New Orleans Norman Mailer, the famed novelist and journalist of the last century, was a king-sized narcissist. He once wrote a book, brashly and honestly, entitled Advertisements for Myself. Who knows how he thought that would work out? Trump must have crossed paths with him in the big city at some point or another. Mailer’s whole shtick was not widely applauded as he campaigned for a Nobel Prize, his for Literature, just like Trump has campaigned for years for a Nobel Peace Prize. Mark this down as another lesson not learned, but, credit to where credit is due, Trump has gone miles past anything that Mailer might have contemplated, despite the fact that they both might have tied in a race to see which one might have been the worst misogynist.
Recently and bizarrely, Trump has indeed begun to run “advertisements for himself.” There have now been two ad drops, the most recent costing more than $300,000, where essentially Trump asks people to “love” him, as much as he loves himself. Did I mention that this particularly love seeker is not going into his own pocket as he seeks this personal adulation. He’s actually using public, taxpayer money in his usual cavalier view of the federal treasury as a personal slush fund that, thanks to his Supreme Court, he believes he can tap with impunity. Shockingly, Louisiana’s Senator Kennedy, an always reliable MAGA vote, was on TV in the airport as I passed by this week, stating clearly that this personal aggrandizement with public funds was not only improper, but illegal.
Given the way the polls are portending a doomsday for his prospects in the coming election and his belief, and perhaps secret hope, that the Republicans can’t win without him on the ballot, when he’s not puffing out his chest on the airwaves, he’s trying some cheap bribes before the election. He’s touted without credibility his promise that if voters maintain his control of a lapdog Congress, Republican in name only, he will somehow, magically, give voters $5000 apiece. Not sure, even if by some miracle, Republicans maintain their majority, that he can deliver on that promise, but I imagine he knows that and just does not care. If he can sucker some votes with it, hey, what the heck.
A news flash has him also saying he’s going to send $500 to one-million people on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces in the 30 states that participate in them. The rap here is that this offsets some costs, while he claims all of his success in lowering drug prices and health costs, despite the double digit increases and the loss of marketplace subsidies. As much as he and his team have lambasted Obamacare in the past and present, it’s very rich to see him now trying to embrace a million folks he has hurt in so many ways on healthcare and with his Bad Budget Bill. Oh and he also went Canadian on the “baby bonds” before the election converting a slow moving sign-up system into an automatic enrollment entitlement. We’ll grind that out some more in the future.
Fool me once, it’s on you; fool me twice, it’s on me. That’s the saying, but with Trump, we haven’t found the limits yet to the number of times he will try to work the con on the American voters. In a bit more than a month, we’ll see whether it worked this time.