What’s Left of Donald Trump. Par Nidra Poller

Paris 29 October 2024

You believe, my friend, that you are making an astute political decision in these troubled times. But I am living a Rhinoceros situation. I witness the erosion of your intellectual and moral integrity as you climb deeper and deeper into the fantasy world of Donald J. Trump. It begins with a small dose of credulity and gradually becomes total surrender. Now, in lockstep with this unsavory personality, you erase your perceptions and swallow his grotesque pretentions. 

It started with the sticky details about Donald Trump that I was supposed to overlook because and above all and perhaps only because he would beat Hillary Clinton. Today, eight years later, I would have to overlook almost everything… because he will beat the Democrats… and they must not be allowed to win. Then and now, I should disregard everything bothersome about Trump because he will be good for Israel. And Kamala Harris would, if elected, abandon Israel. Which explains why I should dismiss Trump’s declarations, explanations, strategies, and behavior. And ignore anything good the Biden- Harris administration has done for Israel during this year of relentless combat.

This is precisely what I do not do. I do not abandon my intuitions, observations, discernment, judgment, and values. As an American living abroad, I vote in a state where the outcome is inevitably blue. I have next to no influence on American voters…I haven’t published anything in English for the past two years and if this text is published, it will appear  at the eleventh hour. Anyway, it’s not about how you vote.

All the more reason to explain to myself why I resist this tremendous pressure from people I would normally consider to be “on my side” that have internalized the desperate need of Donald Trump to be president of the United States.

I followed this saga from the beginning, the Republican primaries of 2015-6. I saw a clumsy oaf, politically unripe, intellectually undeveloped, dishonest, mediocre, a vulgar bully that humiliated and intimidated his rivals and ran roughshod over the Republican party organization. All justified by the certainty that he would win. I thought he wouldn’t but he did. 

He never earned my respect or my trust.

But he did a few things for Israel and I was told to ignore my perceptions. He disgraced himself at home and abroad, I was told it was a sign of strength. He blackmailed President Zelensky, withholding the delivery of arms allocated by Congress, digging for dirt on Hunter Biden to use against Joe in 2020. Today he boasts that Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if the 2020 election hadn’t been stolen. Convincing testimony at the impeachment hearings exposed  a clear pattern of shady dealings with bad actors, coupled with vicious pressure against decent civil servants, some of them high-ranking. I was told by Trump supporters that all those witnesses lied under oath. Only Trump told the truth. 

And then came January 6^th. 

In a normal democracy, Trump would have taken the down escalator and disappeared from American politics. But no, I was supposed to disregard more than ever. The invasion of the Capitol was not an invasion, Trump didn’t incite it, the FBI manipulated it, Nancy Pelosi was responsible for it. Voting machines, election officials, poll workers, judges, and former employees of the Trump administration were all wrong, all lying. Only Trump told the truth. He had won the election in a landslide. He wasn’t trying to overturn the election; he was legitimately questioning widespread voter fraud.

In fact, he was trying to overturn the election. 

How can that be a minor detail, outweighed by the wonders Trump had accomplished and would accomplish?

Trump acts as if he is a divine-right sovereign. Beginning with the 2016 primaries, he has warned at every step of the way that he couldn’t lose unless there was  voter fraud. Going one better, he claims if he loses in 2024, it will be in large part the fault of the Jews. 

Trump had to be the 2024 candidate of a Republican party swallowed up by MAGAs. His base, like the pedestal of a giant dictator’s statue, goes with him wherever he goes. On the outer circles where reasonable people justify their support despite obvious misgivings, I encounter an inexhaustible willingness to compromise.  A MAGA friend who believed it was important to defend Ukraine against Russian invasion surrenders when Trump and Vance sleaze Zelensky with antisemitic undertones and swear they’ll not give him another penny for his stubborn war. Ukraine no longer matters for this MAGA buddy. The priority is saving our country from the communist fascist Democrats.

You inform your rational Trump supporter that Michael Flynn is courting antisemitic antizionist negationist Islamists in Hamtramck Michigan. He doesn’t believe you, won’t look at the documents, but says he’s not in favor of courting Islamists… until Fox News proudly announces that Mayor Ghalib of Hamtramck is supporting Trump. “If he has to court Islamists so Harris won’t win, that’s ok with me,” says your former anti-jihad compadre. 

When Kamala Harris replaced Biden as his rival, Trump lost control of himself. He doesn’t know where he is or what he is doing. He rambles all over the place in a slurred monotone, breaks into a ridiculous dance wriggle, indulges, like a dirty old man, in increasingly vulgar, pornographic, misogynist rhetoric. 

Trump isn’t perfect, you tell me, but he’ll save us from the Democrats, a fate worse than death. However, I have to overlook the fact that he has not made a single coherent statement about foreign affairs. Here’s an example from an interview by Al Arabiya Washington correspondent Nadia Bilbassy, who asks how he would prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon:

“They won’t acquire it. Now, they may get it, they may get it very quickly. I’m not president so I won’t have much to do with that.” He has respect for Iran, “the people are very smart, great negotiators, good business people….I want it to do, as a country, I want it to do great. But now it’s in its own ways probably in danger. Maybe more so than they would’ve thought a month ago, right, with what’s happening. I think it’s in a lot of danger right now which is, you know, very bad.”

Focus on the economy. Trump is going to bring factories back to the United States by slapping huge tariffs on imports. What’s that? Vain promises I should disregard? A real war on free trade? Or another example of ignorant chauvinism? Who’s going to buy shoddy American manufactured goods? 

Immigration? “I’ll build the wall and Mexico will pay for it” didn’t quite do the miracle. Today’s rhetoric is heavily armed, violent, vindictive, and dangerous for the Jews. “Haitian immigrants are eating your pets” will lead one day to “Jews are killing your babies.” Hatred against Haitians is thin gruel. Only the hatred of Jews can satisfy this appetite when it is stimulated to white heat.  Mass deportations are as empty as the Muslim travel ban, but the imagination of Trump disciples thrives on bloodthirsty fear. 

“The enemy within.” Democratic leaders, top military brass, journalists, wokies, BLM and pro-Hamas demonstrators all lumped together. String them up or shoot them down. You tell me the targets are justified and the rest is rhetoric. No, my friend. It’s rhetoric for you and a game plan for the toxic element churning in the heart of MAGA. When Kamala Harris and her surrogates accuse Trump of being a fascist, you say she’s desperately clawing her way out of a hopeless slump in the polls. But Trump is promising to do what fascists do. As soon as they are elected, they settle scores. Violently. By the way, did you notice that Trump said the enemy within is worse than China and Russia? He didn’t say Iran.

Because he wants to win Michigan. But you don’t believe me when I tell you he could abandon Israel the way he will abandon Ukraine.  

Harris risks losing the election because she won’t surrender to the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic party. Trump is courting them. Conservative media chuckle over the [pro-Hamas] hecklers that trouble Harris’s campaign stops. The same Trumpies that went berserk over Tim Walz’s warm reception—long years ago– of an imam, don’t lift a finger when Trump invites a bunch of Imams on stage, says they’re great, “all they want is peace “

He tarred and feathered Liz Cheney, the “warmonger.” “She hates Moooslims, she wants to invade practically every Moooslim country on the planet. And the Moooslims know that. They like me because they want peace.”

Trump is a cynical pacifist.

Sometimes I think Trump is looking in the mirror when he sleazes Kamala Harris: mentally deficient, born that way, inarticulate, can’t speak without a teleprompter, talks in word salad… She’s a liar, a Biden knockoff, Obama pulls her strings… If she wins, you’ll never have another election again. Trump reads a prepared speech haltingly, like a slow-learning  third grader. When he goes off text, he is incapable of forming a proper sentence. His incessant outbursts on Truth Social are woefully indigent and shapeless. His vocabulary is limited, like his clownish dance steps. And it looks to me like he’s a puppet of Donald Jr. and his cronies: J D Vance, Elon Musk, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Tucker Carlson.

Q: So, what about Tucker Carlson? You’re OK with him? 

A: Republicans aren’t interested in Tucker Carlson. He’s a dumb cluck.

Who are you kidding? Tucker Carlson uses his vast network of followers to promote Trump while peddling toxic, virulently antisemitic antizionist, perverse and pro-Putin garbage. Elon Musk pours millions into the campaign and hosts the likes of Carlson, Candace Owens and assorted hot-headed crackpots on his free-speech X platform.

The Trump campaign culminated with a mass hate fest at Madison Square Garden on the 27^th of October. The “star-studded” list of speakers included Senator JD Vance, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, and Tucker Carlson. 

You’re ok with that? The crowd in all its ugly splendor, raising fists and shouting in unison with filthy allusions to female anatomy and functions. Dirty insults against foreigners. Stupid machismo of weak men. And their hero. Donald J. Trump, the triumph of the dumbing of America.

He is not running a political campaign; he’s doing a non-stop self-advertisement. And it’s all fake. Nothing my MAGA buddy tells me about Trump is true. He’s not a showman, not unpredictable, not deceivingly kind, warm-hearted, well-meaning, clever, original. He wasn’t a Great Businessman. He’s a tinpot dictator and I trust what I see.

And nothing was more phony in all that MSG phoniness than the Donald-Melania kiss!

But of course I should disregard that.

© Nidra Poller