As you may have heard, Gold Toilet Aficionado Donald Trump's latest fuckery is attacking Republican Senator John McCain for not being a war hero because he was a prisoner of war who was "captured," which Trump doesn't find heroic.
(McCain was flying a bombing mission during the Vietnam War when he was shot down over Hanoi; he was severely injured, his injuries untreated, and subjected to further physical torture and years of solitary confinement. He was held for five and a half years before being released with permanent physical disabilities.)
Only Trump can be so aggressively execrable that I can muster compassion for my arch-nemesis McCain and find myself in momentary agreement with Senator Lindsey Graham, who called Trump a "jackass" and added: "I am really pissed."
But! This is also a perfect example of how Donald Trump is the uncensored id of his disgusting party: Sure, what he's saying is contemptible, but his fellow Republicans are really only mad about it because he turned on one of their own.
They were all pretty damn okay with this exact strategy when it was being used against then-Democratic presidential candidate and current Secretary of State John Kerry during the '04 election.
Honestly, John Kerry should get a medal for not commandeering C-SPAN to laugh mirthlessly into the camera for eleventy years at the GOP's sudden vigorous defense of war heroes.
I can't wait until one of them accuses Trump of swiftboating McCain, without a trace of irony.
Anyway.
I said my agreement with Lindsey Graham was fleeting. Here's what else he said: "He's becoming a jackass at a time when we need to have a serious debate about the future of the party and the country. This is a line he's crossed, and this is the beginning of the end of Donald Trump."
He talks about Trump as though Trump stands outside of his party's mainstream; as though Trump's bombastic grotesquery is incompatible with Republican Party principles, rather than a gilded billion-dollar caricature of their distilled essence.
If this is the end of Donald Trump, then it's the end of the Republican Party. Because he is the Republican Party—more than any other of its craven candidates, who desperately pretend to be something else.
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