Joey and Chandler, my 8-year-old cats, wound their fat tuxedo bodies nervously around and between my ankles over and over.

Trump was on TV spewing nonsense, and they were all pointy ears.

“No. The mean man is lying, boys. It’s all he knows how to do. Haitian immigrants are not going to eat you. I promise.”

Joey, the calmer one of the two, appeared to relax a little. By which I mean he fell into a happy slumber almost immediately. Chandler, who is famously more anxious, was less convinced.

He growled at the orange man still spittling and sputtering utter foolishness while the nice lady in the presidential pantsuit maintained the bemused expression of someone watching an opossum read a book.

She’d never seen anything like it and neither had America.

“Don’t worry, Chan,” I said, ruffling the fur behind his ears, a move he normally finds calming. “The moderator just pointed out that story has been thoroughly debunked. The orange man often makes things up and proclaims them true.”

Inside his fetid puddin-filled noggin, Trump already knows the story isn’t true but that matters not. Because it suits his narrative: “Migrants are flooding into our towns and cities, stealing our jobs AND PROBABLY OUR STREAMING PASSWORDS by day and feasting on our beloved family pets at night.” Sure. That makes total sense.

Chandler finally decided I was right about this clown on the TV and joined his brother in sound slumber. Because, well, cat.

While the dog and cat eating got a lot of next-day analysis, I didn’t see hardly anything about the other “Grandpa didn’t take his meds today” claim of the night: “Now (Kamala Harris) wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”

Crazy felonious ex-president say what?

Even Trump, in some part of that shriveled mass of malevolence between his ears, must have realized that wasn’t going well because he didn’t return to it. Normally he triple downs on the batshit crazy but not this time.

You can trot out stuff like that at a Trump rally because the cult doesn’t truck in truth or anything close to it. You could even workshop it at a Moms for Liberty brunch because, well, stupid AND unconcerned with the truth.

But, hey, Orange Foolius, read the room: Nobody’s buying it just because you said—ooooga booga—“transgender.”

At a MAGA rally, there are few things participants like better than a rant about how the transgenders are a-comin’ for your kids and grandkids. Here in Constitutional Hall: crickets. Even the moderators were like, “Yeah, well, that’s laboratory-distilled nuttery right there so we’re going to pretend we didn’t hear it…”

The accusation that Kamala Harris, with 34 years in public service, much of it as a prosecutor, wants to now manipulate the prison system so perfectly CIS-gender migrants will check in for burglary and leave with perky boobs? Yeah. Crazy as a soup sandwich.

Finally, when you cite Viktor Orban, as your best buddy when it comes to world leaders (hope Putin didn’t get his heart broke) you might not be great presidential material.

Orban is the Hungarian Prime Minister who is super cozy with Russia and whose Match.com profile “favorites” would be “ya know, long walks on the beach, being an autocrat, vilifying immigrants, the press and gays but not necessarily in that order.”

If Viktor Orban, who is widely regarded as a monster, is your phone-a-friend, maybe you should consider another job besides president of the United States. Just sayin’.

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