RARELY has my throat been ripped so badly by retching as it was watching Donald Trump call on Nigel Farage to speak at one of his rallies last week.
Or rather, one of those superspreader pit-stops where he parks his jet behind a hundred whooping rednecks who aren’t wearing masks because the Great Orange Deceiver has convinced them he’s single-handedly beaten Covid, some of whom may now be intensive care.
As truthful as ever, Trump introduced Farage, who failed seven times to be elected to the Commons, as “one of the most powerful men in Europe”.
The pitiful patsy crawled on stage and declared the most embarrassing thing to happen to America since Vietnam as “the bravest, most resilient person I have met in my life”.
Then, keeping his toad-like face as straight as he could, he informed the crowd a vote for Trump is a vote “for decency”.
The scene backed up what Joe Biden had said a few days earlier about “all the thugs in the world” drawing inspiration from Trump, although he was referring more to the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro than the UKIP has-been who now spends his days on Kent beaches screaming at passing dinghies.
It was a theme Biden elaborated on this week, when he told Americans: “Throughout our history we have seen the charlatans, the conmen, the phony populists who have sought to play on our fears and appeal to our worst appetites. They appear when we’re at our most vulnerable. Never to solve anything. Always to benefit themselves.”
Which summed up the scary place the world has been in since traditional politicians failed ordinary people by making them pay for the bankers’ crash, allowing many voters to be seduced by nationalist bigots.
Look at Britain and the damage populist politicians have done by pandering to the lowest prejudices through a cocktail of fear and lies.
Brexit was won by fooling people with promises of £350 million-a-week going back to the NHS and a deal being struck that was the “easiest in human history”. How’s that panning out?
The campaign was led by a serial deceiver in Boris Johnson, who would have urged us to stay in the EU had it offered safer passage to Number 10. The same con artist who won the last election claiming a desire to “level-up” the north with the affluent south. How’s that going?
Populism is a virus that feeds on division and disillusion created by parasites who deny facts and invent conspiracy theories that some fools swallow. Look at the anti-mask, anti-vax crew who claim Covid is a hoax created by Bill Gates and his mates to enslave us.
It’s why I hope Trump is not just beaten in next week’s election but thrashed out of sight, leaving him forever tainted as a presidential disaster. I hope, like Mussolini in Milan, he is left dangling and despised as a warning to future generations about the danger of electing populist phonies.
Next Tuesday, America can give itself a vaccine which may give the rest of the world hope.
One that begins to inoculate us from this pandemic of narcissistic, right-wing, fake news spreaders.
Do it America. And give us some light at the end of the darkest of years.
