A Report from TrumpLand, USA

Hello. Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool, where we offer you entertainment in exchange for your personal anecdotes and observations. The entertainment follows.

On the way back from Charlottesville with Rachel yesterday, the day after the Trump guilty verdict, we stopped to pee at a roadside gas station / convenience store in the rural Virginia town of Culpeper, pop. 20,750. Legacy Markets, it was called.

Inside was a delightfully anarchic array of crap for sale — snow globes, fanny packs, knives for fish guttin’ or people stabbin’, little bottles of Southern Comfort, flashlights, tool belts, pork rinds, and so forth. But what drew my attention was a display case (pictured above) largely devoted to Trump baseball caps, Trump yard signs, and other Trumpish paraphernalia. As you can see, the stuff is imprinted with colorful slogans for Trump 2024, including “Take America Back,” “Save America,” “God, Guns and Trump,” and “Jesus Is My Savior — Trump is My President.” Sounding cryptically ominous, several of the items say, “The Rules Have Changed.”

After I approached the cashier to pay for our chocolate-chip ice cream sandwich, cherry coke zero and a medium coffee, I asked her in a deadpan:

“Say, do you sell any Biden caps?”

She stared at me, then grinned.

“I’ll look, but I doubt it. It only goes one way here.”

She rummaged through the display case but found nothing.

“Well, you know, Biden’s responsible for the high prices here,” she said, still smiling, waving toward the store’s merchandise.

Returning to her work station, she seemed genuinely sorry to have disappointed me. Her name is Jennifer. She is a nice lady. Then she brightened. “Hey, if you want something with Biden’s name on it, I can write ‘Biden’ on your receipt!”

I said that would be swell.

So she did.

Today’s challenge: Tell us something funny / interesting / illuminating that happened to you during an encounter with a Trump person or persons.

As usual, send your observations / recollections here, to this Felonious Orange Button:

And finally, our Gene Pool Gene Poll:

I contend it is never entirely pleasant to watch the destruction of a person, no matter who that person is, Hitler excepted. I contend we are diminished a little when we gloat over others’ misfortune or dance on someone’s grave.

Donald Trump gave a half-hour rambling, mostly incoherent “press conference” yesterday; it is apparent that stress and fear has markedly shaken him, imbalanced him even more, and left him looking hollowly at his own downfall and dissolution. He seems to be a man in a tailspin who may genuinely not understand that he did wrong. The question for today:

That’s it. See you Tuesday.