Category Intellectual Dishonesty

Diagnosing Baby Donald

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Franklin Roosevelt took office during the Great Depression eager to try out potential remedies for the economic crisis, so he set an arbitrary mark of the first 100 days in office as a goal for measuring progress.  Ever since, journalists looking for a ready-made story have used the excuse of a new president’s first 100 days to issue a report card on his or her progress in enacting campaign promises into law.  This week President Bannon and his team started off downplaying the significance of the silly benchmark, calling it “an artificial barrier” and a “ridiculous standard” that’s “not very meaningful.”  And then spent the rest of the week in “a flurry of action on health care, taxes and the border wall to show just how much he has done in the first 100 days—amplified by a White House program of first-100-days briefings, first-100-days receptions, a first-100-days website and a first-100-days rally.”

“As with so much else, [Donald] Trump is a study in inconsistency,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. “One minute he says his 100 days have been the best of any president, and the next minute he decries the idea of measuring a president by the 100 days.”

What do others say?  While some think this president has done some good things, I haven’t found anyone outside of the White House who would completely agree with the administration’s estimate of its own effectiveness.

The president stated flatly to an audience in Kenosha that “No administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days;” PolitiFact responds: “Trump has had some achievements in office, but at the very least, they are much less numerous and far-reaching than those of Roosevelt, the standard against whom all presidents are measured. In more recent years, other presidents, including Obama, have accomplished more in their first 100 days than Trump has, historians say. We rate the claim False.”

Vox.com is willing to give the new president credit for his success—at making money for himself, his family, and his businesses while “serving” the American people.

“Trump isn’t failing. He and his family appear to be making money hand over fist. It’s a spectacle the likes of which we’ve never seen in the United States, and while it may end in disaster for the Trumps someday, for now it shows no real sign of failure,” reports Vox, reminding the reader that Trump is still able to personally access profits from his businesses and that his actions as president are actually leading to government expenditures that go straight into his own pocket; for example:

Like many previous presidents, he golfs. And like all presidents who golf, when he hits the green, he is accompanied by Secret Service agents. The agents use golf carts to get around the courses. And to get their hands on the golf carts, they need to rent them from the golf courses at which the president plays. All of this is fundamentally normal — except for the fact that Trump golfs at courses he owns. So when the Secret Service spends $35,000 on Mar-a-Lago golf cart rentals, it’s not just a normal security expense — Trump is personally profiting from his own protection.

Grading a president on how many of his policies have been enacted into law puts his 100-days rating at the mercy of the Congress which must pass those bills.  Although his ability to work with the legislative branch, rather than to try to dictate to it, is a valuable guide to a president’s effectiveness, maybe that isn’t the most straightforward way to tell if he’s doing a good job.

And let’s not indulge the argument here that all of the things Trump said that he wanted to do are bad things; William Saletan argues in Slate that the better way to judge is to consider if he’s done what he said he would do:

You can be sick of low wages and lost jobs, disgusted with the Clintons, angry about Obamacare, and wary of open borders without being a monster. My argument to you isn’t that Trump is bad because he addresses these concerns. My argument is that he addresses them badly. If you want better jobs, better health care, better border security, a stronger America, less corruption, and less debt, Trump is taking you in the wrong direction. And he’ll keep making things worse until you stop him.

Saletan finds that in Trump’s first 100 days  he has failed in his promises to fight for the working man, to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better, to strengthen our borders, to reduce the national debt (he’s increased it!), to drain the swamp, or to honor the military.

What we’ve learned in Trump’s first 100 days, in short, is that he’s bad at the job. Maybe last fall you decided to give him a chance. Or maybe you felt you had to choose between two bad candidates, and you could only stop one of them. So you voted against Hillary, and you got this instead.

You don’t have to stand for it. Call your senators and your member of Congress. Demand better health care and a fairer tax system. Go to their town halls. Tell them to oppose Trump when he doesn’t do what’s right for the country. If they don’t listen to you, organize and vote them out next year. Trump’s first 100 days have been bad. We don’t need another four years like them.

(Even Trump is surprised at how he’s done so far: “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”)

There’s little reason for us to believe things are going to get better, or normal-er, more like what we’ve been used to with every previous president, all on their own.  Not when you consider that the erratic, impulsive, self-promoting behavior we’ve all been witness to is at such a degree that a group of mental health professionals has felt the need to ignore a portion of the American Psychiatric Association’s code of ethics to issue a warning about the president’s mental health and to offer suggestions for how we all deal with the fallout.

Let us stipulate that it is not known for a fact that Trump has any kind of psychiatric diagnosis. Let us also stipulate that, to many observers, the most powerful man in the world displays many of the definitional traits of one disorder in particular: Narcissistic Personality Disorder, characterized by behavior that is impulsive, dramatic and erratic. According to the Mayo Clinic, people with NPD “come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious,” require “constant admiration” and belittle people they “perceive as inferior.” This grandiose, bullying shell hides profound insecurity, so “anything that may be perceived as criticism” can provoke “rage or contempt.”

Baby Donald is a child of privilege who’s always been able to buy whatever he wanted, whether a new toy or a new person in his orbit (or a new wife) or a way out of trouble.  He’s been surrounded by yes-men-and-women who rely on him for their livelihoods, so he has precious little experience of having to deal with a differing opinion.  When he opens his mouth his instinct is to educate the listener about his own extraordinary self, and to state as incontrovertible that which he wishes in that moment to be true, without regard for whether the statement is consistent with previous ones or with any known facts.

In reality, it’s not just Congress or world leaders or White House staffers who are in Trump’s orbit and at the whim of his personality traits. We all are. [New Jersey therapist and author] Wendy Behary says that when dealing with such a person, the best defense is to read deeply about psychopathology. Ultimately, she says, understanding the dynamics of personality disorders will help make what seems unpredictable predictable. The more people know, the less they will wonder, “How could he do that?” and come to understand, “How could he not?”

How do you like America?

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Three weeks in; time to take a breath and assess the new administration in Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump asked Americans to trust him to do what’s right for America; 46% of those who bothered to vote (roughly 27% of Americans who were eligible to vote) took him up on his offer, and that was enough to give him the ticket to the Oval Office.  But so far he’s made it plain that he doesn’t respect this country and what it stands for; the only thing he’s interested in is what financially benefits Donald Trump.  This is a partial list of some of the fun so far, just off the top of my pointy head:

  • the new president tries to make good on a campaign promise to keep Muslims from coming into the country, stabbing at the heart of the great American belief in freedom of religion while playing on the irrational fears of many of the people who elected him…
  • and after losing in court, for a second time, his retort is—of course—see you in court
  • he succeeded in placing a racist in charge of enforcing civil rights laws…
  • an effort highlighted by the Senate voting to silence one of its members when she tried to image001read into the record a letter that’s already a public document…
  • before then allowing at least two other members to go unsanctioned for reading that same document into the record
  • a top administration official glibly violates the law but gets just a rap on the knuckles…
  • although that shouldn’t be a surprise since the president is happily making a mockery of government ethics by retaining his business interests and turning a profit…
  • while the First Lady goes to court seeking damages for not being able to monetize her new position
  • the president is still massaging his insatiable ego by repeating the unfounded allegation of a voter fraud that, if true, is so massive as to be unbelievable…
  • and making a promise to have his government investigate said claim, a promise that lays dormant (to put in charitably)
  • he made good on a promise to nominate a Supreme Court justice from his pre-election list of approved candidates…
  • and then by not keeping his Twitter thumb quiet and insulting a judge who had the temerity to disagree with him, Trump forced his high court nominee to blandly chastise his benefactor

Jack Shafer thinks the president of the United States is a child throwing a temper tantrum because he doesn’t get everything he wants; Josh Marshall offers a short list of reminders to help us figure out motivations in the Oval Office; Bill Moyers tries to look past the policies and realize that the chaos which Trump (and President Steve Bannon) are creating is an intentional part of a plan, and Eliot Cohen argues that Trump is behaving exactly as many people (many people) predicted.

Any good news?  Yes, there is:

  • the judicial system is proving it is not afraid of the new president (unlike damn near every Republican in the House and Senate) and is living up to its responsibility of interpreting the law and acting as a check on the executive (and legislative) branches…
  • if new subscription rates are any indication, Americans are being reminded of the value of a free press serving as watchdog and are making their individual contributions to support the effort…
  • we have even been able to take a little joy from watching the president’s childish reaction to being criticized.  0qBLuKbpAny president, or anyone who’s ever performed public service at any level, would know to expect disagreement, but this president has apparently lived in a bubble where people do not criticize him, and he doesn’t get it that the world at large doesn’t accept his every utterance as gospel just because he said it.  He has no sense of humor about himself, it seems, takes the unimportant stuff way too seriously, and can’t seem to stop himself from feebly trying to parry each thrust from outside the bubble—thank you, Twitter.  I giggled when I read that Trump took it out on press secretary Sean Spicer because a woman comedian satirized his briefings on “Saturday Night Live,” so I’m eager to see out how he reacts if it should come to pass that his long-time nemesis Rosie O’Donnell gets a chance to take the role of President Bannon.

What’d I miss?  Oh yeah: a New York congressman has “filed a ‘resolution of inquiry’ that amounts to the first legislative step toward impeachment.”  And there’s much more.  As Crash Davis said to his coach when the coach came to the mound during a game to inquire as to the cause of the delay, “We’re dealing with a lot of shit.”  And as my dad would say from time to time, to reinforce that you really didn’t think about what you were doing or saying just then, “How do you like America?”

“Biggest con job since the Trojan horse”

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

The phrase jumped off the obituary page in Houston’s Leading Information Source last June: Elene Davis passed away from “…complications due to congestive heart failure and the 2016 Presidential campaign.”  Imagine if she’d seen what’s gone on in the past week!

Late last month I saved the link to this Garrison Keillor column punching again at Donald Trump, noting that “a panhandler in Times Square sat holding a sign reading, ‘Give me a dollar or I’ll vote for Trump,’ and people laughed and reached into their pockets.”

His bucket overflowed. He stuffed the bills into his jacket, and other panhandlers looked at him with admiration. The man could’ve sold franchises and retired to Palm Beach.  The panhandler knows what every New Yorker knows, which is that the biggest con job since the Trojan horse is taking place in our midst. Millions of Americans are planning to cast their votes for a man who has lived his life contrary to all of their most cherished values. They are respectful, honest, generous, loyal, modest, church-going people with no Mafia connections and good credit records who try not to spout off about things they know nothing about.

The same week USA Today did something it had never done in its thirty-four years of publication: it took sides in a presidential race:

This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.

From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.

Then it went on to spell out the record, that Trump is erratic, ill-equipped to be commander in chief, traffics in prejudice, has a checkered business career, and more.  The Atlantic quadrupled-down when it comes to historical precedent, making only its third endorsement since 1860 and the first since recommending Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater:

Today, our position is similar to the one in which The Atlantic’s editors found themselves in 1964. We are impressed by many of the qualities of the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, even as we are exasperated by others, but we are mainly concerned with the Republican Party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, who might be the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency.

(snip)

Hillary Rodham Clinton has more than earned, through her service to the country as first lady, as a senator from New York, and as secretary of state, the right to be taken seriously as a White House contender. She has flaws (some legitimately troubling, some exaggerated by her opponents), but she is among the most prepared candidates ever to seek the presidency. We are confident that she understands the role of the United States in the world; we have no doubt that she will apply herself assiduously to the problems confronting this country; and she has demonstrated an aptitude for analysis and hard work.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.

This week the Republican Party’s nominee added something new and bizarre when he repeated to CNN his belief that the Central Park 5 are guilty of a famous 1989 rape and beating of a jogger in Central Park.  That is, he claims that the five men (who were teenagers in 1989) originally convicted of the crime but “exonerated in 2002 when an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney found DNA evidence linking the vicious crime to a previously convicted rapist. That man admitted to acting alone in the crime” are, nevertheless, the guilty parties.  DNA evidence to the contrary, and the confession of the actual guilty party notwithstanding, Trump today insists those five men are guilty of the crime.  It’s one thing to have taken a stand on an issue and then have time and the facts ultimately prove you to be wrong; it happens.  But Trump is incapable of acknowledging the facts laid out for everyone to see, and rather than admit a thoroughly human error–or even, God forbid, just shut his damn mouth–he repeats his error.

Dumb ol’ me, here I am thinking that should be enough to shock some more Trump supporters into realizing just what a moron he is…but then the issue completely disappears when the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold publishes the Access Hollywood videotape that has dozens of high-ranking Republicans elbowing each other out of the way to jump off the Trumptanic.  (Fahrenthold is the reporter who’s dug into the Trump Foundation and found it to be far less than the charitable organ that’s advertised.)  I won’t pretend to be horrified by Trump’s comments, which on their face do resemble an admission of numerous instances of sexual assault (if you assume he was telling the truth and not just “bragging”), since they reinforce my previously-held belief that he’s a genuine creep, as well as an ignorant narcissistic megalomaniac with the attention span of a three year old.

Question for those now changing their minds on Trump: why now?  Does this incident just seem to be a good excuse that also allows you to pander to the puritanical element of your constituency?  It seems like you’ve passed up plenty of chances to do the right thing…

The Deseret News, among others, is now calling on Trump to drop out; I hope he keeps his promise not to withdraw from the race because I think he’s now on an irreversible slide to a yuuuge loss and I want the Republican Party and the crazy right-wing element that nominated this yutz to feel the pain of what they’ve done while they consider their future…yesterday Craig Mazin storified a Tweetstorm that pretty well sums up the path forward for the GOP.

I’d also like to see NBC News pay for its role.  Producers for Access Hollywood, which is a corporate relation of NBC, brought the tape to the network last Monday and they sent it to their lawyers; while a legal review was prudent, withholding permission to publish out of fear that Trump would sue is plain old cowardice: in real journalism, being sued by powerful people over a big story is sometimes just part of the deal.  So far Trump has apologized and he’s started to accuse others of being bad guys, but he hasn’t threatened to sue anyone.  It appears that someone in NBC who was frustrated at the delays leaked the tape to the Washington Post, leaving NBC to be scooped on its own story.

Now, let’s see how Trump handles the town hall-style debate this evening when, hopefully, the nice people at Washington University will insist on straight answers rather than a string of sentence fragments out of the Republican nominee.  I predict that without a fawning audience to buoy him, the real, ugly Donald Trump is likely to be on full display.

 

He’s playing you for a fool; don’t prove him right

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

To everyone who is pissed off at what America’s political system has devolved into, let me say, I get it; I’m with you.  It shouldn’t too much to ask for a political and governmental system that can get things done, that treats people fairly, and that will be about protecting the freedom of all its citizens.  I get it that you want something better; so do I.  But just because you hate Hillary Clinton is not a good enough reason to turn power over to an ignorant, truth-impaired narcissistic megalomaniac with the attention span of a two year old.

Donald Trump is a liar.  I don’t mean that in the sense that all politicians shade the truth in order to put things in the best light–the one that shines on themselves; I mean to say that Trump lies to us.  All the time.  About things that matter, and about things that don’t matter.  He just does.  He may not even see that he’s making this shit up as he goes along, but he says whatever will make him look good in the eyes of the people he’s talking to…and if that’s not true, if it contradicts what he told the crowd yesterday or the day before, no matter.  It’s as if he doesn’t think anyone will remember.

But we do!  And telling the truth matters, or it should, to all of us.  Regardless of what you think of Clinton, do you really want a president who lies consistently, if not constantly?  (“I know you’re lyin/Cause your lips are moving…”)  He lies when it’s convenient, he lies when he’s caught in a lie, he lies to promote himself, he lies when telling the truth would be just fine…he lies to try to persuade us all that the world of his imagination is the real world we all inhabit together.  He lies.

The New York Times has a long list of Trump’s lies…31 from just this week!  They’re broken down into “Tales About Himself,” “Unfounded Claims About Critics and the News Media,” “Inaccurate Claims About Clinton,” “Stump Speech Falsehoods” and “Esoteric Embellishments.”  I won’t bother with the most famous ones; others include:

◊He said a supportive crowd chanted, “Let him speak!” when a black pastor in Flint, Mich., asked Mr. Trump not to give a political speech in the church. (Fox News interview, Sept. 15.)
–There were no such chants.
◊“You see what’s happening with my poll numbers with African-Americans. They’re going, like, high.” (Speech in North Carolina, Sept. 20; made same claim in Ohio, Sept. 21.)
–Polls show him winning virtually no support from African-Americans.
◊“Almost, it seems, everybody agrees” with his position on immigration. (Remarks in Texas, Sept. 17
-Most Americans oppose his signature positions on immigration.
◊The presidential debate moderators “are all Democrats.” “It’s a very unfair system.” (Fox News interview, Sept. 19.
–Only one, Chris Wallace of Fox News, is a registered Democrat.
◊He said it “hasn’t been reported” that Mrs. Clinton called some Trump supporters “deplorable.”  (Speech in North Carolina, Sept. 20)
–It would be difficult to find a news organization that didn’t report her remark.
◊Mrs. Clinton destroyed 13 smartphones with a hammer while she was secretary of state.
(Speeches in Florida, Sept. 15 and Sept. 19.)
–An aide told the F.B.I. of only two occasions in which phones were destroyed with a hammer.
◊Mrs. Clinton is “effectively proposing to abolish the borders around the country.”(Numerous speeches, including in Texas, Sept. 17.)
–She is not even proposing to cut funding for the Border Patrol.

 

Look at the publications that have endorsed Clinton.  It’s not just The New York Times, it’s places that haven’t endorsed any Democrat in generations: The Cincinnati Enqurier has endorsed the Republican candidate for a hundred years, and although it has problems with Clinton it still said no to Trump:

Trump is a clear and present danger to our country. He has no history of governance that should engender any confidence from voters. Trump has no foreign policy experience, and the fact that he doesn’t recognize it – instead insisting that, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do” – is even more troubling. His wild threats to blow Iranian ships out of the water if they make rude gestures at U.S. ships is just the type of reckless, cowboy diplomacy Americans should fear from a Trump presidency. Clinton has been criticized as being hawkish but has shown a measured approach to the world’s problems. Do we really want someone in charge of our military and nuclear codes who has an impulse control problem? The fact that so many top military and national security officials are not supporting Trump speaks volumes.

The Dallas Morning News feels that “Resume vs. resume, judgment vs. judgment, this election is no contest.”

Those are real shortcomings [for Clinton]. But they pale in comparison to the litany of evils some opponents accuse her of. Treason? Murder? Her being cleared of crimes by investigation after investigation has no effect on these political hyenas; they refuse to see anything but conspiracies and cover-ups.

We reject the politics of personal destruction. Clinton has made mistakes and displayed bad judgment, but her errors are plainly in a different universe than her opponent’s.

Trump’s values are hostile to conservatism. He plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best. His serial shifts on fundamental issues reveal an astounding absence of preparedness. And his improvisational insults and midnight tweets exhibit a dangerous lack of judgment and impulse control.

The Los Angeles Times:

Donald J. Trump, a billionaire businessman and television personality…has never held elected office and has shown himself temperamentally unfit to do so. He has run a divisive, belligerent, dishonest campaign, repeatedly aligning himself with racists, strongmen and thugs while maligning or dismissing large segments of the American public. Electing Trump could be catastrophic for the nation.

I can’t sign on with someone who says, seemingly with all sincerity, that he will deport many millions of people from this country–but can’t explain how he plans to accomplish it–and that he will make another country pay for our border security–even after the leaders of that country say they will not and you can’t make me–and that he knows more about fighting foreign terrorists than the military professionals–really, how do you know that?–and lies about, well, he lies about what feels like everything else.

The only thing I can think of that Trump possibly has in his favor is that he is not Hillary Clinton.  When the campaigns started rolling last year, my hope was that certainly the Democrats wouldn’t nominate Clinton: there had to be other, better, trustworthy candidates, and I don’t want to have to listen to the litany of conservative freakout about her all over again.  But Trump’s not being Clinton isn’t enough, not when what he is turns out to be so disqualifying.

The biggest lie is right there on the front of his stupid cap: no matter what he says, no matter what stories he makes up to tell you what he thinks you want to hear, no matter how he tries to appeal to the lesser angels of our nature, the fact is America is great and always has been.  Because of its people, and the ideals that we try to live up to, this is a great country.  I didn’t say it was perfect, but Trump is lying to our face when he insinuates that America is anything less than great, and that he is the only person who can fix it.  It’s time to call him out to his lying face.

Attention American citizens, time for another quick reality check

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Only the people who are employed in America’s political-industrial complex can afford to keep up with all this stuff day to day to day, but some of it you just can’t avoid knowing about.  The Republican candidate for president is:

–seemingly sabotaging one of his own alleged rhetorical strong points–that he will hire “the best people” to take care of America’s problems–with almost every personnel move he makes:

Trump’s campaign has been a roiling, noxious, dysfunctional mess from the start, characterized by public feuds, subject to sudden leadership changes and unable to fulfill key functions (like actually having a campaign apparatus in key states). And Trump’s personnel selections have been both instructive and disastrous.

–finding yet another new way to demonstrate his ignorance of American ideals:..

…more concerning than Trump’s usual lack of specificity was his declaration that “We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people.”

(snip)

what, exactly, are “our values”? I’m betting you and I have some differences of opinion when it comes to what we value. But the good news is, the Founders accounted for that with the First Amendment, allowing for all kinds of different beliefs. Whatever Trump values, citizenship — much less entry into the country — does not require you agree with it.

What citizenship does require, in addition to service, is that immigrants “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” So, if by “our values,” Trump means our laws and Constitution, we’ve already got that covered, Donald. You can take the day off.

But of course, that’s not all Trump means.

—contributing to the long-simmering “confusion” of much of the American voting public:

Trump, who says he doesn’t read much at all, is both a product of the epidemic of ignorance and a main producer of it. He can litter the campaign trail with hundreds of easily debunked falsehoods because conservative media has spent more than two decades tearing down the idea of objective fact.

If Trump supporters knew that illegal immigration peaked in 2007, or that violent crime has been on a steady downward spiral nationwide for more than 20 years, they would scoff when Trump says Mexican rapists are surging across the border and crime is out of control.

If more than 16 percent of Americans could locate Ukraine on a map, it would have been a Really Big Deal when Trump said that Russia was not going to invade it — two years after they had, in fact, invaded it.

If basic civics was still taught, and required, for high school graduation, Trump could not claim that judges “sign bills.”

The dumbing down of this democracy has been gradual, and then — this year — all at once.

–and causing a freak-out in the conservative media that wouldn’t have been believed just a year ago:

throughout the election season, it has appeared that Republicans have fielded more attacks from their supposed friends on the right than their political opponents on the left. It’s an incidental twist, considering how Republicans helped foster the growth of the conservative news media in order to avoid the skewering of mainstream journalists.

Instead, it appears their plan of using friendly pundits to tap directly into the vein of red-blooded Americans sympathetic to their political views has backfired. That has boosted the candidacy of Donald Trump

And all of that was just last week!

Nevertheless, each day I read that there are still plenty of people who supported Trump in the primaries and are still behind their man, no matter anything on that list up there or the fact that he seems to be backing off some of the strong rhetoric–and outrageous positions and promises–that (presumably) won him their support in the first place.  In fact, it’s becoming more clear that those people aren’t much interested in the details of what he’s had to say during the campaign so far:

Boz says illegal immigration is a problem, but when it comes to policy, he trusts Trump to figure that out. “Whatever he wants to do, I’ll back him. That’s all I can say. It’s tough,” Boz says.

Inside, Judy Callahan, 69, says she’s preparing to retire from her job as a hospice cook — and devote her free time to volunteering for the Trump campaign. Wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, Callahan says she has supported the real estate developer from the beginning.

“I just love him — I love every second of him,” she says.

Callahan says she opposes amnesty and wants Trump to be “strong” on immigration, but it doesn’t bother her that his policy positions can sometimes seem unclear.

“I listen to half of what Trump says,” Callahan explains. “And then I move on because you have to get people’s attention.”

The Onion has been able to describe this new reality most effectively:

“Do you really think you’re going to come up with some new criticism of his policies or his preparedness that will finally make us reconsider our votes?” Gallagher continued. “Please, you should all just save yourself the effort.”

The loyal Trump supporters said their message was directed at everyone who has actively sought to convince them that voting for the real estate mogul is against their own interests, a group that includes current and former members of Congress, members of past Republican administrations, America’s NATO allies, human rights advocates, the pope, and many veterans, as well as their own families, friends, and coworkers. The candidate’s backers added that, considering how they have already gone along with everything he has said and done in the 2016 election cycle, those trying to communicate Trump’s shortcomings to them should “quit wasting their breath.”