Circus ’24, Cont.

Donald Trump was talking about Senator Jon Tester (D., Mont.): “I don’t speak badly about somebody’s physical disability, but he’s got the biggest stomach I have ever seen, I swear. I swear. That’s the biggest stomach . . . I have never seen a stomach like that.”

Do people like that kind of talk, that kind of insult, in a leader? I think we can say that, by the evidence, they don’t dislike it. The GOP has nominated Trump for president three times in a row.

I remember what Chris Christie said, during the 2024 primaries, when Trump was mocking his weight. “Oh, like he’s some Adonis?”

• Stay on the theme: During his rally yesterday, Trump said, “I am much better looking than her. I’m a better-looking person than Kamala.”

(A) What kind of man says that? (B) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. (C) The answer to (A) is: someone who has been nominated for president three times in a row, has already been president once, and may well be again, very soon.

• A headline: “Trump Pulls in Tulsi Gabbard for Debate Prep.” (Article here.) You may remember that Gabbard went to Trump Tower in late 2016. This was the transition period, and the president-elect was checking Gabbard out for a position in his administration. It did not come to pass.

But in the next one? Gabbard served in Congress as a Democrat, but she is a natural Republican — a natural modern Republican, Trump Republican. She and Trump seem to be of one mind on Putin, for example.

• On the subject of debates: Harris debated Mike Pence in 2020. In my view, she had the easier task: attacking Trump, while Pence had to defend him. As I saw it, Pence did the better job.

• “Trump campaign brings Corey Lewandowski back on board.” (Article here.) That is a natural. Does anyone, apart from Trump himself, embody the spirit of MAGA more than Lewandowski?

• Have a look at this:

“Blago” was the (Democratic) governor of Illinois. When he was caught trying to sell the Senate seat that Barack Obama had vacated, Republicans decried him as everything that was wrong with American politics. Now he is in the bosom of Fox News and TrumpWorld.

A commentary on our age.

Trump sprang Blagojevich from prison, as you remember. Afterward, Blago told the press, “If you’re asking what my party affiliation is, I’m a Trumpocrat.”

That is a very useful term. It applies to a big chunk of our country — a third?

• Last December, Trump sold off pieces of the suit and tie he was wearing when his mugshot was taken. “The most historically significant artifact in American history,” the ad pitch went. (To refresh your memory on this, consult this article.)

It occurred to me: The suit and tie he was wearing at the time of the assassination attempt? A collector would pay a lot for those items (and they would increase in value over time, I imagine).

It was only a month ago — a month plus a few days — that that assassination attempt took place. A sickening day. One dead (Corey Comperatore). Does it seem like only a month ago? A month and five days?

Time rushes on, almost rudely.

• In 2010, I wrote an essay that included these lines:

To be a conservative, or even anti-Left, is to be called a racist. That much is written in stone. I have been called a racist ever since I began to express classical-liberal views, while in college.

I have been called a “fascist” for as long. I have written about these matters many, many times.

Something to bear in mind: The fact that many accusations of racism, and other sins, are false does not mean there can never be a valid one.

You and I are not bank robbers, let’s say — but there are bank robbers in the world, are there not?

I wonder what you think of the below. Close call? Easy call, one way or the other?

• The Republican ticket has laid some racial-identity stuff on Harris: Sometimes she’s Indian, sometimes she’s black — what is she? She plays it fast and loose. Harris could handle this in one blow, if she wanted — by saying something like this:

“Like many Americans, I am from a mixed background. My father came from Jamaica; my mother came from India. They met and married and had my sister and me. We can talk all day about ‘what I am’ — and people do. But the bottom line is this: I’m 100 percent American.”

Her crowds might erupt in chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

It’s kind of a lay-up, as far as I’m concerned (but I have not been elected dogcatcher, much less president or vice president or senator or . . .).

• So quickly do things get normal, you can have a hard time remembering when they were abnormal. I recall the Republican convention of 2016. There was Michael Flynn, leading chants of “Lock her up! Lock her up!” The crowd, and Flynn, were referring to Hillary Clinton.

I was shocked — because only two years before, Flynn had been director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. And I had certain notions about how such men behaved.

I thought of this when reading about Harris rallies at which the crowd chants, “Lock him up! Lock him up!” The candidate and vice president has a response: “Hold on. Let the courts take care of that. We’re going to beat him in November.”

Something like that, I think, is what we should have heard from Flynn et al.

• I should not intrude a language item, but since it relates to the presidential campaign . . . The heading of this article is “There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?” There is no battle to be fought: “Harris’s.”

“Theo is Harris’s aide. To deliver a package, he went over to the Harrises’ house.”

• Emboldened, I’m going to end on another language item. Do you recall a headline I cited above? This one: “Trump Pulls in Tulsi Gabbard for Debate Prep.” The headline is from the New York Times. There is something wrong in the headline, I think: The word “in” ought to be up — “In.” Sure, “in” is a preposition — but in that sentence, it makes a sandwich with “pull,” giving you the verb “to pull in.”

“Trump Pulls In Tulsi Gabbard; They Will Do Their Debate Prep in Palm Beach.”

• Okay, one more item. The late Florence King didn’t like what a colleague of mine was doing with her copy — putting in too many apostrophe esses, for example. She called him “an apostrophe-ess hole.”