Opinion: Trump's words most likely satirical

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in his poem “Locksley Hall,” penned the line, “In spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

But then Tennyson was a poet, and he never heard of baseball or presidential politics. I’ll leave the baseball intimation to the sports page and use some of my time to talk about politics.

Although the vast majority of voters will not begin to pay attention to presidential politics until after Labor Day, the 15% of the public who consider themselves some sort of pundit, prognosticator or psychic will begin to pontificate on different candidates and their chances of gaining the presidency in November.

No one can write about the 2024 presidential election without writing about Donald J. Trump, and that writing will begin in earnest now.

To start with, Trump will be on the ballot in 2024.

Eugene V. Debs ran for president in the 1920 election while imprisoned in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Debs was the Socialist Party presidential candidate, and he polled more than 900,000 votes without ever going out on the hustings.

Admittedly, Joe Biden did better than Debs without leaving his basement, but that’s a story for another day.

During his four-year tenure as president, Trump’s press coverage was more than 95% negative. When Trump says something, no matter how tongue-in-cheek, it gets treated as Gospel and fact-checked.

His latest is that he would be a dictator only on day one and, “I want to close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

This is construed as Trump’s “increasingly authoritarian and violent rhetoric.” As it happens, I know large numbers of people who want to close the border and drill, drill, drill.

Reporters take what Trump says seriously, but what he does as insignificant.

Renowned reporters from major print papers have insisted that Trump should be treated differently from other candidates. His oratory is so far beyond the pale, that he should no longer be put in the same class as the other honest, forthright, serious, upstanding, church-going, straight-shooting, born-in-a-log cabin presidential candidates that we have been blessed with lo these many years.

This includes Joe “I graduated in the top 10% of my class with two majors” Biden.

My editor once cautioned me that the public wouldn’t pick up on irony or satirical humor. Trump doesn’t know that.

Rube Render is a former Clovis city commissioner and former chair of the Curry County Republican Party. Contact him:

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