A FAMOUS GROUSE
AS children, we’d refer to them as “elephant blackheads”. These days, though, we respect the humble asparagus. Rich in vitamins, antioxidants and folic acid, they’re great for gut health and help prevent urinary tract infections.
They can, it's said, also be used to predict the future.
Jemima Packington, from Bathford in the UK, claims to be the world’s only “asparamancer”. Her “readings” are based on the way asparagus ears fall on the floor when dropped. She’s a regular feature in the regional newspapers and boasts of a “75 to 90 per cent success rate” as a fortune teller.
On 17 July, she appeared on a BBC radio programme and was asked whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump would be elected in November. Ears duly tossed, Packington told listeners, “I can tell you it’s neither of them. It’s a lady. Now, I keep on getting this. The next president of the United States is going to be a lady.”
Four days later, Biden announced his withdrawal from the election. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
On Monday morning, Packington returned to the Beeb and told the Today programme that, according to the asparagus, it wouldn’t be Kamala Harris who would be entering the White House, but another woman, one whose name began with the letter “M”…
Intriguing as this all may be, I mention it only to offset the religious hysteria that has appeared in the wake of the Trump assassination attempt. Images of angels deflecting the sniper’s bullet and Jesus with his hands on the former president’s shoulders were suddenly everywhere. What better way to counter this apocalyptic religiosity than with some vegetable matter?
The suggestion of divine intervention came from the man himself. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.”
Later he told the New York Post: “I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead. By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God, I’m still here.”
The sentiment was echoed by family members who, according to CNN, now felt “spiritual, in a way”. On Sunday, Eric Trump shared a picture of his late mother and his father’s ex-wife, Ivana, on Instagram with the caption: “Two years ago today, we lost this incredible woman! I have no doubt she was watching down on my father last night – it was nothing short of divine intervention…”
God, it seemed, had not only spared Trump’s life, but had handed him the presidency on a plate. There was talk of a Damascene conversion. Humbled by the near-death experience, a chastened Trump was going to tone down the inflammatory rhetoric and dial back the personal attacks on his political opponents.
He told reporters that he’d thrown out the combative address he intended to deliver in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention and would replace it with an appeal for unity among the electorate. “The speech I was going to give was a real humdinger,” he was quoted as saying. “Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”
Honestly, it was not. After 15 minutes, in which he appeared subdued and modest, the megalomania kicked in and it was back to the rage of Mein Trumpf, the egregious lies, familiar grievances and narcissistic fantasies.
According to CNN, this was “the most dishonest speech” of the four-day convention, with more than 20 untruths by their count. “Many of the false claims were ones Trump has made before,” the broadcaster said, “some of them for years. They spanned a wide variety of topics, including the economy, immigration, crime, foreign policy and elections. Some of them were wild lies, others smaller exaggerations.”
Some were ad-libbed as Trump impulsively veered off text. There was, for example, the customary charge that Democrats had cheated in the 2020 election and that the US was currently experiencing its worst ever inflation. But other lies were contained in his prepared speech, like the absurd claim that he left the Biden administration a world at peace — but, thanks to his successor’s performance in office, that world was now tearing itself apart.
Trump, of course, was poised to right all these wrongs. He told the RNC: “I could stop wars with a phone call. I will end every single international crisis that the current administration has created. … I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately. … We’ll start paying off debt and start lowering taxes even further. … Under my plan, incomes will skyrocket, inflation will vanish completely, jobs will come roaring back, and the middle class will prosper like never, ever before, and we’re going to do it very rapidly.”
All that was needed was a victorious return to the White House and everything would magically fall into place. It was a return that was all but assured until Sunday afternoon and Biden’s announcement that he would not be seeking re-election and would instead endorse vice president Kamala Harris to lead the Democrat ticket in the presidential race.
This was now a major spanner in the Trump campaign’s works. Their guns have been spiked. The Republicans were always set on beating just the one person — Joe Biden, or the “dementia patient”, as some GOP operatives have called him.
The problem Trump’s strategists now face is that their best lines of attack, focusing on the incumbent’s age and his mental acuity, are suddenly worthless. If anything, these are tactics the Democrats can use against Trump given that he is now the candidate with age-related difficulties.
As such, he is clearly wary of facing the 59-year-old Harris in a presidential debate, so much so that he wants to change the terms of such an encounter.
Back in May, the Republican and Democrat camps had agreed to two televised events, one hosted by CNN and the other by ABC News. The first, on June 27, was the catastrophe that sparked the chain of events that prompted Biden to stand down. The second is due on 10 September, an encounter Trump wants to take place in a more friendly rightwing venue. On Sunday, he posted on Truth Social:
“My debate with Crooked Joe Biden, the Worst President in the history of the United States, was slated to be broadcast on Fake News ABC, the home of [former White House communications director] George Slopadopolus [Stephanopoulos], sometime in September. Now that Joe has, not surprisingly, has quit the race, I think the Debate, with whomever the Radical Left Democrats choose, should be held on FoxNews, rather than very biased ABC. Thank you! DJT”
Trump also whined about being “forced” to waste time and money on an anti-Biden campaign. “Now we have to start all over again. Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe, including his doctors and the Fake News Media, knew he was not capable of running for, or being, President? Just askin’?”
Harris, meanwhile, is clearly popular with Democrats. As their presumptive nominee for the presidency, she has re-energised and united the party. By Tuesday, supporters had donated more than $100 million to her campaign — a significant reversal of fortune as donor support had dramatically declined following the June presidential debate.
The next debate, should it go ahead, may be a more substantial event, one hopefully focusing on policy rather than personality. Trump will in all likelihood take aim at Harris’s poor record on border control and immigration.
She, in turn, could go after Trump’s costly trade plans. If elected, his stated policies would, according to economists, trigger a recession in the US within six months, with unemployment and inflation soaring. This forecast, according to the Financial Times, is based on a “long-standing plan to impose a 10 per cent tariff on all imports and 60 per cent on goods from China”.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics, meanwhile, has slammed Trump’s suggestion to scrap federal income tax and replace it with revenues from these sky-high tariffs as being the most harmful of all his untested schemes. “If pursued,” they said, “this policy would antagonise US allies and partners, provoking worldwide trade wars, damaging global economic welfare, and undermining national security. It would also likely destabilise the global financial system.”
This is all very grown-up stuff, and unlikely to change the minds of Trump’s core support base. They include voters, it really must be said, who happily sport sanitary pads and bandages on their ears and yet refused to wear face masks during the Covid pandemic because they believed it made them look silly.
But, for the rest of us, the US presidential campaign has suddenly become very interesting. Its outcome will have global repercussions, and that includes South Africa.
As for the assassination attempt … well, that suddenly feels like very old hat indeed.
We have moved on. As Trump himself put it in January this year, just 36 hours after yet another American school shooting, this time in Iowa, where a 17-year-old pupil took his own life after wounding several classmates and teachers: “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it, we have to move forward.”
