So Trump is at it again. His most recent racist trope is that Rep. Ilhan Omar (an elected-Representative, with a majority of the popular vote cast, who just happens to be, literally, an African-American) "hates America." This is the Trumpian version of the Leader Principle (otherwise know historically as the "Fuerher Princip "): "If you don't agree with me [on policy, e.g., national health insurance; practice, e.g., how to deal with asylum-seekers, or whatever] you are not a "true American" and "you hate your country."  

So, Trump has done it again (no surprise there). That it is one of his most open, most violent, racist screams should come as no surprise. For Trump is already buckling down for an election fight in 2020 that is going to be a tough one, even for him. He is, of course, going to run on The Three R's: "Racism, Russia, and Repression (of voting)," just as he did in 2016. But Trump, history's consummate con man, who, knowing nothing about U.S. government, thinks always in terms of reality TV. He knows that in order to keep his audience (otherwise known as "his base") he's got to up the ante this time around. And so he has, in spades, as they used to say at one his (bankrupt) casinos. Of course, we hope that his electoral strategy this time around will be in the end as bankrupt as were those casinos, with no (unknown-but-we-can-guess) bank(s) to bail him out. But hey, you never know. There were many in Germany in 1932 who thought that that "crazy man" Hitler could never become Chancellor.

The Epstein-Barr virus, first of all, is the cause of an infectious disease, mononucleosis, which is (interestingly enough in light of what this column is principally about) called the "kissing disease." Its primary symptoms are: fatigue, fever, lack of appetite, rash, sore throat , swollen glands in the neck, and weakness and sore muscles. While in this column we are dealing with a different kind of Epstein-Barr virus, one of the political sort (credit here must go to one of my Twitter mates, JoeInWVa, for identifying it as such [although unfortunately I cannot find the link to that particular cartoon]) some of the symptoms are the same. That is if you broaden the diagnosis to include Sick-of-Trump-and-Barr Syndrome.

A few weeks ago I published a column entitled "Why do the Republicans Stick with Trump ?" After going through the various possible reasons that I could think of at the time, I came to the conclusion that most of them who do so, do so because they realize that without him at the top of the ticket in the 2020 election, down-ballot the Party would get destroyed. With that conclusion, I came up with a new name for their party: the Trumpublicans (tm). However, following what has been going on the Mexican border over the last several months, and the total refusal of the Congressional Republicans to ally with the Democrat in the Congress to "do something" about it in the legislative manner, I have come to a different conclusion.