PENSACOLA – Yesterday, Donald Trump rallied his Trumpians here in Florida’s Panhandle, less than 30 miles from the border with Alabama.
On August 15, Trump’s fellow Republicans in the Heart of Dixie State nominated Judge Roy Moore, a far right evangelical Christian nutcase, who defeated incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in the GOP primary to succeed Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions had been Alabama’s junior senator for twenty years, during which time he distinguished himself as a radical anti-immigration xenophobe, thus earning the admiration of Trump. Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump.
Trump received sixty-two percent of the votes of Alabamians in last year’s general election.
Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell greatly preferred Big Luther, but Moore, a perennial political candidate in Alabama who was twice elected (why should judges be elected anyway?) as its Chief Justice and twice expelled from that office for disobeying federal court orders, won the primary in Alabama, a state which Trump won overwhelmingly in last year’s election.
McConnell has said that he believes the nine women who have bravely accused Moore of having sexually assaulted them when they were teenagers and when he was a young assistant district attorney in his 30s. McConnell has also said that Moore, if elected on Tuesday, should face charges before the Senate Ethics Committe. But Kentucky’s senior senator has recently been conspicuously walking back from that demand. It’s plain to see that the GOP is desperate to keep Alabama’s two US Senators in the Republican column, even though Moore is a constant and most irresponsible firebrand.
The only thing which Trump really knows how to do (other than sending out irresponsible tweets full of falsehoods) is to incite his Trumpians at campaign style rallies. He’s really good at that, bringing out the worst in America. Last night at the Pensacola rally, he was very pleased that the crowd started chanting “Lock Her Up!,” a distinct reference to Trumpian rallies last year.
Trump holds the levers of executive powers until he is either impeached or defeated, and we have often said that he plans to run for a third term. We dispatched associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones to the rally here. She was not in the least surprised to learn that Trump made special arrangements with Major I. M. Sure, the Commander of Alabama’s Air National Guard 187th Fighter Wing at the Montgomery Air National Guard Base, to fly Moore to Pensacola in one of his F-16C Black 30K Flighting Falcons to join him at the rally. Moore, who has recently extolled the happiness of Alabamians during and because of slavery, campaigns relentlessly, with his mouth foaming, against McConnell and other “establishment Republicans.” Moore agrees with Trump’s close personal friend Vladimir Putin that the United States is in the grip of Pure Evil.
Moore is sure to be defeated on Tuesday by former federal prosecutor Doug Jones, who successfully prosecuted the remaining two Ku Klux Klan members responsible for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which killed four African American girls. But in the unlikely event that Moore should win, he will be a perpetual albatross on the necks of the national GOP ahead of next year’s midterms.
Upon his arrival at the Pensacola Naval Station, Moore tossed his cowboy hat high in the air and led the choir of the Fil-Am Baptist Church of Pensacola in a rendition of “Nearer Our Trump To Me” (Moore rewrote the words of the classic hymn “Nearer My God to Thee” to name Trump as the Deity) and walked barefoot with the entire congregation to the rally, where he was warmly embraced by Trump — a man of very dubious Christian morals who has conned evangelical Christians into adoring him.
But then when the two pols were on stage together, Moore, ever defiant of everybody, spoke for three hours on how unChristian Trump is. Moore then instructed his campaign manager, Billy Bob Undercross, to kiss Trump on the cheek, just as Judas did to Jesus to notify the Roman centurions as to which member of the ragtag Jesus Movement was the one to be crucified.
All this was keenly observed by ASR Jones and by associate solitary reporters Rundell Eddy, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Pensacola who describes himself as a religious humanist; and associate solitary reporters Jason Mullunkey and Keith Downey, who made the trip from Gainesville and Stuart, Florida, to observe Moore’s antics.
After Moore’s three hour sermon, which was laced with falsehoods, Trump spoke for two minutes and told everybody in the crowd, most of whom had come from neighboring Alabama, to vote for Moore.