Trump pantomimes oral sex at rally

I don't know how to put this gently or tastefully, so I'll describe matter-of-factly what happened last night in Milwaukee: A former president of the United States held a rally where he used a microphone holder on his podium to… Acting in pantomime giving fellatio.

I could have worded it differently. I could have said that “a cognitively impaired man who has long shown signs of serious emotional instability and a history of sexism and racism engages in rude behavior in front of a large audience.” But that would miss an important reality :

This deeply flawed man is in the running to become the next president and could be in control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal in less than three months.

I don't know if this bizarre display will turn votes away from Donald Trump. Nothing seems to affect the loyalty of his base. Trump voters are determined to minimize his horrific antics or even banish them from their minds. (As one commentator said on social media today, Trump's new mantra may be: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and beat someone up and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?”)

Plus, it's always difficult to highlight a single terrible moment at a Trump rally when there are so many to choose from. Last night, for example, he insisted that he had won Wisconsin twice. (He didn't.) He also made a veiled racist attack against Milwaukee Bucks player Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is black. “Your team is very good,” Trump told the crowd. “I would say the Greek is a really good player. Do you agree? And tell me, who has more Greek in them, the Greek or me? I think we have about the same thing, right?” Antetokounmpo is of Greek and Nigerian descent and was born in Athens. I'm half-Greek myself (my mother was Irish-American) and the Bucks star is just as Greek as me, but we all get the joke: A black Greek! Get it? He's Greek… and black!

Trump is white, and by the way, we know that because he told us so. During a stop in Michigan before arriving in Wisconsin, Trump explained that he could have had an easier life on the golf course if he had decided not to run for president:

This wasn't the first time Trump made comments about his skin. But I digress, because I'd rather talk about Trump's clumsy racism than his lobster on a microphone stand.

Look, my Greek father lived to be 94 years old. Maybe he found the idea of ​​a black Greek basketball player somewhat amusing and would have laughed about it among his poker friends. My father was a hard-drinking, working-class guy who told more than his fair share of sexist and racist jokes.

But if my father had simulated a blowjob in mixed company in his late 70s, especially in front of an audience that included children, I would have called him in for a full neurological exam. Despite having an ability to swear that rivaled the old man in the film A Christmas storyhe deeply disapproved of men who cursed or were rude in front of women and children. When I went drinking with him, I would occasionally see him go up to and warn other men whose speech was getting out of control. (He was a former police officer and worked as a bouncer for a time.) Dad wasn't exactly Emily Post, but there were limits.

By most accounts, Trump has always been a vulgar and ignorant man. This chilling moment in Milwaukee will deepen our national and international humiliation when he is back in office. More importantly, the increasing frequency of this kind of disinhibited behavior in public is a warning sign that he simply isn't stable enough to sit in the Oval Office.

I don't know if Trump's erratic behavior, his apparent physical deterioration, his bizarre rambles, and their mental dead ends are part of a larger illness. Trump's critics claim he suffers from dementia and other ailments. I am not a doctor and cannot come to that conclusion. But I know this much: If Donald Trump were your father, your husband, your brother, your uncle, or just your friend, you would insist that he see a doctor and you would probably protect him from large gatherings, in which he could become a doctor and an object of ridicule. You might even suggest that family or friends check in more often.

No matter what small mercies and concessions you give to a man who behaves like Trump, you would definitely not promote him to positions of pressure or responsibility or force him into situations in which he would be required to make quick and important decisions. There was no way they would make him commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world and place the safety of billions of innocent people in his hands.

The ever loyal and willing rally crowd laughed as Trump pretended to enjoy a device. But for the rest of us, the laughter must stop and the horror of what might happen in a few days must take its place.