Hillary Clinton famously said that we should not have as President someone who can be “baited by a tweet.”

Exactly so, Madame Secretary, but what about one who can be baited by a speech?

When President Biden went to Philadelphia last Thursday to roundly denounce Trump’s MAGA bowel movement and all it stands for, he chose to do so using as a backdrop one of our most potent symbols of Democracy, Independence Hall, with a couple of sharp U.S. Marines guarding the entrance not edited from the shot. This is exactly the type of symbolism that the Republicans, and especially the American Flag assaulting former guy, think that they own, and of course the President and his advisors know this.

And they exploited that knowledge.

At Atlantic Magazine never-trump staff writer David Frum opines that by appearing in Philadelphia just ahead of drumpf’s scheduled rally in Wilkes-Barre on Saturday, and harshly criticizing drumpf and his cult from there, President Biden “baited” the former idiot into exactly the kind of narcissistic display sure to turn off moderate swing voters in that state.

“For the 2022 election cycle, smart Republicans had a clear and simple plan: Don’t let the election be about Trump. Make it about gas prices, or crime, or the border, or race, or sex education, or anything—anything but Trump. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost control of the House in 2018. He lost the presidency in 2020. He lost both Senate seats in Georgia in 2021. Republicans had good reason to dread the havoc he’d create if he joined the fight in 2022.”

Yeah, good luck with that, GOP.

Frum knows, as should the rest of the Republican Party, and as do Biden’s advisors, that the aging Diva drumpf could be easily coaxed back into the spotlight by even the slightest attack on his famously frail ego…let alone the 30 yard dump truck load of dis Biden laid on him during his speech on Thursday.

“One of the purposes of Biden’s Philadelphia attack on Trump’s faction within the Republican Party was surely to goad Trump. It worked.

Yesterday, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump addressed a rally supposedly in support of Republican candidates in the state: Mehmet Oz for the Senate; the January 6 apologist Doug Mastriano for governor. This was not Trump’s first 2022 rally speech. He spoke in Arizona in July. But this one was different: so extreme, strident, and ugly—and so obviously provoked by Biden’s speech that this was what led local news: “Donald Trump Blasts Philadelphia, President Biden During Rally for Doug Mastriano, Dr. Oz in Wilkes-Barre.”

Because putting Philly on blast always works out well…

And not only did they rally, David… vendors sold Nazi paraphernalia and Swastika Tees like they were set up at a Fashwave concert.

Now, that’s an activity sure to lure in suburban professional women and soccer moms alike!

And TFG said stupid shite like this:

No, no you didn’t, and now it is certain that neither will Oz or Mastriano.

Frum, wrong though he may have been so many times in the past, has this one right:

“Republican congressional leaders desperately but hopelessly tried to avert the risk that this next election would become yet another national referendum on Trump’s leadership. Despite Trump’s lying and boasting, politicians who can count to 50 and 218—the respective numbers needed for a majority in the Senate and House—have to reckon with the real-world costs of Trump’s defeats. But Biden understood their man’s psychology too well.

Biden came to Philadelphia to deliver a wound to Trump’s boundless yet fragile ego. Trump obliged with a monstrously self-involved meltdown 48 hours later. And now his party has nowhere to hide. Trump has overwritten his name on every Republican line of every ballot in 2022.

Biden dangled the bait. Trump took it—and put his whole party on the hook with him. Republican leaders are left with little choice but to pretend to like it.“

Like they always have with drumpf.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. I can all but hear the sour lemons in Frum’s words. And why not? Not only is Trump still running his party but it’s now on track for big losses in November and possible irrelevance this decade.

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    • does the 4 million job losses include the job losses during the great shutdown in 2020. when a bunch of politicians decide to shut down the economy there will be job losses. also how many of the 10 million jobs created were simply jobs that had been lost due to the shutdown of 2020 that were now back open. sorry but those were not job creation. job creation occurs when a job is brand new not when you go back to the job you had before the government told you to stay home for months at a time.

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  2. Traitor Tot CANNOT run in 2024 (or ever again!) without admitting that he LOST in 2020! He is a malignant narcissistic psychopath that will never admit the truth, even if he could recognize truth at all. In the twisted pile of rotten bat guano that passes for his mind, he cannot ever admit that he lost, that he is the biggest loser in the history of the universe!

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    • I wish you were right Nonya, that he won’t run again for anything, but Trumpler doesn’t have to admit defeat in order to run — he just carries on with the Big Lie. He didn’t lose, he was robbed. On the other hand, if he does run in 2024, it could spell the end of the GOP when he loses, which he would. He’s loathed and despised by far too many young voters to win, despite all the rigging being done right now by corrupt MAGA-loving state officials.

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      • But those young people need to vote. If you can’t get them to vote…he can still win. While I’m worried he will run and win, I have a suspicion that his ego is too fragile for him to take the risk of losing again. Especially now that he’s virtually guaranteed he won’t be indicted for years. (Which I don’t see happening anyway, irregardless of inexplicable -other than blatant corruption-Court rulings, b/c I don’t see Garland risking cult members shooting up DC again just to have the case go to the SC and they let him walk.) Despite his insistence of stolen election, he knows he lost and it’s eating him alive. I think he’ll just continue to fleece the morons sending him $. If Alex Jones was making $800k/day off Sandy Hook denial, Trump has GOT to be making at least that same number if not more off his ‘beautiful MaraLago break in’ where Barons room was searched too. I’ve seen the blue prints for MaraLago and I’m not sure there’s a ‘residence’ there larger than 2000sqft, it’s all banquet hall/restaurant, hotel room, spa, offices. I don’t see Melania living in 2000sqft where you can’t go in and out w/o going thru huge public areas. I’m sure Don the con LOVES that but I don’t see Melania tolerating it. (The point of this yammering being Barron may have a ‘room’ there but I don’t think he actually ‘lives’ there.)

  3. It takes very little to send Trump into incoherent lies. Next he will.blame NASA’s Artemis issues and will.claim that when he was,pres we sent a,man to Mars.

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      • He said one true thing in the past seven years: He could kill someone in broad daylight in the middle of New York City, and the brainless wonders that make up his base would still vote for him.

  4. All Obama needs is a Grammy, and he’ll have an EGO too. At the moment he just has the Emmy and the Oscar.

    Though that’s not quite like Trump’s ego. It certainly riles it.

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