So far, all the "TELLS" indicate that the TFG's Republican presidential nomination is entirely Performative, featuring retribution plans and attacks on "Marxists". Substantial issues that affect the American people are nowhere to be found. Policy issues were never a big deal for Donald.
The best-known Marx in America was not Karl, but Groucho, who said, "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." So by this definition, Trump is a Marxist.
Tells are actions, speech patterns, or gestures that reveal when someone IS bluffing or lying. The phrase comes from watching poker players at a card game where a TELL can be worth money to someone who observes it.
Here are some Trump behavioral "Tells" in his own word.
Projection: "I knew that the "Powers-That-Be" – who have rigged the system to enrich themselves – would try and ruin me because they know I am the only one who will end their reign of corruption."
Belligerent: "This is the battle I signed up for when I chose to run for president as a COMPLETE POLITICAL OUTSIDER who refused to play by the Washington rules."
Simplistic: "This is a smoke-and-mirrors witch hunt designed to ELIMINATE our campaign and divert the American people's eyes from Crooked Joe Biden's REAL CRIME"
Blame: "400 years in prison? It sounds like something Stalin or Mao did to eliminate their opposition.It's happening here in America. Communism has finally come to our shores."
HisPitch: "Why is it ONLY our movement that is targeted, persecuted, and dragged through witch hunt after witch hunt?"
Spock may not have said this on StarTrek, but it's how his Vulcan mind worked.
Republican politicians, by and large, fearing their rightwing voters, have tossed their independence, intelligence, and morality into a wastebasket.
Seventeen Congressional Republicans elected in 2022 were in districts where Biden's votes exceeded Trump's. Yet, these 17 voted to impeach Biden based on a flimsy resolution introduced by one of the least intelligent women in Congress. This bill will never get out of the full House. But some of the 17 will lose in 2024.
In the just concluded session of the US Supreme Court, the six conservative justices, three appointed by Trump, let their Federalist Society flag fly high using ideological grounds for several key rulings, one on discrimination, one on affirmative action in college admissions and the third denying with a "doctrine it invented" to stop the government from helping pay down student loans owed by millions of Americans.
When Trump ignited a Trade war with China in 2018 the response cost American farmers— and agribusiness— billions of dollars. Republicans had no problem finding $16 billion in unplanned aid to disburse immediately.
Trump doesn't always do the lying. Frequently he just passes on the fabrications of others. "House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer stated that the Biden Crime Family may have cashed in on upwards of $40 MILLION in exchange for political influence in our country. In Comer's own words: it borders on TREASON." Comer's alleged whistle-blower witness has disappeared, and there is no evidence that any of this is other than a Republican confection baked at the “House of Conspiracy."
What can sensible people, regardless of political affiliation, do about this?
Tell everyone, not just friends and family, to vote in 2024 in local, state, and national elections.
The "Tells" keep coming. We can interpret them any way we want. If you desire an America that doesn't resemble a dictatorship, vote and make a difference. Help stop the USA from becoming the largest banana republic led by a despot on the planet.
By; Kenneth Tiven