Burke: Must’ve been some magic in that old red hat they found

By Tom Burke / Herald columnist

In the Harry Potter books, Harry gets a magic cloak making all who wear it invisible. Very useful it was and he put it to great advantage.

The Former Guy, Donald Trump, has created something very, very similar; but it’s not a cloak, it’s a hat; a magic hat! The MAGA hat. It magically makes those who wear it not invisible, but civically incompetent; in other words dangerously (deliberately?) misinformed, zealots, suckers, marks, cultists and batcrap stupid chuckleheads. And, potentially, deadly (unmasked covid carriers) or dead (covid vaccine deniers).

How do I know MAGA hats have magic powers? Simple, I watch and listen to the folks wearing them.

Consider what the MAGAs say they believe and then tell me the hats don’t have a mystic power to create “alternative facts.” MAGAs actually believe:

• The Big Lie: that the election was “stolen.”

• Donald Trump won.

• Mexico would pay for the wall.

• Injected disinfectants would kill the covid virus. (It killed, but it killed Trump believers who took the stuff.)

• Chloroquine would cure the covid.

• The U.S. Capitol riot was Antifa-caused. All the Trump cultists did was participate in a small peaceful expression of patriotism. (Millions of seconds of video show violent insurrectionists carrying Trump flags, banners and wearing magic MAGA hats pounding on police and hunting legislators. And the FBI said Antifa was not involved.)

• Trump didn’t motivate the rioters. (Read his tweets, listen to his speech, count the dead and injured.)

• The stock market would crash if Biden were elected. (The Dow’s at 34,069, an all-time high.)

• They should boycott Coca-Cola. (All Trump properties are still serving Coke!)

• The Trump White House inherited a broken, bad, and obsolete coronavirus test. (But there was no covid-19 before Trump, so there was no test to inherit. Duh.)

• Mask wearing is an attack on freedom.

• Trump’s claim “the head of the Boy Scouts” called him to say his National Jamboree address was “the greatest speech that was ever made to them.” (The BSA chief said he never made a call to Trump.)

• Trump didn’t know about the $130,000 payment to porn performer Stormy Daniels or where Michael Cohen got the money. (Records show he personally reimbursed Cohen.)

• Trump’s big health care plan was coming in “two weeks.” (It never, ever arrived.)

And they believed him when he said (and these are exact Trump quotes):

• “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle—it (covid) will disappear.” 569,000 dead.

• It would just “go away.” 569,000 dead

• It would be gone “by summer.” 569,000 dead

• “Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere,” and cases are “coming way down.” 569,000 dead

• The pandemic is “fading away. It’s going to fade away.” 569,000 dead.

• 99 percent” of COVID-19 cases are “totally harmless.” (Tell that to the families of 569,000 dead.)

• The coronavirus is “going to go away without a vaccine … and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.” 569,000 dead.

And when he asserted:

• “We had the biggest audience in the history of inaugural speeches.” (Proven untrue.)

• Alabama “will most likely be hit’ from Hurricane Dorian.” (Alabama was not in the storm’s line, federal officials said, hence Sharpie-gate.)

• “Then I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” (It doesn’t say that. Read it.)

• “You’re not paying for those tariffs. China’s paying for those tariffs … we will be taxing the hell out of China.” (He didn’t. Americans paid the tariffs, not the Chinese.)

• Trump claimed “Complete and total exoneration” in the Mueller report. (Except the report said, “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. … While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”)

• The nation’s first Black president was not born in the United States. (He was.)

• His phone call to Unkraine’s Zelensky was “perfect;” Trump’s uncle was a professor at MIT so “I” must be a “very stable genius;” global warming is bogus; windmills cause cancer; the Q-Anon crazies are, “people that love our country,” and “Only I can fix it.”

The former guy made 30,500 documented false or misleading statements over his four-year term. I can’t believe his supporters, the MAGA hat wearers, would actually believe all his crap if there weren’t some mystical, malign force at work.

So, rather than think the MAGAs are truly that stupid, that gullible, or that brainwashed, I am forced to believe it must be magic, the MAGA hat magic, that’s destroyed the basic cognitive ability of so many people.

Because, maybe, just maybe, as we get further from Jan. 20 the magic will wear off and people can reclaim their ability to reason.

If only.

Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.