Paul Corio
The supporters of Donald Trump are many things: loyal, rabid, focused, frenzied, committed, single-minded, self-righteous, rabid, oblivious, and loud. And rabid. Many have gone so far as to call them zombies. “Truuuump. Truuump.” The major difference being these undead demonstrate little interest in brains.
They also have no doubts. They back their glorious leader 100 percent. His poll numbers will never drop below 35 percent. During the 2016 campaign, he famously bragged he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and wouldn’t lose any votes; that may be truer today. If he wanted to show how that would go down, he could hold a nationwide lottery to pick from the millions of zombies who would volunteer to prove it.
It was never a secret that Trump was a philandering, lying, greedy, cheating businessman who stiffed contractors, burned partners, defaulted on loans, and sued everyone. He’s a New York City real estate developer. They are to choirboys what glass shards are to lace. What gum is to hair. Concrete to crockery.
And Trump’s band of walking dead countenance no argument. They are impervious to logic, reason, math, ethics, decency, compassion, protocol, science, history, physics, and gravity. He’s their guy. They don’t care what he’s done or what he’s accused of doing. If Ronald Reagan was Teflon, the forty-fifth President is a space age polymer dipped in polyurethane and covered in weasel grease.
A prime example: While the Russian collusion investigation plays out in the background, the President gets hit with multiple accusations of using hush money to silence women who claim to have had affairs with him. And nobody cares. No impact at all. The focus centers on the lawyer who arranged the payoffs. Misdirection managed.
Obstruction of justice? “Who cares? They all do it.” Shady business deals? “So what. They all do it.” Did he personally kill a person with his bare hands? Even if he did, “So what? They all do it.”
Trump could push an old lady in a wheelchair down three flights of stairs and his supporters would insist he was “giving her a series of chiropractic adjustments.” He could be photographed burning down an orphanage and his people would claim “he was restoring the heat that Obama diverted to illegal aliens.” A mushroom cloud? “Farmers could use the rain.”
James Comey wrote a book that claims the President isn’t just a congenital liar unfit to lead, but an orange, unethical, dangerous Mob Boss with baby hands. Trump’s zombie supporters complained that Comey had made personal attacks—as if personal attacks were not the currency in which Trump trades. They also thought the font in the book was uppity.
The President went on to call the former FBI director “a slimeball.” Trump said that. About somebody else. You can’t make stuff up like this. That’s like Martin Shkreli complaining that the prison commissary is gouging him for his Snickers bars. Or mocking another guy for having lint on his lapels while you’re knee-deep in a pigsty.
Then Trump said the release of the Comey memos vindicated him. Even though they didn’t. At all. In any sense. This guy would claim victory after being decapitated. He’s the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “It’s just a flesh wound.”
And if Trump does fire Robert Mueller or keeps dismissing FBI directors until he finds one that will rid him of this troublesome pest, Republicans will continue to back him as long as his zombies do. Not even a stake through the heart would work. Of course that presupposes the existence of a heart. No brains, no heart, just “Truuuump. Truuump.”
Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed comedian, columnist, and former paperboy in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For past columns, commentaries, and a calendar of personal appearances, including this weekend in various places, please visit willdurst.com.