Pennsylvania Speech Shows Again that Trump Wants to Be a Dictator

The Donald Trump Show traveled to Moon Township, PA, on Saturday night in support of Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone ahead of a special congressional election on Tuesday. But as is usually the case with this president, the speech ended up being about Donald Trump and his insane ideas.

In a speech lasting just over an hour, Trump’s dictatorial tendencies, raging narcissism, and blatant bigotry were on full display. Unmentioned, however, were the encroaching special counsel investigation into possible collusion with Russia to disrupt the 2016 election and other crimes, and a sex scandal involving a shady hush money payoff to a porn star by Trump’s personal lawyer.

Trump claimed credit for the success of the Winter Olympics in South Korea, bragged incessantly about winning an election that happened 488 days ago, reminisced about how much money he made a major television network during the run of his reality show The Apprentice, and expressed his apparent “love” for “women.” He also claimed to be the first politician in 40 years to use the term “tax cuts.”

“Women, women,” Trump said. “We love women.” He clarified by saying he had won 52% of women’s votes in the 2016 election, but in reality, he won 52% of white women’s votes, another of Trump’s many tells.

What the president doesn’t love, however, is a free press. Trump assailed “sleepy-eyes Chuck Todd” of “third–rate” MSNBC, whom he called a “sleepy son–of–a–bitch,” and “fake as hell CNN,” whose “ratings are lousy, by the way, compared to Fox.”

He also attacked: Democrats, “criminal” immigrants, Hillary Clinton, presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, Oprah, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (with racist “Pocahontas” references), Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Maxine Waters (“a very low–IQ individual”), congressional candidate Conor Lamb (“Lamb the sham”), and all of our major European allies. He also insulted his own wife without even realizing it.

Meanwhile, Trump did not attack Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he praised China’s President Xi Jinping, who essentially became president for life on Sunday when the country’s parliament endorsed a constitutional change to remove presidential term limits.

“China,” he said, “has done more for us than they have ever done for any president or for this country”—a claim he’s been making for months.

Trump also lauded diplomatic efforts extended by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, but he had to fend off boos and hisses from his red–meat–seeking MAGA crowd at the very mention of the North Korean leader’s name.

He praised Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs, who he implied were helping to “liberate” American towns. (“It’s like a war,” Trump said, referring to his administration’s battles with sanctuary cities.) And he called the National Rifle Association “good people.”

But one of the more troubling moments of a highly discomforting speech was Trump’s admission that he wants to impose the death penalty on convicted drug dealers. The president has been pushing this idea for weeks, inspired by Philippines President Rodrigo Dutarte, a murderer whom Trump admires, Singapore’s policy of executing drug dealers, and conversations Trump had with the Chinese president.

“The only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness,” Trump said.

If that’s not a dictator in the making, I don’t know what is.