By Stephen Macaulay

There were two clown cars on the road Wednesday, one traveling to Atlanta, the other to Milwaukee. The former was piloted by Rudy Giuliani, the man who has gone from being a respected leader to the sort of man who has a sense of reality that is a few degrees off of what the rest of the world perceives … which may be a slight exaggeration as a distinction should be made that there is still something known as “Trump World,” the inhabitants of which seemingly live in a world that is defined only by what Donald Trump tells them …

“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening. Just stick with us,” he pronounced on July 25, 2018, and they’ve been blind and illiterate ever since.

The other car — not an autonomous one, as that would be too technologically advanced and there is a suspicion of technology, as it is probably “woke,” even though they don’t quite have a definition for the word, but it sounds meaningful to their ears — carried people who are apparently running for vice president, including Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Doug Burgum. While it isn’t clear precisely what they think needs to be done to improve anything (possibly because Biden has been doing a good job on things his predecessor didn’t: the unemployment rate is 3.5%, inflation is at 3.18% -- compare that to 6.2% in Germany and 6.8% in the UK -- and the Inflation Reduction Act has some $500 billion in spending and tax breaks that, among other things, are helping to rebuild the infrastructure that Trump never did anything about despite pronouncements that he would), what is clear is that they are still pledging fealty to Trump. Ramaswamy has come right out and said that he would pardon Trump were he convicted of any of the federal crimes he is currently charged with (isn’t this a slap in the face of the American voters: if he is convinced it will be by regular citizens, so Ramaswamy is essentially saying they don’t know what they are doing). DeSantis, Scott, Haley, and to a lesser extent Burgum, talk about the “weaponization of the Justice Department,” which is code for “How dare they pay any attention to the evidence that shows [think of the documents in the bathroom of Mar-a-Lago] wrongdoing!”

Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson weren’t in that car, because they are actually running for president. And Pence, in effect, had to take a bus to Milwaukee because his apparent change of mind (soul?) on Trump is so late in coming that he couldn’t get a rental.

So they climb on the stage for the Fox News-hosted “debate,” though one wonders about the “News” part of that name: didn’t it settle a lawsuit costing nearly a billion dollars due to its election-results-denial “reporting”?

Characteristic of its slack-spined approach to things that may seem to be critical of Trump, Fox’s Bret Baier (let’s not call him a “moderator” because that would be to undignify real moderators) asked the assembled whether they would support “the elephant not in the room” — gee, Bret, a funny pun to boot! — were he convicted.

Convicted.

CONVICTED.

It is surprising Ramaswamy didn’t give himself a rotator cuff injury as a result of his eager hand raise.

Hutchinson stood by his stated conviction (not the same as being convicted of a felony) and didn’t raise his hand.

Christie half-assed it by raising a finger, then saying he didn’t approve of what Trump did. With all due respect to the man who was a U.S. attorney, “approval” isn’t the issue when condemnation should be. Christie was sufficiently critical of Trump to garner boos from the audience. But that digit goes a long, long way to make that less substantial than it really ought to be.

The rest of those who arrived in the clown car raised their hands.

While it may appear there is too much attention being given to Trump here and not enough on policy matters, there wasn’t a whole lot of discussion of what they would actually do to improve the lot of the American citizens, and Trump remains the issue if any of these people seriously want to move to the White House, not Number One Observatory Circle.

And how scary the prospect of The Return of Trump is can be discerned from his conversation with Tucker Carlson:

“Jan. 6 was a very interesting day because they don’t report it properly. People in that crowd said it was the most beautiful day they ever experienced. There was love and unity. I have never seen such spirit and such passion and such love.”

At the very least, the man is delusional.