I have seen madness, dear, sweet Americans. I have looked into the eyes of men who have ripped off their clothes, rolled around in mud and shit, and then howled at the sky. I have wrestled with a drunk who was trying to set me on fire because he thought my legs were too hairy (they're not). I have confronted religious zealots who screamed and spit in my face and threatened me with hellfire for the crime of keeping a path clear so women could get into a completely legal family planning clinic. I have visited institutions for the mentally ill, and I have stayed at music festival campgrounds. Oh, yes, I have seen insanity in individual and mass forms.
So when I watched Republican presidential candidate and overfed orangutan Donald Trump delivering his long-awaited address on immigration, I knew that I was watching the kind of frothing madness that generally gets street preachers arrested before they assault someone or enrage passersby into punching them in their goddamn faces.
After the embarrassment of Trump's quickie with Mexico's utterly disgraced president, after both of them stood there and pretended like they were comrades in arms on immigration, after Trump said he didn't talk about who is paying for his border wall, and after President Pena Nieto tweeted that he said Mexico wasn't paying for any fucking wall, Trump went out to an adoring crowd of savages in Arizona, his idiot horde, his people, and, as they held their breaths for the long-suspected "pivot" and "softening" on immigration, they heard their candidate proclaim that he was their mad dog godhead and would be as batshit crazy as ever. It was less a speech and more a "fuck you" to anyone who thought Trump might moderate. "Suck my bright white dick," he said. "I am the same racist shit-shoveler I've been the entire campaign."
It was, in its way, an epic act of self-immolation in regards to the Latino vote in the upcoming election. When Trump started his campaign, he proclaimed that Mexico was sending all criminals with few exceptions for some "good" people when the truth is the extreme opposite. Yet here he was last night, parading the corpses of people who were murdered by undocumented immigrants over the last few years and shitting on workers. "Most illegal immigrants are lower skilled workers with less education, who compete directly against vulnerable American workers, and that these illegal workers draw much more out from the system than they can ever possibly pay back," he said, which probably shocked all those undocumented workers who pay a ton of taxes and will never see a dime of Social Security or Medicare. This is not to mention the roughly 40% of them who work in positions that require a decent level of education. Trump might as well have taken a piece of paper on it that read "Tu madre" and wiped his ass with it for all the Latino votes he's gonna get.
He continued, "But these facts are never reported," a kind of amazing statement since it's telling the media to report things that are simply not true. At this point, though, fact-checking a Trump speech is about as useful an activity as fucking lamp. It might initially feel good to you, but the lamp doesn't get anything out of it and you'll probably just burn your dick eventually.
Trump's attacks on Hillary Clinton in the speech were comprised of his usual brutish, wheezing punches. He suggested using his "deportation force" to get rid of her. After declaring that he would use executive orders to get his deportation plan going (which, to be honest, ain't all that different from Obama's right now, just with a prickish attitude), Trump said he'd cancel all of President Obama's "unconstitutional executive orders" (never mind the ones the Supreme Court has upheld). But if Clinton is elected? Holy fuck, it's game over: "Clinton's plan would trigger a constitutional crisis unlike almost anything we have ever seen before. In effect, she would be abolishing the lawmaking arm of Congress in order to write her own laws from the Oval Office." If Clinton is elected, "The result will be millions more illegal immigrants, thousands of more violent, horrible crimes and total chaos and lawlessness. That's what going to happen and sure as you are standing there." That's the kind of drama queen shit that'd make an entire cast of RuPaul's Drag Race say, "Calm down a little, Mary."
What a big fuckin' joke the last week or so has been, where pundits and surrogates were talking about some moderation in Trump, some turn to acting "presidential." That's hilarious. Trump knows what got him here in the first place. It was being the biggest asshole in the room. And his voters ejaculated all over themselves for it. As the great columnist Molly Ivins, who is missed now about as much as she's ever been, "You got to dance with them what brung you." Trump has reached out his crooked arms and is ready to fox trot to the apocalypse.
The speech ended and Trump introduced the family members of those killed by undocumented immigrants. One by one, they stepped to the mic in a repulsive display of exploitation and misery, each swearing allegiance to a man who wouldn't have given a single shit about any of them if they didn't have horror he could turn into his profit.