Trump And Bernie Don't Know What "Rigged" Means

by Bob Cesca

Thanks to Donald Trump, America is now in the business of running prison camps for toddlers. You know, because life begins at conception but ends at birth. 

Women seeking abortion services in Missouri’s last remaining Planned Parenthood facility were forced to undergo mandatory and medically unnecessary vaginal probes thanks to a Republican Trumper named Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. 

African-Americans continue to be assaulted and murdered by the police tasked with protecting them. Untold thousands of black voters will be tossed off voter rolls either by hackers or by Republican voter suppression efforts.

Tens of millions of Americans are in danger of losing their health insurance if Trump’s Justice Department successfully refuses to defend the Affordable Care Act in court. Our electoral system continues to be disrupted by hostile foreign attackers without any intervention by the White House. And soon, we’ll begin to see scores of Latinos rounded up and hauled off to all new internment camps before being randomly deported.

We’re teetering on the verge of another land war in Asia, as well as teetering on the verge of another recession thanks to Trump’s instability and his spastic trade war.

Meanwhile, powerful leaders with their hands on the levers of democracy refuse to step up to the challenge of thwarting a new kind of political despot, Trump, and so his monstrous behavior becomes further entangled with our politics, reaching or perhaps surpassing the point of no return.

We’re all trapped in this alternative timeline in which Biff Tannen is president and fascism is circulating around the globe, one tweet at a time. Knowing all of this, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t weep for Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders -- you know, given how everything is rigged against them.

You might’ve seen the video already of Bernie Sanders being asked whether he’d drop out of the race if he has no chance of winning enough delegates for the nomination. During an interview with MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt, Bernie refused to accept that he might not be the nominee, noting that “some people” have said he would’ve defeated Trump in the general “if the system weren't rigged against me."

Good lord, when will the world take its boot off the throats of aging white men? 

But when it comes to self-pity and a bottomless persecution complex, no one tops Trump. Our current president works in self-pity and victimhood the way Eddie Van Halen works in hammer-ons and cocaine. I’ve honestly never observed a whinier adult -- in real life or in politics. That so many Red Hats think Trump is a studmuffin who asserts his alpha-might to crush the puny scrotums of anyone who challenges his authority betrays his supporters as being grossly misled about the character of their bitchy messiah.

Yet while so many people are suffering -- while our constitutional order suffers along with them -- Trump was busy Wednesday whining about how no one can follow him on Twitter and that Google is “trying to rig the election.” Yes, another entitled white guy who insists something is rigged against him. You know who the system is really rigged against? Children who come to America to live free of persecution or death and, instead, are quickly rounded up and punished in ways that far from match any perceived crimes. That’s who.

Trump was in full screech-mode during a segment with Fox News anchor and Lando’s copilot in Return of the Jedi, Maria Bartiromo, who seemed genuinely perplexed by the motormouth on the phone -- the president -- who was so angry and relentless I couldn’t help but wonder whether he had a full diaper or if he needs to start breaking the Provigil in half or both. Nevertheless, Trump ranted about Google rigging the election against him because of a new video created by prankster-propagandist James O’Keefe. 

The new O’Keefe video is, like always, heavily edited to make it seem as if a low-level Google employee, Jen Gennai, confessed that her employers are manipulating the platform to hurt Trump’s re-election chances. A careful and non-conspiratorial review of the video clearly shows that Gennai was talking about Russian interference and Google’s efforts to prevent it. Gennai also wrote the following for Medium:

Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course. In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016. Google has been very public about the work that our teams have done since 2016 on this, so it’s hardly a revelation.

But it’s easier for Trump and his loyalists to believe there’s a vast conspiracy against a man who lies about literally everything and always has. As for Twitter, and this alleged plot to keep people from following him, Trump is clearly distorting the normal functioning of Twitter to make it seem nefarious -- his now predictable tactic of merely pointing at something normal and shouting “LOOKIT! LOOKIT” with an accusatory tone. That’s all his flying monkeys need -- no evidence, just the suggestion of a plot.

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The real rigging of the previous election was orchestrated by Trump’s allies in Russia and by Trump’s allies in the Republican Party. And we shouldn’t forget how Russia was apparently also working to elevate Bernie against Hillary Clinton in the primaries. Knowing this, and knowing the worsening nightmare in parts of the country, there are millions of us who are being actively screwed with our pants on by privileged, entitled white men. That’s the truth. No matter how often Trump and Trump-adjacent leaders play this “why is everyone against me?” nonsense, do not believe them. I assure you, they’ll be fine. Just as long as they have their binkies nearby.

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