Trump lashes out at Mitt Romney for proposing plan to stop him from winning GOP nomination

Posted on July 27, 2023 (Updated July 27, 2023) by Charles Jay

Donald Trump went on yet another rant, this time against Sen. Mitt Romney on his Truth Social platform after the Utah senator wrote an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal on Monday, proposing a plan to stop Trump from winning the GOP presidential nomination. Analysts said the plan was unlikely to succeed.

Late Tuesday night, Trump lashed out at both Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who in May declared that the GOP should come up with another candidate because Trump was simply unelectable. Trump then asked his followers to weigh in and spent hours reposting derogatory comments, in particular about Romney, The Independent reported.

Trump wrote on Truth Social:

”Who is a worse Senator, John ‘The Stiff’ Cornyn of Texas, or Mitt ‘The Loser’ Romney of Massachusetts (Utah?)? They are both weak, ineffective, and very bad for the Republican Party, and our Nation. With even modestly skilled opposition, they’’ll lose their next-Election. Who could even forget Mitt proudly marching, with full mask, down a once proud Washington, D.C. street with BLM and Rioters? Likewise there’s Cornyn, always quick to surrender to the Dems, giving them anything they want?”

There’s something funny about Donald Trump calling Mitt Romney “The Loser”… pic.twitter.com/Nsg0E5JiKN
— Benjamin Rothove (@BenjaminRothove) July 26, 2023

In June 2020, Romney tweeted a picture showing him wearing a face mask as he marched in a protest in Washington, D.C., after the police killing of George Floyd.

Black Lives Matter. pic.twitter.com/JpXUFlxH2J
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) June 7, 2020

Romney, a Mormon, became a full-time Utah resident after he lost the 2012 presidential election to Barack Obama. He was elected to the Senate in 2018. He was the only Republican senator to vote twice to convict Trump in his Senate impeachment trials.

The twice-impeached, twice-indicted (and counting) former president was enraged after Romney published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday headlined: “Donors, Don’t Fund a Trump Plurality.”

Romney wrote:

“Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president. That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person race before Mr. Trump has the nomination sewn up. For that to happen, Republican megadonors and influencers—large and small—are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed. That decision day should be no later than, say, Feb. 26, the Monday following the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.”

Romney noted that if candidates stay in the race for a long time, they will split the non-Trump vote and hand the nomination to Trump. That’s because unlike Democratic presidential primaries, a plurality is all that’s needed for GOP winner-take-all primaries. Romney concluded by writing:

“Our party and our country need a nominee with character, driven by something greater than revenge and ego, preferably from the next generation. Family, friends and campaign donors are the only people who can get a lost-cause candidate to exit the race. After Feb. 26, they should start doing just that.”

Well, good luck with that plan, Mitt. It’s simply too little, too late.

It didn’t take long for The Washington Post’s Philip Bump to write an analysis on Tuesday titled, “The fatal flaws in Mitt Romney’s plans to stop Trump.” Bump said there were three big problems with Romney’s latest plan to stop Trump. First, Bump said that Romney was wrong about how things worked in 2015-2016. Even though Trump was only getting about one-third of the support in pre-primary polls, it didn’t mean that two-thirds of Republicans opposed him. As the primaries proceeded and candidates dropped out, Trump kept picking up some of the support those candidates had enjoyed, until his nomination was secured.

Second, Bump pointed out that it’s unlikely that the Republicans could replay the scenario that occurred with the Democrats in 2020 when Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democratic candidates dropped out of the race to back Biden after the South Carolina primary. Bump noted that “the Democratic nominating process is more equitable for candidates than the Republican one” and that “the GOP process disproportionately rewards whoever is leading in the polls.” He said that waiting to see which Republican emerges as the most viable non-Trump candidate means letting Trump build up an early lead in delegates.

The third problem with Romney’s proposal, according to Bump, is that Trump “is much better positioned now than he was in 2015 or 2016.” National polling averages show Trump has consistently been at or over 50% since the beginning of the year. And as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign has cratered, Trump is near 50% as the first choice of Republican voters in the early states of Iowa and Nebraska. Bump concluded:

These numbers can shift, but they already undermine Romney’s argument. The idea that there is a plurality of Republicans who oppose Trump might have been true in 2016, but there’s no evidence of that now. Consolidating around one candidate seems, at least at this point, like it would not have much effect on Trump’s march to the nomination.

Matthew Dowd, who served as President George W. Bush’s chief strategist in the 2004 presidential campaign, in an interview Tuesday on MSNBC pointed out another flaw in Romney’s proposal—his emphasis on the influence of megadonors.

"It (the GOP nominating process) is controlled by small donors, and Donald Trump has shown that his ability to raise money, $30, $40, $50 at a time, and he can outraise anybody else," said Dowd. “Mitt Romney wants to signal to megadonors what to do in this process. They really don't control the process. The students are in charge of campus today, and the deans have left town. And that's what Mitt Romney doesn't seem to understand about the Republican Party."

Dowd, who is now a Democrat, did have a suggestion as to what Romney could do if he wanted to make a real difference.

"If Mitt Romney really wanted to have an effect, Mitt Romney could stand up and say, me, and Sen. [Lisa] Murkowski (R-AK) and maybe one or two others, if Donald Trump is the nominee, we're going to become independents and caucus with the Democrats in the Senate in order to hold the MAGA side of the party accountable.

"That would send more shock waves through the system and maybe get people to actually do something about Donald Trump.”

YouTube Video

In another Truth Social post, Trump managed to put the shiv into the GOP presidential primary opponent who has been most outspoken in criticizing the former president. He accused former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie of costing Romney the 2012 presidential race by embracing President Barack Obama on the Jersey Shore after Superstorm Sandy struck in October 2012. Trump wrote:

Christie was so star struck with Barack Hussein Obuma (sic), that Romney, who is a terrible politician and horrible representative of the Republican Party, never had a chance of winning the Presidency. Christie sold Romney out, making one of the worst Convention Speeches in History—Virtually not even mentioning Romney by name. Romney sat watching, in a trance—He couldn’t believe it!

Christie helped Trump prepare for the 2020 presidential debates with Joe Biden, only to become very ill with COVID-19 shortly afterward. Trump was carrying the virus during the Sept. 29 debate and was diagnosed with COVID-19 a few days later. Christie’s relationship with Trump further deteriorated after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump has also blamed Christie for recommending the appointment of Christopher Wray to be the FBI director. Trump and his allies have castigated Wray and the FBI for their role in the investigation into his handling of classified documents, including the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate, that resulted in a multi-count indictment.

As for Romney, there are already signs that he is going to face a MAGA challenger should he decide to seek reelection to the Senate in 2024. In May, the mayor of Riverton, Utah, Trent Staggs, announced his candidacy for Romney’s seat, according to the AP.

“The only thing I’ve seen him fight for are the Establishment, ‘wokeness,’ open borders, impeaching President Trump and putting us even deeper into debt,” Staggs said in his announcement video that highlights Romney’s votes to impeach Trump, according to the AP.

The AP reported that other Republicans, including former U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz and state Attorney General Sean Reyes, were considering challenging Romney from the right. Romney retains widespread popularity in Utah because his family ranks among the most prominent members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and many Mormons have had reservations about Trump’s moral character.

But let’s not forget that Romney sought and accepted Trump’s endorsement in 2012.

Reminder that Romney gladly accepted Trump's endorsement in February 2012, when Trump's political claim to fame was pushing racist conspiracy theories about Obama https://t.co/NKBbPCFkbC pic.twitter.com/brcVo0htjH
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2022

Now Romney is clearly on Trump’s enemies list.

And look at who else has joined Trump in criticizing Romney: U.S. Rep. George Santos, who called the Utah senator “the biggest clown we’ve seen in government.” Certainly takes one to know one.

George Santos on Mitt Romney: “He’s a clown. He’s the biggest clown we’ve seen in government.” Coming from a notorious fraudster and a pathological liar, that’s a real compliment for Senator Romney. pic.twitter.com/clJW2v2Qox
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 19, 2023

‘I had a stroke because of Trump’: GOP strategist offers latest proof that guy is bad for our health

Posted on May 18, 2023 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

It’s not just liberal Democrats who’ve been horribly traumatized by Trump. Indeed, some Republicans have gone off-record as saying they hope he dies before the 2024 election—which, given his obvious drag on GOP candidates’ prospects, is not all that surprising. Add longtime GOP pollster and strategist Frank Luntz to the list of conservatives who’d probably prefer that a milquetoast candidate like Mike Pence secure the 2024 GOP nomination. Sure, they might still lose, but they wouldn’t develop four different kinds of ulcers trying to explain why he’s now moving to the center by trying to carve out an abortion exception for 6-foot, 5-inch fetuses named Eric.

In a recent interview, Luntz, who’s devoted his career to making Republican policies appear less benighted and awful, talked about how Trump—a monster whom, let’s be honest, Luntz helped create—literally gave him a stroke. RELATED STORY: A catalog of capital incompetence: The short list of things Donald Trump did to kill America

New York Magazine:

“Donald Trump made my head explode,” he said.

In early 2020, Luntz checked himself into a hospital after a tingling in his arm crept up his shoulder and began to spread across his face. Doctors told him his blood pressure was an alarming 197 over 122 and that he had suffered a stroke. His lack of exercise and unhealthy eating habits didn’t help, but a lot of it had to do with stress and the fact that when Luntz got upset about the state of the world, he was less likely to take his blood-pressure medicine. He was at that time constantly upset about the state of the world. He blamed Trump.

“I had a stroke because of Trump,” Luntz said. “I didn’t have the guts to speak out enough about him, and it drove me crazy. Every time I spoke out, I felt the backlash, I felt it on social media, I felt it a little bit with my clients, I felt it with my friends here.”

It’s hard to feel sorry for Luntz, given that he’s been greasing the skids for fascism for decades. But his example does help illustrate how bad Trump has been for many people’s mental as well as physical health—particularly during the peak of the pandemic.

Perhaps the best way to describe how most of us have felt over the past eight years—that is, since Donald Trump glided down his gilded escalator like a papaya messiah alighting at our unwashed plebeian feet—is that it’s a lot like driving down a two-lane highway at night with a bee trapped in your car. You don’t know if you’ll get stung five times in the eyeball or accidentally drive into oncoming traffic. Either way, it’s going to be an awful ride, and there’s no way to know if you’ll reach your destination—or what that destination even is.

For instance, this January 2021 Vox story details just how on edge Americans were after four years of Trump in the White House.

While Trump was able to energize a core of supporters with his mix of bravado, defiance, and racism, for many others, his presidency was, quite simply, scary. In the American Psychological Association’s 2016 “Stress in America” survey, 63 percent of Americans said the future of the country was a “significant source of stress,” and 56 percent said they were stressed out by the current political climate. In the 2018 version of the survey, those numbers went up to 69 percent and 62 percent, respectively.

Clinical psychologist Jennifer Panning even coined the term “Trump anxiety disorder” to describe the stress many people were feeling in the weeks and months following the 2016 election. “People tended to experience things like ruminations, like worries of what’s going to be next” as they awaited each new tweet or action by the president, Panning told Vox.

Meanwhile, anyone who’s ever been in an abusive relationship was likely retraumatized by Trump’s crass rhetorical methods.

Trump also subjected people in America and around the world to language and tactics used by abusers, Farrah Khan, a gender justice advocate and manager of the Office of Sexual Violence Support and Education at Ryerson University in Canada, told Vox. That includes gaslighting (like when he claimed that the official Covid-19 death tolls were fraudulent, or that the virus would “go away on its own”), lashing out in anger (his perennial rage-tweets about “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT”), and seeking revenge on people for perceived wrongs (his attacks on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after she criticized his administration’s Covid-19 response). In a relationship with an abuser, “you’re constantly hypervigilant to what he’s going to do next,” Khan said. Under Trump’s presidency, that hypervigilance extended to the millions of Americans affected by him and his policies.

And while progressive Americans likely felt Trump’s presence most keenly, Republicans have not been immune to his reverse charms. A widely shared Atlantic story from January gave us a glimpse into GOP thinking and panic in the lead-up to the 2024 election. One anonymously quoted former congressman bluntly noted, “We’re just waiting for him to die.”

“You have a lot of folks who are just wishing for [Trump’s] mortal demise,” [former Republican Rep. Peter] Meijer told me. “I want to be clear: I’m not in that camp. But I’ve heard from a lot of people who will go onstage and put on the red hat, and then give me a call the next day and say, ‘I can’t wait until this guy dies.’ And it’s like, Good Lord.” (Trump’s mother died at 88 and his father at 93, so this strategy isn’t exactly foolproof.)

Of course, simply waiting for another human being to croak so that we don’t become a fascist dystopia isn’t a great strategy (it’s morbid, for one, and a pretty cowardly avenue for people who could simply put country over party and lock arms in opposition to fascism), but you can’t really blame people for the sentiment. Seriously, the guy wanted to pull us out of NATO and, among other gobsmacking inanities, once suggested to his chief of staff that we could nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else—an idea he no doubt arrived at earlier in the day while reading The Family Circus. How is anyone supposed to sleep soundly with a guy like that in the Oval Office? And how are we supposed to relax if there’s even a 1% chance that he might find himself back in power?

After all, Hibernol isn’t real. Or it isn’t yet, I should say. Though the pharmaceutical companies may want to get on this tout de suite. I could see a surging demand for this wonder drug the closer we get to November 2024.

YouTube Video

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

Trump’s ‘parade of supplicants’ advised to woo the ocher ape with big fonts and color photos

Posted on April 19, 2022 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

I’m trying to think of anything more undignified than sucking up to colossal loser Donald Trump after everything that’s happened in the past few years—telling him he won elections he lost, groveling for his endorsement, buying overpriced tchotchkes at his cult compound/golf resort, and pretending you’re not staring directly into the sallow, rheumy eyes of primordial evil.

I wouldn’t hire Trump to manage a Chuck E. Cheese, unless I actually wanted to open a strip club with an animatronic jug band and didn’t know who to bribe or murder to make that happen. And yet, according to a profoundly pathetic Sunday New York Times story, Republicans as a whole still can’t get enough of his unique blend of feral charisma and sultry lunch meat sweats.

The story is long, sad, and eye-gougingly horrific, but we pretty much already knew the broad strokes of everything that’s in there. Republicans are cashing in their souls for endorsements, and Trump is devouring those souls like so many saucy McNuggets. Pretty standard fare for the sell-out-democracy party.

That said, one portion of the story did grab my eye, because there’s such a huge disconnect between what these GOP hopefuls—almost all of whom went to college—are likely thinking in the parts of their brains they’ve decided to keep alive and what they’re actually doing these days to curry Trump’s favor.

Mr. Trump enjoys flattery and is not above rewarding sycophants. But insiders say bringing compelling visual material matters, too. Big fonts are crucial. With photos and graphics. In color.

“He’s not a real big digital guy, so we had printouts,” said Joe Kent, who has since won Mr. Trump’s backing for his effort to unseat Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, one of the 10 Republican impeachment votes.

...

When he likes what he sees, Mr. Trump will mail words of encouragement, scrawled on news clippings with a Sharpie. “You are doing great!” he wrote in January to Mr. Kent. “You are doing great!” he wrote last October to Harriet Hageman, who is challenging Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

Good God, is being in Congress really worth this degradation? Is being in the GOP worth it? If I had to choose between behaving this way to stay politically relevant or chaining a pair of slumbering antelopes to my vintage Sam and Frodo nipple rings, it would probably come down to a coin flip.

The Times charitably refers to the GOPsters visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago as a “parade of supplicants”—possibly because “caravan of ass-kissers” was deemed too déclassé for the paper of record. But Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio sums up these ingratiation celebrations pretty well.

“What was The Apprentice but a sad scramble of people behaving like crabs in a bucket to be lifted out by him?” said D’Antonio. “How are these people anything other than contestants vying for his approval?”

That’s a good analogy, but like most analogies, it’s a bit imprecise. Crabs in a bucket have far more dignity. If the GOP ever reaches crabs-in-a-bucket levels of seriousness again, maybe we can talk. But for now, they’re still beholden to the worst sentient being on this or any planet. And, well, the vast majority of them seem just fine with it.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

How’s this for a rallying cry? If we lose the midterms, Trump will run again and (could) steal 2024

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

I never thought a fascist takeover of the galaxy could ever be less entertaining than the one depicted in The Phantom Menace, but here we are. One major American political party remains tethered to reality, whereas the other is a barmy cult of personality that worships at the clay feet of the worst human being I’ve ever laid eyes on outside of the port-a-potty queue at the annual Chilton, Wisconsin, Beer Festival—which is a long story, but trust me. And the line to pee in the creek is even worse. I only wish I were kidding.

Being the guileless backwoods naif that I am, I figured Donald Trump would be forced to slink away after the sound beating he received in November from the guy he kept calling a senile loser. After all, when George W. Bush left the country in a smoldering heap after his eight years of misrule, Republicans scrambled away from him like Quint trying to escape the shark on the deck of the Orca at the end of Jaws.

But Trump is different. For one thing, he doesn’t have the common decency to concede an election he lost—by a lot. For another, he’s somehow mesmerized a majority of Republicans into believing he’s their bumblefuck messiah, despite having surrendered the White House and his congressional majority during his truncated tenure—and despite having incited a deadly insurrection based on corrosive lies about the integrity of our elections.

So here we are. I fully expected Republicans to dip a diffident toe or two back into consensus reality after the big dopey Dr. Zaius cosplayer was 86’d from the White House, but it looks like they’re all-in on febrile fantasy.

The Maricopa County audit, the conspicuous (and appalling) lack of enthusiasm among Republicans for a Jan. 6 commission, the rebuke of ultraconservative but anti-Big Lie Republican Liz Cheney, polls showing that a majority of Republicans still think the election was stolen from Trump—it’s all more than a little scary. I was already freaking out about 2024 and the possibility that Donald Trump would run again instead of vanishing forever under a pile of fast food detritus after removing a load-bearing McRib box.

Then MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan welcomed Yale professor Timothy Snyder and Emory University professor Carol Anderson, both historians and experts on democracy, onto his UpFront show. He asked them a chilling hypothetical: What happens if Republicans hold Congress in 2024 and a Democrat wins the White House?

Buckle in. This gets weird.

"If the Republican candidate is running on the Big Lie, if that's their issue in 2024...the Republican candidate who loses the election will indeed be appointed by Congress to be President of the United States," Prof @TimothyDSnyder tells me tonight. Wow.pic.twitter.com/Vaj4QL5Brx
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 25, 2021

Transcript!

HASAN: “Tim and Carol, I’m going to ask you both the exact same question I asked Norm Ornstein and Ruth Ben-Ghiat on the show last week. If the Republicans are in control of the House and Senate come 2024 and a Democrat wins the presidential election narrowly, do you believe a Republican Party in Congress will certify that Democratic candidate’s win in Congress? Yes or no? Tim.”

SNYDER: “I think if the Republican candidate is running on the Big Lie, if that’s their issue in ‘24 the way that it seems to be in ‘22, then the answer to your question is the Republican candidate who loses the election will indeed be appointed by Congress to be president of the United States.”

HASAN: “Wow. Carol?”

ANDERSON: “Given that we have Republicans now who refuse to back the Jan. 6 commission, which was about the overthrow of an election … a fair election, given that we have the refusal of the Republicans to go in on impeachment, and given that they’re doing all of this work to undermine democracy with voter suppression and taking over control of electoral certification, I see this as a dress rehearsal for 2024 where they will not certify.”

HASAN: “Wow. So that’s Norm, Ruth, Tim, Carol. Four experts on this show all have answered this question in a very, very depressing way, but it’s important that we have this discussion.”

Jaw ===> floor

These experts aren’t in the mold of modern-day Republican “experts.” Ornstein, a contributor to The Atlantic and The Washington Post, helped draft parts of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history at New York University who “writes frequently for CNN and other media outlets on threats to democracy around the world.”

None of them, as far as I know, makes a living selling mediocre pillows to donkey-brained dipshits. So that’s scary shit, indeed. But it could also be an opportunity. Why? Because Donald Trump is a coward.

Let me explain.

In a recent Politico story on Republicans’ attitude toward a potential Trump 2024 run, Trump flunky and perduring magic toadstool hallucination Lindsey Graham said this:

“It’s more likely than not that he does” run, Graham said. “How we do in 2022 will have a big effect on his viability. If we do well in 2022, it helps his cause. I want him to keep the option open.”

So there it is, from Hermey himself. Graham doesn’t explain why Trump’s viability as a candidate would be improved if Republicans take back Congress in 2022 and then build their momentum enough to hold onto it in 2024, but I will: It would make stealing the election a piece of cake.

Trump is a loser. Full stop. He lost in 2020 and, if our elections are conducted in 2024 the way they always have been (i.e., with Congress’ certification of the results being taken as a mere formality), Trump would almost certainly flame out, assuming President Joe Biden isn’t handed some major crisis that he fails to get under control.

After all, Trump lost by 7 million votes last time, and that’s before he tried to shiv democracy with his stabby little Chucky doll hands. The guy’s poll numbers were underwater for all but a few days of his White House tenure. On the day he left office, his aggregate disapproval rating, according to FiveThirtyEight, was a whopping 57.9%. Sure, the guy would likely skate through the primary process and would almost certainly be the GOP nominee if he ran, but he’d likely be dead in the water in the general election. Who (beyond his death cult) would want him back?

Most of the country has moved on and never wants to lay eyes on this sodden heap of off-brand urinal cake ever again. But Republicans—who, let’s not forget, make up less than 30% of the population—can’t get enough of the guy. Fifty-three percent of these deludenoids still think Trump is the rightful president, FFS.

And so there’s our opportunity. Participation in midterm elections is typically far less than that of presidential elections. Voter turnout was strong in 2018—particularly in the suburbs—as many Democrats, independents, and disaffected Republicans came out to rebuke Trump and his agenda. Trump was on the ballot in 2020, and 81 million people came out to toss his ass, swamping the MAGAs’ own enthusiastic turnout.

Without a doubt, Trump can be a motivating factor, whether he’s on the ballot or not.

So here’s our motivation—and our rallying cry—for 2022.

If we lose Congress in the midterm elections, Trump will almost certainly run again, seeing his opportunity to cheat and manipulate his way to victory regardless of the actual results. If we keep Congress, Trump may finally slink away, knowing that he’d have little to no chance of pulling off another upset.

Incumbency is a huge advantage in a presidential election, and Trump won’t have that this time. His only advantage would be the likelihood—dare I say the guarantee?—of Republican treachery. But that can’t happen if there aren’t enough treacherous GOPsters in Congress to pull off an election theft.

So if you want Trump to run again—to be a major part of your waking life again—by all means, skip the midterm elections. If you don’t, show the fuck up, and make sure your friends and neighbors do, too.

That’s a rallying cry for 2022 if I’ve ever heard one. If we win in 2022, which we must, Trump will likely bugger off—finally and forever. Because he knows he can’t win, and he’s nothing if not a coward. If we lose, well, that could be the end of democracy as we know it.

Let’s win. In the face of insurmountable odds, let’s make sure we win.

The alternative is simply too awful to consider.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Just $12.96 for the pack of 4! Or if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.