Trump’s closing argument: I am Batman

In a particularly contentious segment Friday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Dr. Ben Carson made his case for why GOP nominee Donald Trump must be elected president:

“What we’re engaging in is exactly what happens to pinnacle nations historically before their fall. They take their eye off the ball, start engaging in things that really don’t matter that much — not that, you know, sexual language and abuses is not important — but when you’re talking about the train going off the cliff, you really need to deal with that first.”

Carson went on to argue that “it doesn’t matter,” if Trump’s accusers are lying or not because, going back to his new, favorite metaphor, that train is still charging toward the cliff. Then, he complained about the difficulties in getting the news media to understand how dire our situation is. “Think about what’s happening with our borders, you think what’s happening with our jobs, you think about what’s happening with education, you look at all the division that’s going on in our country … get it through your thick skulls,” he said.

This line of defense appears to be the Trump campaign’s closing argument in these final three weeks. Campaign operatives and right-wing radio hosts are imploring us to understand what we are up against.

{mosads}And if you listen closely enough, you can hear Hans Zimmer’s ominous percussion and strings playing quietly, yet continually, underneath the yelling and pleas for understanding by Trump and his surrogates: He is the only one who can save us. He is the only one who can fix things. He is the Dark Knight. He is Batman.

Trump first started down this path while delivering his acceptance speech in July at the Republican National Convention. “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” he said that night.

And since then, he’s offered variations on his perceived role as America’s last, best hope. His message has alternated between accepting the mantle as the “law and order candidate” to explaining that since he’s been such a crook and sleazebag for his entire adult life, it makes perfect sense for him to ascend to the highest office in the land. It’s the my-defensive-coordinator-can-run-your-offense-better argument, I guess.

But with time running out and the polls slipping away, it seems the Trump campaign has fully embraced his role as the Dark Knight. Sure, he’s a flawed billionaire with an imperfect past, but he’s the only one who can save us.

“They knew they would throw every lie they could at me and my family and my loved ones,” said Trump at a rally in Florida on Thursday. “They knew they would stop at nothing to try to stop me. But I never knew as bad as it would be. I never knew it would be this vile, that it would be this bad, that it would be this vicious.”

A statement better only with heavy rainfall and delivered in the dead of night.

“They will attack you, they will slander you, they will seek to destroy your career and your family; they will seek to destroy everything about you, including your reputation,” Trump said later in the same speech. “They will lie, lie, lie, and then again they will do worse than that; they will do whatever is necessary.”

It’s a strategy that won’t likely win the day, but it’s all the campaign has left. Trump is the Dark Knight, “[taking] all of these slings and arrows gladly,” as he said.

In the movie “The Dark Knight,” Bruce Wayne complains to his butler, Alfred, while Gotham City lay in shambles. “People are dying, Alfred. What would you have me do?”

Alfred replies, “Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They’ll hate you for it, but that’s the point of Batman; he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make — the right choice.”

It’s almost as if Gotham needed to be made great again, and Batman was the only one who could do it.

Hale is a freelance writer who resides in San Antonio with his wife and three children. He has written for Sports Illustrated and NBC Sports but his first, true love has always been politics. The machinations carried out by otherwise good people are his glorious, guilty pleasure.

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