Or, should that be ‘Moron In The Debate?’ Trump apparently thinks he won. Or not. He says so in public because he’s incapable of saying anything else. The question is, what is he measuring? If his goal was to firm up support among those who already worship his every breath, he probably did okay. If his goal was to convince non-MAGA that he has some leadership skills, OMG, did he fail! That is, did he gain even a single voter?

The thing is, he ALSO said the debate was “rigged.” If he loses, it’s always “rigged.” That…former President simply cannot conceive that he might have lost something fair and square. Pure narcissism. He was fact-checked in real time a couple of times. (Not enough.) Because since facts don’t match his delusions, he decided the FACTS were wrong, so the moderators must be on Team Kamala. He said the debate was “a three on one.”

After the debate, he posted a bunch of snap polls from far-right websites showing that MAGA thinks he won by a large margin. Sure, the polls from far-right websites are certainly going to be MAGA-heavy. Hell, the people who participated in the polls may not have even watched. They didn’t really need to. All they needed to do was vote in those polls for their guy.

Outside of MAGA land, though, I don’t think anybody calls him the winner and I seriously doubt he brought in one new vote. In fact, I’d say there’s a strong possibility that he turned some off. There must be some conservatives who don’t yet qualify as MAGA who thought they’d vote Republican because they’ve always voted Republican but after watching his performance, have decided they can’t vote for that. They may not swing all the way over to Kamala but they may just sit out this election.

I enjoyed watching Kamala play him like a Stradivarius. Did you see how easily she baited him into defending his effing crowd size? He simply can’t control himself. He just…responds. So what happens when Putin comes calling and praising Donald for his big crowds? I’m guessing Donald hands over the nuclear codes while basking in the “praise.” He’s a buffoon. Dictators around the world know it and they’re salivating at the prospect of being able to play the gullible fool in the future.

Obviously, MAGA is all in on Trump, no matter what. They’ve crafted an entire narrative about what an amazing human being he is and they simply dismiss all of the evidence against him. And there is SO MUCH evidence against him. It’s a mountain of evidence. The guy is a useless wasteland of a human being, but MAGA can make him anything they like. So they do.

It continues to boggle the mind, how loyal they remain. I find myself wondering what kind of damage such cognitive dissonance can do. I keep waiting for some moment when MAGA realizes they’ve been played for fools but they just keep hanging in there. Then I remember, in other cults, some of them NEVER realize how far wrong they were and are. Some of “Manson’s Children” STILL think he was something special. MAGA might never recover…

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Oh, the comment about “eating cats in Springfield, Ohio?” I was curious. Often, MAGA stories aren’t just made up out of whole cloth. Often, there’s some kernel of truth that gets built on and distorted. As it happens, this is one of those. There’s a woman in Canton, Ohio who killed and ate a cat. She was arrested and is in jail and has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Oh, yeah, she was born and raised in the US. She’s a US citizen.

MAGA just added all the other stuff to make it a little more frightening and a lot more racist. (Or vice-versa). They changed the town to make it just a little harder to trace the story, though, not much. They blamed Haitians. Suddenly it wasn’t just one cat, eaten by one struggling person. Now it’s “pets for lunch” all day, every day. My question? How far can one stretch an otherwise true story before it becomes a lie? I think we’ve seen at least one answer, here.

Still, it should concern every American that one of the debate participants repeated that silly story as true, and then continued to repeat the story even after being informed, live on TV, that the story was false. He just couldn’t accept the idea that he might have been mistaken so he preferred to look stubbornly stupid. Weird choice, but…okay.

How many policy decisions do you think he’ll make based on scary rumors from the internet? I’m guessing, all of them…

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It looks like prices will be going up at the pump again. Much of this country is on fire, including areas in the south near refineries. So they had to shut down the refineries for safety. Count on a price spike. Count on cons blaming Biden. But the cons brought us this climate change, not Biden…

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The Dems are doing something I don’t much care for. They’re calling Trump’s tariffs a “tax” on the American people. The thing is, tariffs are not a direct tax on Americans. They’re a tax on companies sending goods into America. Splitting hairs? Maybe. But it allows Trump to claim, honestly, that Dems are lying about his tariffs.

To be clear, Trump’s tariffs WILL increase all Americans day to day cost of living. The taxes on the companies simply get built into the price, making everything more expensive. They have the effect of a national sales tax, but they are NOT, technically, a national sales tax and I wish the Dems would stop saying otherwise. Just tell people things are going to get more expensive under Trump’s plan. THAT part is true…