reflexive name-calling, he confirms that there really is one word that describes him better than any other: vulgar.