Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Who doesn’t remember playing sandlot football, baseball, or soccer during childhood? Enjoying those long afternoons of playing a game or two without the encumbrances of adult supervision? And who doesn’t remember that one kid getting upset and taking his bat or the ball and storming off the field? The crybaby. This was the kid who always claimed a foul ball was fair or that he was interfered with or that the other side was offside. This was the kid who blamed his own teammates for his mistakes. This was the kid who threatened to call his dad or big brother to beat you up. This was the kid nobody liked.
Over the past few years, we have heard many, many references to a certain former president’s childlike behaviors. He calls people names like “Lying Ted” or “Sleepy Joe” or “Little Marco”. He denies ever doing anything wrong. Whenever he gets into trouble—or maybe just for the hell of it—he lies like a rug. He mocked Serge Kovaleski, a reporter who suffers from a congenital joint disability. He is a bully that takes advantage of women, employees, and colleagues. His comments about being able to grab a woman’s private parts just because he is famous are disgusting and deplorable. He has insulted America’s veterans by refusing to visit the Normandy cemeteries and Arlington National Cemetery, calling veterans of the armed forces “suckers and losers”. When asked about Senator John McCain’s war service, which included a stint in a prisoner of war camp, Trump said that “I like people who weren’t captured”, a statement nearly as stupid as it is disrespectful.
In a dubious departure from these childlike behaviors, Mr. Trump succeeded in a very adult way of getting convicted of thirty-four counts of felony fraud—as well as being held liable for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll. He is also awaiting trial in three other matters: the Mar-a-Lago documents case, the January 6th insurrection, and the conspiracy to fix the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Even though we have become used to this man’s disgusting excesses, he has recently displayed conduct that makes a ten-year-old brat look like a continental sophisticate.
About a month ago, after surviving an assassination attempt and accepting the nomination as President of the United States at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Donald Trump seemed to be on top of the world. Following President Joe Biden’s feeble debate performance in which he looked slow and confused, Trump’s election to the office seemed assured.
Then, suddenly—with the encouragement of many of the Democratic elite—President Biden stepped down as the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. It was unsettling to many Democrats and liberals, who have all too often experienced the party’s tendency to splinter, second-guess, and shatter in the face of, well, anything. But after the president endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris as a nominee, a miracle happened. No one dissented, No one (except for Joe Manchan’s half-hearted attempt) tried to step in as a competitor The Democrats had outdone the Republicans in providing a strong unified front behind their candidate.
All this caused Donald Trump to throw a fit. Like that kid in the sandlot ball game, Trump called foul and no fair. Republicans threatened to sue—with absolutely no legal grounds, calling it unfair that one candidate could simply hand over all his delegates to another—even they voted to willingly change allegiances. Ironically, the seventy-eight-year-old suddenly found himself as the old, slow, and out-of-touch candidate. The very playbook he’d been using against President Biden was now the blueprint for his opponent’s offense.
On the campaign trail, Trump started wishing out loud that Biden was running again. At one point, he even speculated that the president would storm into the DNC demanding that the nomination be returned to him. All of this is—of course—a childish demand, not unlike that sandlot kid demanding a redo—a fourth strike.
Like the crybaby whining that a foul ball was fair, he siad that he was not aware that Vice-President Harris is black, stating that he’d always thought she was Indian and that she only recently “became black”, which did not enthrall many African American voters.
And then, when Trump had to watch Kamala Harris’ meteoric rise as a candidate, a supernova that completely eclipsed him in the news cycle for days, his fury increased. And, like a stubborn child, he refused to listen to anyone. Advisors and Republican kingmakers told Trump to stay on topic during his speeches, to focus on policy. The former president instead continued—and continues—to make personal attacks against Vice-President Harris and Governor Walz, her running mate.
And like a spoiled child, Trump has used his bully pulpit to ramble on—sometimes incoherently—about how world has slighted and disrespected him. At times, his competency has been questioned. At one event, Trump went on at some length about electric car batteries in a boat and how dangerous it would be if one had to choose between being electrocuted by the liberal-leaning batteries or eaten by a shark. He has at times publicly misidentified associates, misspoken, and seemed to get lost in the middle of a sentence. Concerns about his age have begun to surface.
On top of being overshadowed by an African American woman, Trump has also had to deal with his questionable choice of a running mate. Like a typical schoolyard bully, he has recruited a guy to fill the role of his back-up thug. J.D. Vance seemed to fit the bill. He is very Trumplike. He’s even attempting to start a “No Girls Allowed” club. Not unlike Donald Trump, J.D. Vance does not have much respect for women—especially women who have the audacity to want to run their own lives.
Vance (no matter what he says now) favors a nation-wide abortion ban. He believes post-menopausal women are ideal nannies and that childless women and couples should pay more in taxes while having fewer votes. “No Girls Allowed!”
There is no question that Donald Trump is unfit to be president and that he always was. The truth is that now he is more unfit than he ever was. He is emotionally unable to deal with the stress of running against an opponent he’s not sure he can beat. He is selfish, rude, and mean-spirited. He is incompetent.
Like that sandlot kid who threatened to take his ball and go home, we should say, “Go ahead and hurry up.” This one does not only not work and play well with others, he is a menace to our very way of life. Putting nuclear codes into the hands of a twelve-year-old is not only foolish, it is foolhardy.