Tonight is the start of The Year That Was!

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2024

Why not take The Scarborough Challenge? Tonight is the start of The Year That Was. It's the start of a campaign year which will presumably send President Biden or Candidate Trump to the White House.

In large part, the outcome will likely turn on President Biden's ability to run a competent, vigorous campaign. Tonight involves a scripted speech, but it's the start of the chance to make a type of assessment.

Meanwhile, could Donald J. Trump get elected again? Presumably, he could! 

For what it's worth, the only trial he will face may turn out to be the Stormy Daniels trial. There's no way of knowing how that somewhat unusual trial will turn out, or how it will seem to American voters.

(It could defeat Trump, of course. Or that again, possibly not.)

Can President Biden run a competent campaign? Can Candidate Trump steer clear of self-destruction?

Tonight, we get our first look at Candidate Biden. Concerning Candidate Trump, we wanted to make a suggestion about the way our blue tribe's major tribunes are currently performing their tasks.

Last Friday morning, March 1, we were asked and told these things as we watched Morning Joe:

Can you imagine voting for that guy? How stupid would you have to be?

He can't. complete. a sentence. He can't. complete. a thought.

That was Joe Scarborough, at 7:07 last Friday morning, developing the "early onset dementia" hypothesis concerning Candidate Trump.

"He can't complete a sentence," the gentleman said, pausing for emphasis as he did. "He can't complete a thought." 

We were surprised to hear that! The night before, we had seen Trump do the full hour on the Hannity cable news show. In the course of that hour, we'd seen him complete a very large number of sentences and a very large number of thoughts.

Quite a few of the thoughts were off the wall; some of the thoughts were not. But in the course of an entire hour, the candidate betrayed no trouble completing sentences. He had been surprisingly calm, and he had somehow managed to complete every sentence and thought.

Warning! If you watch the Morning Joe segment, you'll see Joe and Mika taking advantage of a doctored "edit"—of a piece of videotape which has been clipped so abruptly as to give the impression that Trump's statement hadn't made sense.

You'll then see Joe and Mika histrionically acting out a bit of a scam. After that, you'll see Scarborough make the statements we've posted above.

We offer this suggestion:

Why not go ahead and take The Joe Scarborough Challenge? To see the start of Trump's appearance with Hannity, you just have to click here. 

As you will see if you take the challenge, the first segment of the interview ran for sixteen minutes. If you choose to take the challenge, you'll see the candidate complete a very large number of sentences and a very large number of thoughts.

At this point, Scarborough rarely makes a statement about Trump which hasn't been embellished. For ourselves, we've long regarded Trump as severely disordered, but the behavior of our blue tribe's panicking tribunes offers a picture of a slightly different, but quite familiar, type of human disorder.

We regard Trump as severely disordered, but he can complete a sentence. Scarborough is very smart and highly experienced, with a very good sense of humor, but he's becoming a familiar type of figure from the annals of public distortion.

Who will win November's election? We don't have the slightest idea, but tonight is almost surely the night which starts us down that road.

Presumably, Nestor's speech to the troops would be premature: Tonight's the night that rip our ranks to shreds or that pulls us through.

Also this: If you watch that Hannity tape, you'll see what's actually being said on red tribe cable about the problems at the border, as opposed to the characterizations we blues are currently sold.