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Marolt: A bad sign planted in the front lawn

Roger Marolt
Roger This

There’s a yard in town I drive by almost every day that is littered with Trump/Pence signs. There’s no curb bordering the grass, and it would be so easy to swerve across the sidewalk and take out the whole placarded hedge that somehow looks incomplete, missing some things like Confederate flags, burning crosses and swastikas. Don’t be alarmed at my reaction, that’s what the exhibition is there for. Nobody puts up an overblown display like that intending to make friends, peace or love, for that matter.

I’m not thrilled at all expressions of free speech, but I totally support it. Accordingly, there is nothing I can do about this in-my-face, over-the-top lawn collage of ugly foolishness disguised as party loyalty. You set up a display next to the front porch like this and you have crossed the frontier of reason and entered the realm of all or nothingness. … Then again, maybe there are some out there who might be able to do something about that display. I don’t know.

Hillary Clinton should not have said half of Donald Trump’s supporters are a basket of deplorables. She should have said that the proportion of Trump supporters who are deplorable is probably about the same as Hitler’s was. It leaves so much more to talk about.



How many of Hitler’s supporters were deplorable? I’m not asking this as if I know the answer. If you guessed maybe 10 percent were abject mongers of hatred and the rest were just normal German citizens who temporarily lost their minds and got caught up in some deranged group sanity-warp, I could see that. Just the same, if you said that more of them than not were latently racist, sexist, anti-religious, intolerant nuts, I couldn’t argue with that, either. The only thing we know for sure is that absolutely all of them were completely wrong.

I would say there are a lot more deplorables in Trump’s support group than in Clinton’s. That’s just my opinion, so I may as well emphasize it. I feel there are lots, lots, lots more deplorables supporting Trump than Clinton. I just don’t see a lot of crossover here. Again, just an opinion, so keep that in mind. I do not have a shred of evidence to support this.




This is really no secret, though, even among those who blasted Clinton for making the remark about the deplorables. Lots of people, acknowledging that Trump is a racist, sexist and xenophobe, say they support him regardless because they think Clinton is this incredibly huge liar. I assume this is because, in their minds, liars are far worse than racists, sexists and xenophobes all in one.

Even still, it’s painfully puzzling because just about every other thing out of Trump’s mouth is a lie, and I think I’m being generous when I say only half of what he says is utter fact-free nonsense. I mean, he saw Muslims out in the street celebrating the World Trade Center buildings collapsing? Obama wasn’t born in the United States? He gives millions to charity every year? Ha!

Politico tried to count how often Trump lied during roughly 41/2 hours of speeches they analyzed. They concluded he told a fib about every five minutes. That would be completely unbelievable except that Huffington Post counted 71 lies during just one town hall event. That’s one about every two minutes! That kind of proficiency qualifies deceit as a craft.

Here’s the thing about lying between Trump and Clinton: Clinton has made her career holding high political positions where what she does effects lots of people and everything she says is closely listened to and scrutinized by the smartest journalists, most vicious political adversaries and allies and millions of regular people like us. What she says actually matters to the masses and has mattered for a long time. People have motivations to twist what she says.

When Trump lies, he makes money. Count up his bankruptcies, law suits and divorces, look where that’s gotten him, and you’ll get my drift. Over the years he hasn’t faced much public scrutiny over what he says, either. For one, nobody cared. For two, nobody tells a billionaire that he’s full of crap. For three, where would somebody start?

Finally, let’s not forget about Trump’s own federal investigation. I’m not talking about the shenanigans with his charitable foundation. I’m talking about the Internal Revenue Service. He says he won’t release his recent tax return because it’s currently under IRS audit. He’s been saying this for almost eight months. That’s one hell of an audit! And, if it’s even actually happening, it’s probably not going to come out clean.

Roger Marolt is not going to Canada if Trump wins because even Canadians will despise Americans then. Email roger@maroltllp.com.