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I rarely comment on Presidential candidates (and probably won’t endorse one), but I simply couldn’t pass up this opportunity to voice my agreement with Garrison Keillor on Donald Trump Continue reading . . .

I rarely comment on Presidential candidates (and probably won’t endorse one), but I simply couldn’t pass up this opportunity to voice my agreement with Garrison Keillor on Donald Trump (his article was titled, “Cartoon Candidates Don’t Last” and was published on the Opinion page of USA Today, Thursday, January 7, 2016, p. 7a; I encourage you to read the entire article).

I doubt if Keillor and I would agree on much in the realm of politics, but in this case he’s spot on. I only wish that I had been the first to make these observations:

“As demagogues go, Donald Trump is not a very good one.

I’ve been studying his speeches on YouTube, and what a sloppy orator he is. He can blow for an entire hour in a loose oleaginous [I know; I had to look it up too. The Oxford English Dictionary has two definitions for it: (1) oily or greasy; and (2) exaggeratedly complimentary; obsequious] confabulation of detached sentences drifting toward crescendo and then, swerving away, non-sequiturs segueing into non-sequiturs as his audience waits for the message (They are stupid, we are smart, let’s be great again.) as he brags about his numbers, his success, coasting, camping, posing, lounging against the lectern, scowling, hands outstretched in his trademark ‘What gives?’ gesture.

Sloppy. As he himself would say, ‘Unbelievable!’ His audience expects him to be yuuuuuge, and instead he comes off as the most irritating cabdriver you ever had to listen to.

Twitter was made for this man. More than 140 characters and his mind wanders. Short sentences are his medium: People are tired of stupidity. Foreigners are pouring across the border. We’ll build a wall. It’ll be beautiful. ISIL was created by Hillary Clinton. Let’s take over Saudi Arabia. You’ve got to be strong. And smart. China is robbing us blind. The press is unfair.

Racism? Sexism? Whatever. The guy is a cartoon, campaigning in captions. He is a very rich man who is lucky that his father was born before he was and, like so many fortunate sons, he is long on confidence, short on social skills.”

After comparing Trump to Jesse (the Body) Ventura, the former governor of his own state of Minnesota, Keillor continues by describing so many who support the man:

“These people are angry and don’t know what to do, and in Trump they find a man who is also very angry and doesn’t know what to do. He is careful in a whole hour of ‘Unbelievable!’ and ‘Stupid!’ and ‘Take my word for it!’ not to offer specific proposals. He has no ideas. His rationale for running is that a lot of people like him. . . .

Trump is already a joke in most of the rest of the world. Onward he goes, leaning on his podium like a big old mud turtle, leering, grimacing, bragging about his poll numbers and attendance figures and his net worth and his alma mater, and I expect he will do respectably well in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina.”

Well, that should give you a sense for Keillor’s opinion of Trump (mine too). He closes by saying:

“Conrad Hilton stayed out of politics; Benito Mussolini didn’t go into the hotel business. There are reasons for that.”

1 Comment

Thank you, can I copy and send to others? I agree!

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