Welcome to Donald Trump’s fourth quarter
In football, when one team is behind by several points in the fourth quarter of the game, that team begins aggressively and recklessly throwing the ball up and down the field, in a high-risk attempt at making a comeback. If you weren’t familiar with this particular aspect of football, and you tuned in just as this was happening, you might be tempted to think that the team showing the aggression was winning. Of course the opposite is the case. In that regard, welcome to Donald Trump’s fourth quarter. Allow me to explain.
Various reports today have confirmed that Donald Trump’s top remaining advisers have been wanting to round up immigrant children and lock them in cages from day one. They’ve only been holding off all this time for fear it would blow up in their faces. As it turns out, that fear was warranted. The nation is in an uproar. Those trying to oust him have found their focal point. Even Trump’s own Republican Party is trying to figure out how to quietly distance itself from him on this issue.
This has blown up in Trump’s face so badly, he and his advisers can’t even keep their stories straight when it comes to trying to explain it away. One of Trump’s top advisers claims it’s a necessary deterrent, then the next one says it’s a political bargaining chip to be traded away, then the next one blames it on the Democrats, and then the next one claims the camps don’t even exist. This is blowing back on them far more fiercely than they were prepared for.
Of course that’s what happens when you start recklessly slinging the ball around the field in the fourth quarter. The odds end up being far higher that you fumble the ball, or that the other team figures out how to intercept you and put you out of your misery. Donald Trump realized he was going to lose anyway, and bet everything on the idea that child camps might somehow turn things around for him. This is the fourth quarter, he’s losing badly, and he knows it. Don’t mistake his desperate low-percentage aggression for a show of strength; this is the weakest and most vulnerable he’s ever been.
