Can Trump Survive Without The Lunatic Fringe?

So, last week Trump goes down to Alabama, makes an offhand comment about getting vaxxed, which sets off a chorus of boos. I don’t mean just a couple of boos. I mean a cascade. And he is so surprised by the reaction that he just started stammering something about how everyone needed to keep their ‘freedoms,’ whatever that meant.

Right now, Alabama may be about the worst state in terms of being overwhelmed by the Kung Flu. All the states around Alabama are in bad shape, but none of them are seeing cases climb the way cases are climbing in the Crimson Tide state. Even Florida has seen a recent cresting and slightly downward slope.

So, Trump probably figured he was doing his hosts a favor by telling the crowd to go get jabbed. Instead, he got a kind of ‘lock her up’ response except it was aimed at him.

Then today it got worse. Guess who came out and called Trump a ‘dumb ass’ and ‘maybe not so bright’ on his video show? None other than Alex Jones, who was the first alt-right, conspiracy-monger to endorse Trump back in 2015

Take a look at the daily postings on Trump’s website. Scroll back 5 or 6 screens to August 10th. Every day from August 10th until yesterday there are three, four, five postings or more — it’s like a Twitter page without the tweets. Know how many postings are up there today? None. Not one.

For all the talk about how the Deep State and the Democrats have gotten together to deprive Trump of his ‘right’ to free speech, what’s keeping him from shooting his mouth off at the moment has nothing to do with any kind of cancel culture playing itself out on prime time. It has to do with a very simple fact.

Here’s a guy who spent the last 5 ½ years telling everyone that you can’t trust anything that the ‘fake news’ says. You also can’t trust anything that anyone says who doesn’t agree with Trump. And most of all, you can’t believe anything that anyone says who promotes any kind of public health response to Covid-!9. Because we all know that government mandates that are allegedly designed to keep ourselves from hurting ourselves or others are just a way to keep us from being ‘free.’

Whenever I hear that nonsense, I’m tempted to ask what these idiots think about speed limits. But I never actually ask the question to an anti-vaxxer because I know that there’s really no way I’ll get through.

Back in 2016, about a month before the election, I taught the required safety course which you need to take in my state in order to apply for a license to own a gun. One of the students that evening was a nattily-dressed woman, clearly a professional, maybe a bank manager and someone who was used to telling other employees what had to get done.

At the end of the class, she came up to me and told me that she was very happy to have attended the class because she didn’t think she had another free night over the next couple of months.

No problem, I answered, we do the course all year long.

To which she said in all seriousness, “But if Hillary wins next month how will I be able to buy a gun?”

How did such a crazy idea get into this woman’s head? Think that’s any less crazy than the idea that the election was stolen from Trump or that getting vaxxed or wearing a mask is a threat to your freedom or your health?

I don’t think that most of the people who voted for Trump and would vote for him again are loony tunes. I think that most people vote the way they vote because that’s how they have always voted, faux de mieux, for better or worse.

But Trump’s problem is that he has used (and exploited) all the people who really buy into that conspiracy nonsense as a wedge to maintain his presence at the top of the GOP. Which means he has no choice but to continue promoting crazy ideas because the moment he stops, he’ll get attacked by the lunatic fringe.

But maybe Trump doesn’t have to worry about how much support he’ll get from his alt-right friends, because there’s always the liberal media that to bail him out. Just the other day, CNN ran an interview with a Trump supporter at the Iowa State Fair and here’s what the guy had to say, word for word: “You know, it took 11 days for them [the Taliban] to take over Afghanistan. Wonder how many days it would take the patriots to take over this country.”

Did CNN advertise for someone to get in front of their camera and say the dumbest thing that could be said?