Jacqueline Lerner

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Moscow Mitch and Dishonest Don: Fighting Back Against Trump New York Style By Richard M. Lerner Joe Scarborough should be declared an honorary native son of New York. By creating the label of Moscow Mitch for the reprehensible and shameless senior senator from Kentucky, he created a movement that has gotten under the skin, or shell, of Moscow Mitch. Scarborough has illustrated powerfully that the best way to fight the assaults on democracy and decency perpetrated daily by Trump and his minions is to take the approach ingrained New Yorkers’ approach for dealing with degenerate bullies: Ridicule and derision. Trump himself has made this approach the signature of his approach to political life: Low Energy Jeb, Pocahontas, and Sleepy Joe being just a small sample of his use of ridicule and derision. The ingenuity of Joe Scarborough is that he has decided to fight fire with fire, and in so doing he has it works in combatting bullies. Yes, we are going low when they go low. But to not dish it out as good as we get it is not the New York Way. Although the art of the ridicule is enacted best by folks from Brooklyn and the Bronx, and Trump, as only a fellow from Queens in only a second-rate derider. Hover, until Joe Scarborough, second-rate ridicule seemed to be good enough for people outside of the five boroughs. Trump’s invective has often been compared to the speech of a middle schooler – although this comparison sells middle school youth short. Therefore, if we pursue the path taken by Scarborough, we can easily put Moscow Mitch, Barr the Betrayer, and Dishonest Don on the defensive in a way that is catching on across America. My humble addition to Scarborough’s inventive leadership is to suggest some additional samples of how we might use tools of ridicule to change the conversation about Trump. Rather than stewing in outrage as the chorus of “Send her back” is chanted by ignorant automatons, and allowing the American way of life to be punched in the gut each day by the Vicar of Vice let’s take the New York approach to him that has been championed by Joe Scarborough: • We can place placards across the streets of our nation that read: Dishonest Don: Lock Him Up! • We could wear a tee-shirt that read: Totally Reprehensible and Unconscionably Morally Perverse = T.R.U.M.P. • We could create a bumper sticker: Dispense with the Despicable DJT • We can wear blue hats with the initials MAAA and proclaim MAKE AMERICA AMERICAN AGAIN. These few examples only illustrate the ways in which we can take the initiative of ridicule away from Trump and put it in the hands of his betters: The rest of people of New York and the people across the nation who are fed up with lies, hate, racism, cowardice, and the erosion of American values and world leadership. By fighting back in the way New Yorkers fight back – by constant and unrelenting ridicule – will put the occupant of the White House on the defensive. Joe Scarborough has shown that this tactic works. Let’s bring his creativity to scale!