Like everything else in MAGA world, the claim is bullshit.   Trump can barely read a teleprompter and only does so when he thinks it will help his “brand” to stumble through prepared comments.  Whether he reads or not is beside the point, the message in “Trump reads transcripts” is that you can’t hide from the wrath of this destructive, vindictive maniac, even if what you truthfully reveal is only written on a page somewhere.  The bold lies of MAGA world are central to its popularity, its legitimacy!  You can’t argue so-called truth with people happy with any lie that helps their cause, and who are openly calling for the killing of their hated enemies.

Against this determined onslaught we have a 79 year-old moderate chosen by his party as our leader in this perilous moment.  Joe Biden promised to give his heart and soul as president.  He probably has.  His heart is clearly broken and his soul appears to be inconsolable too.  He is blamed, by virtually everyone, for worldwide inflation, for the “failure” of all his promises to make it past the sacred, inviolable filibuster, supported to the death by two of his slim 51-50 Senate majority, nullifying all initiatives.  There’s nothing sacred about the filibuster.  Remember how nonchalantly fucking Mitch McConnell changed the sacrosanct filibuster rule to install a “51-49, suck it” fully MAGA Supreme Court majority after denying Obama’s nominee a hearing and leaving Scalia’s seat open for Gorsuch.   And, of course, cramming Christian cultist Amy Coney Barrett down America’s collective throat to make it “6-3, suck it” while votes were being cast in the 2020 presidential election.  Quite the little shit sandwich, with supremely entitled, angrily hissing victim of left wing revenge conspiracies, Boof Kavanaugh, in between.

Biden seems to live in his memory as much as in 2022.   He probably remembers having coffee with Mitch McConnell years back and coming away with the impression that Mitch wouldn’t stand by silently as others tried to lynch the first mulatto president.   He still believes a calm, steady approach appealing to decency is best, that Reason always wins over blind hatred (true in the long run, perhaps, but not in the short run).   He acted in accord with this belief when appointing calm, steady, cautious Merrick Garland as AG, with the perfect poetic justice of the moderate Supreme Court candidate the GOP fucked out of a hearing leading prosecutions of those who trampled American democracy, restoring bipartisan faith in American justice and democracy.

American justice has most often been carried out by violence.   Frontier justice, Texas justice, Home Rule justice, States’ Rights justice.  Lynch mobs that support their leader’s view of things always act with impunity.  The simpleton’s nuanced logic runs this way:  deadly violence to keep the peace is justified when the good guys with the guns control the violence, otherwise common criminals would run roughshod over all of us.   Police routinely arrest white mass murderers and quietly take them into custody, they also fill Black traffic law violators, or those suspected of such violations, with bullets from time to time.  A literal lynch mob storms the Capitol, armed to the teeth, organized, led by paramilitary hate group members.  The cry of the violent is always “Justice!“

So, yeah, by all means, keep in mind that Trump reads transcripts, just like he reads his second favorite book, The Bible.   The book he kept at his bedside, according to his first wife, was the Collected Speeches of Adolf Hitler.   Hitler knew a thing or two about how to get things done.   How the will, exerted as mightily as possible, can overcome all obstacles, all logic, all so-called decency, overcome all hesitation, all so-called moral qualms (conscience being a Jewish invention, according to AH).  Find men who believe you were sent by God Himself, an infallible man of destiny.  When the moment calls for a screaming temper tantrum, rage, that’s how you bend people to your will.

The answer to a screaming temper tantrum, of course, is firmness, logic, and sometimes, a good hard slap.  If the tantrum is by a president insisting on his right to take illegal action, the good hard slap is enforcement of the laws he and his allies violated.   It is the enduring shame of the human race that we have so often been herded by groups of wilful men operating in a blinding rage, opposed by good people bound by moral qualms.  When Trump finally goes to his reserved seat in the smoking section of Hell, the radical party of born-wealthy men like him will continue to exert its infuriated will.  After all, what good is having all the money in the world if you also can’t make everyone in the world do whatever you tell them to?