Dem
50
GOP
50
This might be the most brutal takedown ad we've ever seen. Donald Trump may have much of the combat sports world on
his side, but he most certainly does not have Dave Bautista. While Bautista is a giant, muscular WWE legend, he's
also an outspoken liberal who first got involved in politics as a surrogate for the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign.
Last week, Bautista recorded
a campaign-style ad
to be aired on The Jimmy Kimmel Show:
You should consider watching it, but if you don't, know that it really hits Trump where it hurts, calling into question the former president's masculinity in roughly two dozen different ways. For example: "[A] lot of men seem to think that Donald Trump is some kind of tough guy. He's not. I mean, look at him. He wears more makeup than Dolly Parton."
We actually had not seen the video until reader P.C. in Yandina, QLD, Australia, brought it to our attention. On the other hand, it would seem that Trump HAS seen it, and that's what's behind his recent move to turn up the locker room talk to 10. Most obviously, the Donald earned quite a bit of coverage this week with his comments about the size of (deceased) golfer Arnold Palmer's... putter, if you will. He's also said a bunch of other locker-roomy things in the past few days.
The choice to make Palmer the star of the show is not too much of a surprise, since Trump was in western Pennsylvania, and the golfer was a local boy and is a local hero. Palmer was also a Republican, and while he lived long enough to learn about and to disdain Trump (dying in September 2016), Trump presumably doesn't know that. On top of all this, Trump's cultural references are all stuck in the 1970s and before, and this just reiterates that. We have no doubt that he went to some of the old Friars' Roasts in New York City, where they would tell all kinds of stories and jokes like the one Trump told (quite often about Milton Berle's natural gifts). Palmer himself was the subject of a very famous off-color story/joke in that era. Allegedly, the golfer went on The Tonight Show and explained to Johnny Carson that he and his wife liked to get affectionate while watching baseball games: "I kiss her on the strikes, and she kisses me on the balls." This never actually happened, but we would bet good money that: (1) Trump is familiar with the story, and (2) Doesn't know (or care) that it's not true. (Note that the story has also been told about many other personalities from the 1970s and 1980s.)
The upshot is that it looks like Trump's closing argument is going to include a lot of clumsy ribaldry, as he tries to stabilize his macho image, and to win over as many young, male voters as he can. It's interesting because, back in 2016, this same kind of talk ("grab 'em by the pu**y") came closer to destroying his campaign than any of the other myriad controversies he was involved in. It's basically a 180-degree turn. Either he's changed in the last 8 years, or the voting public has. (Z)