Campaign Donald is uncaged again.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: When was he ever caged? Well, compared to the wild man who turned up over the weekend in Moon Township, Pennsylvania — yes, that’s really the name — the character who’s been seething in the White House looks downright presidential.
Get ready for Round 2.
The 2020 campaign is now officially up and running. Donald Trump just threw his MAGA hat in the ring and enthusiastically endorsed himself.
Better make that his KAG! hat. Every new campaign needs a new slogan, and this one, Trump revealed, is going to be Keep America Great! — exclamation point very much included. In Trump’s self-congratulatory universe, he has now solved all those dreadful problems that had so bedeviled America. And if you don’t believe it, you clearly aren’t watching enough NRA-TV.
Who needs presidential when we have this?
A black congresswoman is “low IQ.” NBC’s Chuck Todd is a “sleepy son of a b—h.” Fierce New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman is a “Hillary flunky.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren is — yawn, yawn — “Pocahontas.” Drug dealers should be executed.
Including America’s top pharmaceutical executives who’ve flooded the nation with highly addictive opioids? Trump didn’t specify, any more than he specified how the new steel-and-aluminum tariffs will work, what he’ll say to North Korean madman Kim Jung Un or when Mexico will pay for the wall. Don’t bother me with details.
Trump was in Moon Township to support Republican Rick Saccone, who is running in Tuesday’s special election against Democrat Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, which Trump won in 2016 by more than 20 points. Now, under the weight of his abysmal approval ratings, this easy GOP win has become a real squeaker.
In his long and careening address, Trump mentioned Saccone a few times and dished up the requisite insult-nickname for the opponent du jour (“Lamb the Sham”). But as is always the case at unhinged Trump rallies, it all came back to Trump.
“Don’t forget, this got us elected,” he told the adoring crowd. “If I came like a stiff, you guys wouldn’t come here tonight.”
No, they probably wouldn’t, and the rest of us are stuck with that.
Metro columnist Ellis Henican is the author of a dozen books including “Trumpitude: The Secret Confessions of Donald’s Brain.” Join Ellis on Twitter @henican.
