Last Thursday, when I turned on MSNBC to settle in for Maddow, I saw that they were playing clips from a Trump rally in Ohio. Or was it Pennsylvania? One of those two. I normally change the channel or just turn the TV off when his face appears, but I continued listening. He was, once again, calling for an investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, even though this has already been investigated twice, and the crowd was cheering "Lock Her Up!" The chant alone is frightening to democracy. Calling for your political opponent to be imprisoned is what a dictator does. I've been thinking about this all week. Why does he keep bringing up Clinton and her campaign? He won. The election is over. Then, just today it hit me. He needs a villain. Every story needs a villain, but they also need a hero.
Trump has done very little, if anything, for the people who voted for him. He promised to repeal and replace Obamacare within the first week of his presidency. We are seven months in and that failed horribly. Millions of voters who are paying double premiums and double deductibles, are walking away from Trump like my mom when someone carries around a plate of vegetables. That’s not so much walking as it is wind milling it out the door. Trump's approval rating is sitting at 35%, and the only 'victory' he has had is Neil Gorsuch getting the stolen seat on the supreme court.
Meanwhile, the Russian investigation is heating up. Just this morning, the FBI raided Paul Manafort's, former Trump campaign manager, apartment in Manhattan. Robert Mueller, the special investigator, is looking into Trump's business transactions. There is too much smoke here to think that there is no fire. Now Trump is on a seventeen day 'working' vacation. Where he's been spending a majority of his time split between golfing and threatening North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
As you can see, in Trump's story there is no hero to be found. That is why he needs to find a villain and focus the attention on them. Who better to pick than your former political opponent and arch rival, Hillary Clinton. This is the best way to get his base all riled up and to divert attention from possible nuclear war with North Korea, the fact that he cannot make any deals in Washington like he promised, the Russian investigation, or maybe even the staff shake ups that have been continually happening over the course of three weeks.
Another reason why he brings up the election, he cannot stand it that a woman got more votes than he did. More votes than any other white man in history. Three million more votes and yet we are still stuck with this guy. It's probably eating him up inside and that gives me just a little bit of satisfaction. Resist and persist.
