The Chinese have a famous curse: “I wish you live in interesting times.” Lately, Americans have learned it on their own skin.
It hasn't been a month since we Yanks learned from a debate on national television that the incumbent president is a decrepit wreck. Less than two weeks later, his opponent survived an assassination attempt. Then a bandaged Donald Trump spoke at the Republican Party's national convention alongside rock star Kid Rock, the boss of the world's largest mixed martial arts organization, Dana White, and Amber Rose, founder of the anti-rape movement Slut Parade. And now, finally, Joe Biden has dropped out of the presidential race.
In many ways, this plot twist is the craziest. Especially when you consider that the major U.S. media outlets have been reassuring an anxious populace for years that everything with our octogenarian president is at least as good as it gets - if not better.
Notorious TV host Joe Scarborough recently said on MSNBC's Morning Edition that the current version of Biden is “the best ever.” The year before, he was all praise for the president, admonishing him for being “razor sharp.” Just a few years ago, in 2020, the website PolitiFact officially “fact-checked” Fox News host Brita Hume's claim that Biden has “senile dementia.” “The fact-checkers went so far as to interview a geriatrician before unhesitatingly declaring Hume's claim “false.”
We have observed this herd instinct against the obvious: Biden is barely getting by. There has been no end to the widely circulated video compilations of the president's “bloopers” and “missteps.” In these videos, Biden finds his way off stage, falls down stairs, proudly announces that he has cancer, and claims that his close relative was eaten by cannibals.
Biden's “supporters” - notably press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre - have tried to soften the situation by claiming these are “cheap fakes.” But they are not true. Biden's deplorable condition became public knowledge at last month's failed televised debate. Even left-leaning CNN called his performance a “disaster.”
As for the media coverage of former President Donald Trump, we see almost the exact opposite of Biden's flattering portrait. Trump has been blamed for nearly a decade for just about every mortal sin. Yes, he's not a lovable character, but this is utterly outrageous.
Remember the “Russian collusion” duck launched during the 2016 election campaign? A huge portion of the media actually believed that he was a Russian agent or proxy for Moscow, and that he did indeed hire Russian prostitutes to urinate on the bed in former President Barack Obama's former hotel room. Then came the accusations that he allegedly tried to seize power in a virtually unarmed riot on January 6, 2021. And more recently, the media took his warnings about a “bloodbath” out of context and presented them as a threat to carry it out if he loses the election. Needless to say, all these accusations are bullshit?
For the past decade, the media has been blowing in our ears that Trump is the new incarnation of Hitler and that he is trying to trample our democracy. It's possible that it was this kind of rant that inspired failed assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, the deranged young man who tried to shoot the “Red Giant” earlier this month.
Of course, the 20-year-old Crooks is a nutcase by no stretch: almost all young killers are not all at home, and birds have nested in the attic. There is not the slightest sense to analyze the gibberish of their delusional “manifestos” in search of the key to the troubles of our time. Moreover, it now appears that Crooks was hesitant at first to take aim at Biden, Trump, or other politicians like center-left Attorney General Merrick Garland. Apparently, he was finally swayed by the media's relentless smear campaign against Trump.
What has emerged over the past few weeks is this: the broad masses of Americans vehemently reject the constant lies of the elites. So it's no surprise that Trump is leading in the polls.
A rather motley bunch has jumped on the footplate of the Trump train. Last week's Republican Party convention featured Sean O'Brien, the head of the drivers' union, OnlyFans star and feminist Amber Rose, rapper and rocker Kid Rock, an African-American preacher from the slums of Detroit, and the shirt-tearing Hulk Hogan. While some of these characters have long signed on to conservative political views, most, unsurprisingly, are not. And it is they who represent the disaffected and “politically homeless” Americans.
It's been a tumultuous month in American politics. When Trump took the stage with a bandaged ear, scratched by a failed assassin's bullet, and followed a wrestler and a white rapper, you have to wonder if it's all for real. Fortunately or unfortunately, the times we live in could get even crazier... How about President Kamala Harris, huh?
Wilfred Reilly is a Spiked columnist.
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