Expecting to be "cheered" at the ball game, Trump forced to confront what real Americans think of his criminality

Donald Trump learned a hard lesson last night, or should have: A lot of people hate him—I mean really hate him for the ignorant, immoral and unethical bigot he is. Despite the fact that Trump had almost nothing to do with the operation that eliminated ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in fact was so distrusted by intelligence services that he was not informed until it was certain that there wasn’t enough time for him to leak its details, he seemed to fall under the spell of his alternate fact universe, where people who hate him would suddenly change their tune. Thus he and some of his Republican familiars like Lindsey Graham and Matt Gaetz showed up with him during Game 5 of the World Series, supposedly there to cheer on the Washington Nationals, but in reality this raging narcissist and self-flatterer expected to receive all of the cheers. Instead, when his face appeared on the big screen an eruption of boos went forth, followed by the chanting of “Lock Him Up!” 

As we know, Trump encouraged a variation of this chant in regard to Hillary Clinton before crowds of mindless fanatics; that he was receiving some of his own “medicine” was doubly gratifying not just because it was a spontaneous, public rejection of a man living in a world of self-created illusion, but that it was broadcast before millions of television viewers across the country and around the globe. For a man who has spent his whole life marketing his personal “brand,” this public rejection of him as a man worthy of respect should have stung. Other presidents may have been “booed” when they appeared at a major sporting event, but never before was there a president whose own depravity was so openly and angrily tossed back into his orange face with those unsightly ringlets around his eyes.

The Democrats’ continue to soldier on with their impeachment inquiry in spite of Trump’s “victory.” Why? For one thing, as evil a man as al-Baghdadi was, hardly anyone even knew who he was in the country, probably because his name didn’t “roll of the tongue” like Osama bin Laden’s did.  In fact, he was so nondescript a presence that his occasional forays out in the open elicited no particular notice, since the people living in the neighborhood of his last hideout didn’t even recognize him as a man of any particular notoriety. Joel Mathis points out in The Week that had it not been for George Bush’s pointless adventure in Iraq, religious fanatics like al-Baghdad would have remained marginalized and not even worthy of a footnote in history, and that part of the Mideast would have remained merely a power stalemate between Sunni-led Iraq and Shiite Iran, with radical Islamists being under tight control by a secular Iraq. 

But more tellingly, most people were not buying Trump’s braggadocio; we have heard it all before, and Trump has even less reason to claim “credit” for it than usual. U.S. intelligence agencies that Trump has ridiculed and marginalized, Kurdish allies that he has denigrated and an ISIS defector were responsible for al-Baghdadi’s downfall. Trump even had the audacity to “thank” Russia—Putin apparently “approving” the operation to hasten the U.S.’ withdrawal so that he can muscle in. The obviously staged photograph of Trump allegedly viewing the raid even calls into question if he actually saw it in "real" time; one suspects that if it had failed, he wanted people to know that he wasn't "personally" involved in it. Perhaps Trump’s bragging was just that much more sick because in his description of al-Baghdadi’s final moments, we could see that he was actually describing himself in a fashion. Trump called him “a sick and depraved man,” “a coward” and “a dog,” "whimpering and crying and screaming." Trump has tended to use language like this toward his political enemies, celebrities who have crossed him, and to migrants. 

But his own reactions to the current impeachment hearings, either on twitter and during public pronouncements, reveal him to be a desperate man who at least in a rhetorical fashion, is “whimpering and crying and screaming” in face of finally being forced to account for his crimes. This is a man whose sickness and depravity continues to prevent needed humanitarian aid to an island of U.S. citizens, leading to the death of thousands, simply because he feels contempt toward human beings who happen to be Hispanic. This is a sick and depraved man who has kept thousands of children in virtual concentration camp conditions. Like a bullying coward, he has used his executive power to beat-on the most vulnerable. Like a coward, he has engaged in willful and unlawful obstruction of justice for crimes that well-informed, intelligent people recognize that he has committed. If Republicans like Graham and Gaetz want to drown in the cesspool with him and kill-off any shred of human decency they ever had, this country will be better for it. 

“Lock him up.” Now that sounds like an appropriate anti-Trump slogan. Some on the left have said it was "inappropriate" and "un-American," but it is the only language that Trump and his supporters understand. Hopefully it will catch on. It fits Trump like a wet rag.