Trump turns a taxpayer-funded event into an illegal campaign rally for the second day in a row
So after getting roundly condemned for turning his Rose Garden address yesterday — which was originally billed as a speech on China — into a Hatch Act-violating campaign rally, what does Donald Trump do today while giving a taxpayer-funded speech at the UPS airport hub in Atlanta?
If you guessed exactly the same thing as he did yesterday — turning an already condemnable announcement that he’s allowing infrastructure projects to move forward without the previously required environmental reviews into a poor substitute for a COVID-19-transmitting MAGA rally — BINGO! You win and the nation continues to lose.
Trump doesn’t even bother pretending that rules and laws apply to his imperial interpretation of the presidency any longer.
He just shamelessly turns every opportunity in which he could potentially demonstrate that he understands and is willing to fulfill his presidential duties into a desperate plea to re-elect his butt and avoid sending it to the dank cell that surely awaits him once he’s out of the protective trappings of the White House.
Here are the condensed highlights of Trump’s speech today, in front of a backdrop that gives the commercial competitor to his much-hated U.S. Postal Service the same free advertising and marketing that he provided earlier in the day for Goya, a company owned by an ardent supporter of his re-election.
Watch this clip while keeping in mind that this a taxpayer-funded event and is not supposed to be a campaign rally pic.twitter.com/4ddVtfZXNz
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 15, 2020
No Trump speech is complete without a completely made-up story that can be easily debunked by a simple review of the video of the event that he is describing. Spoiler alert! There is absolutely no sign of anyone bawling tears of joy in the crowd behind the president in the footage of him signing the bill.
wait until Trump hears about how the soldiers voted https://t.co/EAyqpwuwyO
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 15, 2020
History was never his strong suit, but then again does he even have one?
Even Trump has to chuckle to himself when he brings up the topic of vote counting in the 2016 election. If he was smart, he would never have brought it up, but now that he mentions it, perhaps we should take another look at those detailed results from swing states.
Trump just learned that the Empire State Building was built in less than a year (it was actually built in just over 13 months, but at least he's close!) pic.twitter.com/eAMr6yGMGD
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 15, 2020
Another area that isn’t one of Trump’s strongest points is his command of the English vernacular, as the verb form for the word “veto” mysteriously eludes him.
"We want to be totally involved with the environment" — Trump pic.twitter.com/7C4gLfrVLH
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 15, 2020
Did we mention that English was not one of his strong suits?
Trump concludes his official White House eve– I mean campaign rally at a UPS hub in Georgia by desecrating Neil Young pic.twitter.com/nnuc3Jmrd1
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 15, 2020
Mr. Young, who has already told the White House that he doesn’t want his music associated with any Trump campaign events, may be forced to renounce the newly acquired American citizenship that he finally was granted earlier this year after decades as a legal green-card holder if Trump keeps ignoring him.
The upshot of today’s speech is that no matter how far his polls sink, no matter how much criticism he gets for violating every ethics law that’s been passed and many that will need to be enacted once he leaves office and the loopholes are discovered, Trump will do and say whatever he wants, unrestricted by his cowardly Republican enablers in the Senate.
The only way to stop these blatant violations of the rule of law is to push him out of office as soon as possible by whatever means we have at hand. November can’t come too soon.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Original reporting by Aaron Rupar at Vox.
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