Donald Trump is protesting too much about this one

| 7:00 pm EST February 17, 2024
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Back when I first began writing for Palmer Report, I attracted the malice of a rancorous little comment field troll whose name I forget. But I do recall one specific thing he said. I caught him in so many mistakes in grammar, spelling and facts that at length he proclaimed that those solecisms were actually “clever” ploys, deliberately contrived to see if I was smart enough to catch them.

His attempt to save face in this way was so pathetic it almost converted my weary disdain into pity. I remember thinking at the time that it was unworthy, even for him. It was the kind of thing only someone at once pitifully needy and underconfident would try, and it betrayed a naive stupidity that was frankly remarkable.

It was also a classic instance of The Streisand Effect. By drawing attention to his mistakes in this way I was certain to never forget them. And so I have not. It never occurred to me that so silly a thing would ever be attempted by someone prominent, let alone by a former president of the United States. Naturally I can only be thinking of Donald Trump. “What did he do now?” you ask. I’ll tell you.

Donald Trump recently claimed two of his campaign trail gaffes, in which he appeared to believe that Barack Obama was still president, and where he mistook Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi, were deliberate, the result of his being “sarcastic” in the first place and choosing to interchange names in the second. It’s a claim so obviously false that I’m surprised that even Donald Trump actually tried it. Whatever he intended with so obvious a lie, it means we are now, in Streisand fashion, unlikely to forget it.

“When I say ‘Barack Hussein Obama is the president of the United States,’” Trump told supporters in his Hitleresque rally on Wednesday, “[I mean] there’s a lot of control there because the one guy [i.e., Biden] can’t put two sentences together.” Explaining his confusion of Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi he said, “When I purposely interposed [interchanged] names, they said, ‘He didn’t know Pelosi from Nikki.” Again, these are lies. Trump in fact made those mistakes, but he cannot bring himself to acknowledge it. His ego won’t permit it.

By suggesting that his bugs are really features, Donald Trump underscores his increasing cognitive decline. He also makes sure that we will never forget it. Let’s help him achieve his accidental goal, and never forget that the man who claims, without evidence, that President Biden is the one in cognitive decline, is in reality Donald John Trump himself. What’s more, he’s getting worse by the day. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe..