For those keeping score at home, it has now been a week since Donald Trump promised to visit Aurora — also, Springfield, Ohio — within two weeks.
Well, the clock is ticking, but, at the risk of mixing metaphors, I’m not holding my breath.
But I hope he does show up. And I hope he holds a giant rally — Coors Field may not be in Aurora, but it’s close by and it will be available soon enough — and that everyone attends. And that if you can’t go, I hope some TV station — doesn’t Fox still run his rallies? — would show it live.
Why do I want Trump here? So we could directly hear from him about his theories on pet barbecues and the need for a strong man — say, like a certain former president — to protect women from, well, Democrats and unchecked roving migrants.
You may remember that during the Harris-Trump debate, Harris actually advised people to go to a Trump rally and listen to what Trump is saying on the campaign trail these days. She wants you to listen because she knows the Trumpian cray-cray keeps getting crazier every day.
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OK, I know. Once upon a time, the conventional wisdom was that showing Trump rallies on TV only served to normalize him.
That may have been true at one point. But today, when approximately half of American voters seem prepared to elect Trump again, what we need is de-normalization. And the truth is, nobody de-normalizes Trump better than Trump himself.
If he comes to Aurora, he would presumably talk about the Venezuelan gangs he falsely claims have “taken over” the city and the war zone that has resulted. And he would then, I‘m guessing, segue into his plan to use the military to help deport millions of migrants — starting, he has promised, in Aurora and in Springfield.
OK, it might not be a direct segue. The renowned weaver might wander off topic for a moment or two to bring up the late, great Hannibal Lecter or, I don’t know, the danger of being eaten by sharks if you own an electric boat that is suddenly sinking from the weight of its battery.
But he’d get to the issue of deportation soon enough, and it wouldn’t bother him — although it might bother some of you — that, in Springfield at least, he’d be deporting Haitians who are there legally. But why let legality — or truth, for that matter — get in the way of a good story about pet-chomping Black people?
As so he said at a rally the other night in Pennsylvania, “Do you think Springfield will ever be the same? The fact is, and I’ll say it now, you have to get them … out.”
You will not be surprised to hear that many attending the rally immediately began to chant: “Send them back!”
In other words, Trump should send those who are legally in the country back to an unsafe place of origin because of a fake internet story about pet barbecues.
So, yeah, I like Harris’ idea about watching the Trump craziness, but I have to disagree with at least one part of her message.
She said the one thing you’ll never hear from Trump is him talking “about your needs, your dreams and your desires.” And yet at the same Pennsylvania send-them-back rally, Trump directly addressed women and their, uh, needs and dreams and desires.
He told them those dreams can now come true because, he said, if elected again, “I will be your protector.”
Yes, the sexual predator wants women — who, he hears, are feeling “abandoned, lonely or scared” — to know that he’ll protect them and, if only they would vote for him, keep them safe from any and all harm.
This is, apparently, what Trump thinks women want, despite all the polls saying that a great majority of American women definitely do not want Donald Trump. Even Freud could have figured that out.
And yet, Trump says what women need to do is get over that whole abortion thing, which they would never have to worry about again if Trump were in the White House.
I promise this is true. I’m printing the quotes here, but you should really watch the video. Mere words don’t do it justice.
And so:
“I am your protector. I want to be your protector. I hope you don’t make too much of it. I hope the fake news doesn’t go, ‘Oh, he wants to be their protector.’ Well, I am. As president, I have to be your protector.
“I will make you safe at the border, on the sidewalks of your now violent cities, in the suburbs where you are under migrant criminal siege, and with our military protecting you from foreign enemies, of which we have many today because of the incompetent leadership that we have. You will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger. You’re not going to be in danger any longer. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected, and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free.”
And he continued — yes, he did — with this conclusion: “You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
Um, I can hear you asked, just why would women no longer be thinking about abortion?
Because, as Trump tells the story, now that he has helped the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, the issue belongs to individual states, which, he assures us, is what everyone wanted all along, including pro-choice advocates.
Let’s just say that your take on this subject may vary.
But Trump has apparently been reading the fake-news polls showing that his role in overturning Roe has turned the gender gap into a gender canyon. According to a recent NBC poll, Harris is leading Trump by a 58-37 margin among women. A recent Suffolk University/USA Today poll had the gender gap in Pennsylvania, the site of his speech, at 17 points. Of course, Trump is winning big among men.
What Trump doesn’t mention in his rallies, or anywhere else, is that in the post-Roe world, 14 states now have total bans on abortion and that eight more ban abortion at or before 18 weeks of gestation. Trump apparently thinks that women aren’t bright enough to know that.
We’ll have a better idea of whether Colorado women, and men for that matter, are bright when they vote this November on Amendment 79, which would protect abortion rights in Colorado by amending the state constitution.
Or maybe it’s just this: He thinks they wouldn’t have to worry their pretty little heads about it if only they could find a creepy, misogynistic, genital-grabbing, adjudicated rapist to keep them safe.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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