How is it possible that Donald Trump may again become president of this country?

I don’t know how many of you read about the interview Trump gave to Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom (Israel Today) yesterday, but this one interview alone should be sufficient to convince everyone that a vote for Trump should be added to the list of Deadly Sins.

First, as he has done in the past with regard to anything bad happening in the world, he blamed the Hamas October 7 attack on Joe Biden, saying that “[Hamas] would have never done that attack if I were there”. He said that it was because Hamas “has no respect” for Biden (the implication being that Hamas really respects Trump). He has of course said this as well about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is all the fault of Joe Biden and his weakness.

Perhaps remarks like this have become so commonplace that most Americans would simply roll their eyes and go on with their lives. But what else Trump said in that interview is more serious. I quote Trump (the translations come from the English language Haaretz article on the interview) speaking about Biden:

“He can’t put two sentences together. He can’t talk. He’s a very dumb person. His foreign policy throughout 50 years has been horrible.”

He went on and said:

“In Israel I get 98 percent of the vote……”…we have a lot of people in the United States who are Jewish but they actually fight Israel, look at the New York Times. It’s a Jewish family. I think they hate Israel. I watch what they write in the New York Times. It’s hysterical.”

And:

“How could a Jewish person vote for Kamala Harris? And essentially, you know that’s what probably is going to happen because you look at this guy, he can’t walk down a flight of stairs, he can’t walk across a room. He can’t find the exist to a stage without five different sets of stairs. You might have Kamala Harris if this doesn’t work out. Something happens to him, and you have her. She supports the enemy, but he supports the enemy, too.”

We here in DC know our three electoral votes will go Democratic. But what can we do to influence voters in other places? We gotta do something. I checked Real Clear Politics polls this morning. Still have Trump ahead in most of the states that should be competitive. Time is growing shorter, if not short.

But life is uncertain. Look, for example, at what happened early this morning in Baltimore, when a Singaporean-flagged 1000 foot long cargo ship ran into a pillar holding up the Francis Scott Key Bridge on the Baltimore Beltway, causing untold damage, injury and death. No one predicted this – an entire bridge suddenly down into the Patapsco River, cars under water, construction workers dead, commuter routes destroyed, ships in Baltimore Harbor paralyzed. Who would have imagined that such a thing could happen?

And equally surprising things could happen in this election. We will have to wait and see. But, as we keep waiting for the political tide to turn, it hasn’t happened yet.

As Kurt Vonnegut said (again and again), “So it goes”. [“What???”. the younger generation says, “Kurt Who?? Don’t you mean Taylor Swift?”]

Of course some things are not surprising: (1) The Hamas attack (2) the Russian attack (3) the ISIS-K attack. But we treat them as surprises anyway – “We are shocked!!!”. Same will be true of a Trump victory.

So it goes.