Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has morphed from the patently absurd to the utterly surreal
Hard as it is to believe that a credible presidential candidate can resort to gaudy sneaker-hucksterism, we’ve all seen it with our own eyes. That pic above (from a public domain image posted in wikimedia commons) says it all when it comes to assessing the level of contempt that Donald Trump and his cohorts have for the American public.
The self-pitying whiner must think we’re the easiest marks that ever strolled down the carnival midway.
His latest effort at con-artistry followed a legal setback earlier this week, when he went into ‘I am being hounded by the courts for political reasons’ mode.
The catalyst for this latest venture into victim-hood? Some recent news from Russia.
Comparing himself to Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and merciless Putin critic who died while a prisoner under circumstances that will probably never be revealed, Trump let loose with a tirade that put his martyr complex on full display, relentlessly trying to convince us that he’s ever the victim.
Complaining about the $355 million fine just leveled against him in New York, he said “it’s a form of Navalny.”
This is completely crazy as Trump was found to have broken state laws against misrepresenting the value of assets in a loan application. Trump seems to think that the law doesn’t apply to him just because he’s a presidential contender and that if he weren't running for office the incident would never have come to trial.
The logic behind Trump’s complaint is nonexistent, as its premise is that laws apply to some people but not to others – an absurdity on the face of it.
But then, absurdity is the essence of surrealism, which seems to come naturally to Trump.
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam.
