Is Donald Trump an Actual Menace?

“Tell me what company you keep and I’ll tell you who you are,” Miguel Cervantes once said. 

That’s a statement every parent who has ever tried to steer teenagers right would support. It’s why we want sons and daughters to choose their friends wisely. It’s why we study the boyfriends and girlfriends they bring home closely too.

With that truism in mind, you have to worry about the company President Trump continues to keep. Consider, for example, the the disgusting source of his infamous Twitter post, showing him beating up a character with a CNN logo face. If you’re a Trump supporter you might say the tweet was funny.

At least 600,000 of his followers hit the “love” button on Twitter—I guess it’s called. Anyway: the heart icon.

Unfortunately, there are countless reasons to worry about where Trump’s heart truly lies. His bashing of all Mexicans, of all Muslims and his offer to pay legal fees after a supporter sucker-punched a black protester at a campaign rally come quickly to mind. Later, that supporter offered up this bit of Make America Great Again logic. It wasn’t enough to sucker-punch the anti-Trump protester: “Next time we might have to kill him.” If we throw in the President’s repeated attacks on reporters who describe him in unflattering fashion and his fetish for authoritarians and dictators, you have more than enough reason to wonder if Donald J. Trump is an actual menace.

(See, for example, his complimenting of famous killers including Dutarte, Saddam and, of course, Vladimir Putin.)

I’m not one who believes all Trump supporters are racists. I think we need to give at least half a break. I have friends who voted for the man, in one case because my friend believed Trump would curtail abortion. My daughter’s husband, whom I love, cast a ballot for Trump. So did one of my favorite neighbors. But there is a strain of hate running through the veins of some percentage, and that percentage not small, of many who don those Make America Great Again hats before leaving the house every day.

Consider the man who first posted the “comic” video featuring the leader of the free world taking down a figure representing the free press. (Am I the only one who thinks the right sometimes forgets there are other amendments besides the Second?)  It turns out that man, who goes by the electronic handle, HanAssholeSolo, is a font of sick hatred—even if we were to give him a pass for finding comedy in watching a nation’s leader pound the head of a journalist like a melon.

Can you say: Fascism?

On Fox News, they might call this “fake news,” because any news that makes Trump look like an idiot—which is most news—tends to ruffle the feathers of leggy anchors and pompous gelled asses who inhabit the Fox set  every hour of every day. But if you have even a tenuous hold on reality, you have to be deeply concerned. As far away as Israeli, one news outlet took note of the venom that dripped from HanAsshole’s many posts. Consider this attack on CNN, which might have also pleased Trump, who clearly loathes the whole news organization. See if you can spot anything that might be..um...anti-Semitic.

At first, realizing that some of his “finest work” had been picked up by the Commander-in-Chief of this great nation, and then reposted on Twitter, HanAssholeSolo was thrilled. “Wow!!” he posted on his own account. “I never expected my meme to be retweeted by the God Emperor himself!!!”

Then he realized he might come in for increased scrutiny—and went to work sanitizing his many despicable posts.

Thanks to Quartz Media—which one might expect will henceforth be classed as “fake media” by all the racists who do love Mr. Trump, we can view many of Asshole’s other contributions to the national discourse.

Here’s his edited version of one post (which can be found in the original above):

According to David Gershgorn, writing for Quartz (hey, a Jewish-sounding name!! that’s going to get Asshole going again!): “It’s unknown how the video made its way from Reddit to Trump’s twitter feed.” But Gershgorn notes a worrisome trend: “In May, New York Magazine noted another similarity between Trump’s Twitter account and The_Donald [where Asshole loves to post], suggesting that White House social media manager Dan Scavino might be regularly monitoring the site. Scavino didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Like many things about Trump’s Twitter account, we just may never know.”

We may never know. 

We may never know for sure, if Trump is simply petty, or, more worrisome, racist, and, most worrisome of all, just plain nuts.

But if you really want to get into the flow of hatred you can uncover on The_Donald, you can even stop and shop and pick up some really cool merchandise. Call it the monetization of bigotry, I suppose. You might not find the KKK robe you always wanted; but how about a MAGA flag, featuring stripes and a fierce looking lion?

And what hater wouldn’t love a basketball jersey to show their love for America, when America was great, and all the dark-skinned people still knew their place?

Naturally, on Fox News, when they heard the story, people like Greatest-Christian-Ever-and-Former-Arkansas-Governor Mike Huckabee, looked at the glass half full of racism, and decided CNN was mean. Why was CNN mean? Because CNN managed to identify Asshole and warn him he would be exposed if his hateful posts continued.

But CNN specifically refrained from doing so; and so, or Solo, I hereby wish to compliment 

G-C-E Huckabee for standing up for the poor, downtrodden racist, whose name we still don’t know, because, unlike President Trump, CNN has a reputation for decency and journalistic standards to uphold.

From HanAsshole-to-Trump-to all the closet racists who love him-to all the shills at Fox News who blindly support him, you have to ask what they mean when the say they want to make this country great again. 

You have to question their core values.