Trump is Boring
Let’s face it. The Trump campaign is the most boring campaign since … ever. He has no original thoughts. He has no humor. He has no vision for the future. The only time he has any decent music at his rallies is when he uses tracks for which the artists immediately issue cease and desist orders.
His big laugh line (or what is supposed to be a laugh line, I guess) is some lame “joke” about Hannibal Lecter that he repeats, perhaps so his cultists can parrot the joke along with him. Even the dads who are famous for their dad jokes have been distancing themselves from that one.
After nine years of putting up with Trump, we’ve already seen all his trademark gesticulations — the stupid little “dance” he does where he looks like he’s yanking a couple of cranks; the accordion playing that tips us off as to just how much he is lying; the stubby little finger pointed skyward when he thinks he’s making a really serious point. What a bore!
His lies are boring. His racism is boring. His stupidity is boring. His endless self-aggrandizement is boring. His non-stop litany of grievances is boring. Even his word salad, once humorous for its incongruence and its mid-thought changes of subject, is now just unbearably boring.
It seems like even his most brainwashed devotees are starting to abandon him. He’s already bilked them out of as much money as they could give. What they didn’t give to him, they’ve spent on flags and T-shirts and boat parades and commemorative coins and truck wraps and all manner of useless, worthless swag. What few rallies he’s held have been sparsely attended, despite his lies that his crowds have been larger than Martin Luther King’s Lincoln Memorial speech. I guess he expects us to believe his lies and not those photographs and video footage of arenas that are 3/4 empty. But he’s even told those lies before, too. Boring!
I think he skipped his Campaigning 101 class the day they taught how you’re supposed to present your policies and your ideas. Or maybe he just doesn’t have any policies or ideas — at least none of his own. (He’s more than willing to tout extremist Christian nationalist policies as if they’re his own, though, because he thinks the Christian nationalists will put him back in office and therefore keep him out of prison.)
People have been describing Trump as weird lately. But that gives him too much credit. He’s not original enough to be weird. We’ve seen this act for something like nine years. Maybe it was weird when he first showed up on the political scene in his ill-fitting cheap suits and clown-length neckties. His buffoonery, once jaw-dropping for its brazenness, is simply passé. Now it’s more like the third bus-and-truck company of a second rate musical.
Even his attacks on Kamala Harris feel old and boring, like he’s just recycling old material that didn’t really work when he used them against Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and all of his Republican primary opponents. He can’t even come up with a decent nickname for Kamala. “Kamabla”? WTF is that supposed to mean?
Is it just me, or are all the criminal charges against him starting to feel boring, too? I mean, after 34 felony convictions, 2 impeachments, 54 additional criminal charges pending, multiple losses in civil cases, and being found negligent for sexual assault, what else is left?
His campaign — what’s left of it, anyway — is reminding me of what happens when all of the usable shaving cream is gone from the aerosol can but you can still sputter out a few bursts of air and white goo. Low energy! Only the most ardent supporters are showing up, and that’s mostly out of habit. Whenever a camera focuses on them, it just looks like they don’t quite know what they’re doing there. While we’re on the subject, has anyone seen the lone “Blacks for Trump” guy lately? Someone really ought to check in on him.
The primary job that Democrats have in this election cycle is not to get bored — or boring. The initial glow of the Harris/Walz ticket will inevitably dim, but the enthusiasm for them, coupled with the determination to keep the boring criminal con artist out of the White House, cannot dim. All that Democrats need to do to avoid flagging enthusiasm is to think ahead about what a second Trump term would mean. This could be our last election. The boring guy even said so.