‘It’s the hypocrisy, stupid,’ visible daily in its reptilian depravity as Trumpworld disintegrates with an electoral bang and countless whimpers to follow
Playwright Tennessee Williams: “The only thing worse than a liar is a liar who’s also a hypocrite!”
Historian Timothy Snyder: “Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity.”
Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “This election isn’t about choosing the flavor of ice cream you like. It’s about choosing between ice cream and rat poisoning.”
If lying hypocrisy is the ultimate public sin, what happens when the Hypocrite-in-chief is also a corrupt predator who betrays his every promise and the country’s integrity, then resorts to vengeance against those who challenge his abuses? What looms is an electoral tsunami that promises not only to de-feather the lame duck but eviscerate the disgraced party and the MAGA base he hijacked.
Showing the infinitude of shameless hypocrisy, Trump demands that Alaska’s Mary Peltola, hardly presumed innocent before trial, be prosecuted and disqualified for something she did not direct. “This is voter fraud at the highest level,” Trump fabricated, ignoring a court decision that approved candidate names, laughably insisting she “should be removed from the ballot and so should the fake Dan Sullivan. I think it’s a criminal act, what they did. It’s hard to believe that she could even be allowed to run.” To run? Right, Trump is the instant election law expert? Does it matter no such crime exists, nor evidence that Peltola approved it, that candidates cannot be wiped days before voting, and that this bullying WH intrusions will likely backfire?
Unlike failed wars, international trade and legal/ Constitutional niceties (where total ignorance reigns), Trump knows how to commit voter fraud – confirmed for all time as the era’s master schemer for “voter fraud at the highest level.” On prime TV, without a shred of evidence, Trump not only impugned legitimate 2020 voting totals, but incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol and overturn a certified election over which the president had no legal authority. Now here’s a repeat of blatant voter fraud vilifying a winning AK Dem candidate BEFORE election, all to maliciously offset a GOP loss. No one matches this Partisan on steroids as the ultimate hypocritical election fraudster! Who believes anything so preposterous in 50 years?
Comeuppance equal to endless hypocrisy
Nothing MAGA Trump has done is more morally devastating than assaulting verified truth campaigning, the integrity of elections and the sacred balance between federalism and 50 sovereign states. Trump is now outdoing himself, no longer just a world-class hustler, a criminal convicted of sex abuse and tax fraud, a sadist (executing violence) and a reality denier (however laughable). Dictating to MAGA Trump is an unprecedented, sneering icon of hypocrisy, absurdly distorting “make America great again” into make America “as bad as he can as fast as he can.” What is more hypocritical than MAGA losers (even those simply terrified of losing) trying to corrupt state elections over which they lack statutory authority?
Of course, rampant hypocrisy is a team MAGA effort. From JD Vance at a Ken Paxton rally: “Anybody who would divide us by the color of our skin and say that you’re more or less American – that person is a scumbag.” What fake tolerance from the hypocrite who lied through his teeth about black Ohio immigrants stealing, then eating neighborhood pets, thus justifying Trump’s ongoing, wretched deportation crusade.
Other than fair elections that pick winners, what is the core, the heart and soul of anything that smacks of democratic values? If a citizen majority can’t empower clear choices, without negotiating nefarious mine fields, there goes the sovereignty, if not the suspect blather of “we, the people” controlling our own destiny.
What is more hypocritical than DT outrageously demanding the Nobel Peace Prize, all the while ordering ICE to violently assault his own lawful citizens, then bombing (the non-attacking) Iran, defending Israeli abuses, or paling with Putin to steal Ukrainian resources? Need we add the onslaught of belligerence against allies, trading partners, and would-be friends – or the calculated murder of innocents on fishing boats? Too bad there’s no Nobel War Prize for he’d be a ringer!
What is more hypocritical than a convicted sexual abuser – who denies all guilt – defending allies and appointees facing similar allegations, namely Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, RFK, Jr.. Brett Kavanaugh, Roy Moore, Rob Porter, and Cabinet selections? Or openly castigating tepid Al Franken or Gov. Cuomo or Graham Platner for far, far lesser (alleged) improprieties? Sins morally on par with election denigration.
What is more hypocritical than a confirmed misogynist standing with predators, sexual and otherwise, when defending vile attacks on the Ohio Dem candidate for governor. Trump cheered on heinous attack ads using the estranged (criminally liable) mother who failed to protect her own daughter against step-father rape. Is there no law against enabling sexual predators? Or fellow “scumbags” tolerating such rampant sexism?
What is more hypocritical than for a major culprit to suppress humiliating (potentially criminal) Epstein files after having demonized “amateurs” like Bill Clinton in comparison for his improprieties (few illegal)? Or Hillary as “enabler” of her husband’s misconduct? Or Kamala Harris for private romantic attachments? Or falsely branding James Talarico among the worst politicians “in history” for pushing trans interventions (a lie)? All because the winning TX Dem defends the right to own your own body and gender equality, even posit that God the unknowable transcends human categories (beyond male, female and in-between).
Crushing our most sacred trusts
Not only is Trump the ultimate hypocrite, he’s terrible at covering up his infamies (except Epstein). During the 2016 race, Trump simply fabricated his first Big Lie: “of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day, annoyed that “naive” Republican “leaders deny what’s going on.” An earlier tweet concocted his other paranoid Big Lie about truthful news: the “election is being rigged by the media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting stories that never happened into news!” Such nonsense justifies whining ONLY when he loses and gloating when he wins (stuck in his own universe).
The folly never ends. This week Trump insultingly claimed Alaska voters “don’t know what incumbent means,” that Al
Thus journalist Anne Applebaum rightly casts outrageous misconduct in a wider context:
What links Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Andrej Babis, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Marine Le Pen is one simple character trait: hypocrisy. These politicians aren’t tribunes of the people, they are hucksters. They aren’t bitter enemies of the Western system; they are con artists who seek to profit.
As writer Octavio Pax puts it, hypocrisy demands self-indulgent, reality-rejection: “When hypocrisy is a character trait, it also affects one’s thinking, because it consists in the negation of all aspects of reality that one finds disagreeable, irrational or repugnant.” That explains why writer William Hazlitt isolates the most unforgivable sin: “The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.” No one expects the ultimate MAGA hypocrite to repent, even acknowledge betrayals. Like malignant narcissists, that’s just not what world-class hypocrites do, ever, even after evidence mounts. Truth has very few faces whereas lying has an infinity of facades.
To sum up, steal a neighbor’s food and the family goes hungry; steal his goods and money and they suffer poverty; but produce a cult that persuades marks you are their (entitled) redemption (indeed “retribution”), and you demolish judgment, reason, and well-being. That’s why a lying hypocrite is the most debilitating of public figures, corrupting freedom, choice and purchasing power, in the main to prove this deified Lord of Misrule can pull it off. And the denial never ends: Trump in August quipped that frustrated voters are “angry at Republicans. But they’re not angry at me.” Read the polls, dude (or dud) if you dare. Or election totals.
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