A SIMPLE PROP TO OCCUPY MY TIME

This is insane.

Trump campaign considers displaying statues at future rallies: Sources

A potential new addition to President Trump’s future rallies: statues.

The idea has been discussed by White House and Trump campaign aides, but no final decision has been made, sources familiar with the planning told ABC News. It’s also not clear who exactly the statues would resemble, but sources say one idea was for “America’s Founding Fathers."

What's the plan? Will the Trump campaign commission statues and then ferry them around from campaign stop to campaign stop, at great expense? Do Trump and his advisers understand that it will take time to acquire these statues, because sculptors don't just knock off a statue over a weekend?

Or is Trump thinking that because he's the president he can simply requisition a statue from anywhere in America and the people who own it or maintain it will simply lend it to him? And if he's taking statues from public places, isn't that removing them from public display, which is precisely what he doesn't like about the statue-topplers?

And when he has them, will he hug them?

Watch Trump hug, kiss, and call the American flag ‘baby’ during this truly bizarre moment from CPAC 2020 👀 pic.twitter.com/jSpZEQqqrF

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) February 29, 2020

Trump not only thinks this is a brilliant campaign strategy, he's preemptively accusing down-ballot Republicans of an inadequate appreciation of its brilliance.

In an interview with RealClearPolitics on Tuesday, the president reiterated his thought that "we are in a culture war."

"If the Republicans don't toughen up and get smart and get strong and protect our heritage and protect our country," Trump told the publication, "I think they're going to have a very tough election."

I interpret this as Trump getting ready to blame Republicans for dragging him down to defeat in November, rather than the other way around.

There's more excuse-making in the same interview.

“This was going to be a blowout, and then China hit us with the ‘China virus,’ and all of a sudden, it discombobulated this country and the entire world. Now, it's a much closer situation,” he said.

“We were sailing to an easy victory. Now, I have to fight for the victory, but I've been fighting all my life. That's what I do. I fight for victory.”

(Trump has trailed Joe Biden in the polls since last year, but he refuses to believe that.)

The RCP interview also includes one of my favorite Trump sentences of all time:

Calling them like he sees them will not end between now and November. “My instincts have been right. I follow my instinct,” the president said of how he will continue to campaign and advance the front in the culture war. “I follow the brain; the brain has gotten me far.”

I follow the brain; the brain has gotten me far. Fred Trump's brain may have gotten him far, and then Roy Cohn's, and later Mark Burnett's and Vladimir Putin's, but not Trump's own brain.

But he thinks he has the secret to victory, even though other Republicans won't follow his lead. And if they all lose, he'll blame them for underestimating his brilliance and causing him to lose.