We gathered at the top of a biblical-looking hill in California to watch the presidential candidates dance on Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s graves. The sun was bright as it began to set, and I’m certain I saw Governor Gavin Newsom behind a slab of the Berlin Wall slipping into his skin suit. Crouching there like some kind of Gollum. It turns out that beneath the suit and Dracula hair and white picket fence teeth, Newsom’s just three demons standing on top of each other’s shoulders. I yelled at him, about to make a citizen’s arrest, but he vanished in a puff of smoke. Later that night, I stood dangerously close to the tyrant. As he had his face powdered for TV, I inspected for seams in the skin suit—one of the best skin suits in politics. A few months back, I saw Adam Schiff up close at the Capitol and his skin suit was nowhere near as good—his eyes are like the plastic eyes taxidermists shove into the faces of dead deer. I spoke with some conservative-leaning women at the debate who confessed that Newsom was handsome and charming. I showed them pictures of Pol Pot and Mussolini and asked if they found these men attractive as well. They told me they understand Newsom is an evil bootlicking lizard tyrant who will do anything for power—but they admit that his good looks and charm were undeniable. Of all the candidates who came through the Reagan Library that night, Newsom was the most confident. No, he hasn’t officially announced that he’s running in place of President Biden, but his actions say otherwise. Yes, he said Biden was the clear winner of the GOP debate—but every time he spoke, he couldn’t contain a maniacal laugh. As if he couldn’t believe he was getting away with everything—from strolling through the debate to saying Biden’s a winner of anything. The demons don’t believe what they say, and they can’t believe they can get away with saying anything at all. I stood closer to Newsom than my doctors would’ve liked. There is a concern that demons like the ones beneath the Newsom costume discharge radiation. I was forced to take a chemical bath later at the local ER. But I think it was worth it to know for certain that this man is nothing but a product of Hell. His smile is like the Hollywood sign—a postcard image that, in reality, overlooks despair, homelessness, dying dreams, and severe PTSD from tyrannical COVID policies. * The GOP ushered all the journalists into a circus tent. They kept us at a safe distance from the actual debate—which was on the same grounds, but in the Air Force One Pavilion. Us lowlife writers had to watch the debate on a projector. It’s like going to a funeral but being told we had to pay our respects over Zoom in the parking lot. I suspect this was because it was part of the GOP’s illusion to help trick audiences into thinking that any of these candidates had any country-wide likability and/or a chance to make it to the nomination. (I will, mostly, exempt Vivek Ramaswamy from this since he’s a rookie at this circus, and he, so far, amongst this crowd of candidates, has a more authentic enthusiasm than the rest. There might be some dubious concerns about his past, but I’m still parsing through whether I feel like he’s authentic. That said, he’s the only one on the stage who seems comfortable and mostly honest.) The entire crowd beneath the tent shrieked when Mike Pence’s face appeared on the screen. It was a jump scare for sure. His ghoulish features had worsened since the last time we saw him. His face looked like it had been painted on by a mortician. Some of us began to wager whether it was really Mike Pence or if someone went to Spirit Halloween, got a Mike Pence costume, and showed up before the real one did. We still don’t know. Nikki Haley trashed TikTok, but there were commercials for TikTok between debate breaks. More evidence that the GOP is an antiquated machine appealing to the hypocrite class. (I saw these candidates blow off young conservative Tik Tok influencers to get facetime with the likes of ABC. Again, to his credit, Vivek is the only candidate to embrace TikTok—which, in my opinion, is also reminiscent of Obama embracing new social media leading up to the 2008 election. So I hope the Zoomers understand why I have some reservations about candidates doing silly dances for votes… but what else is politics if not a freakish dance off reality show?) Ron DeSantis said he was going to treat cartels like foreign terrorists. Nikki Haley said she would send special ops into Mexico to defeat drugs. The War on Drugs did nothing before, and ramping it up won’t fix anything now—aside from financially benefitting one of the biggest cartels in the whole wide world: D.C. When the camera zoomed in real tight on their pupils, you could see drone strikes and dead bodies and dollar bills. I think Tim Scott has had some strong interviews in the past, but his performance on the stage was underwhelming. The unspoken pact amongst all the candidates must be that they’re vying for a position in Trump’s administration. Though I doubt this would be extended to Chris Christie, who seems to be on a vengeance tour with Trump jokes written by first graders. Christie is the Taylor Swift of the debate. Trump broke his heart, so now everything he says reeks more of a jilted lover than someone who actually sees themselves living in the White House. Christie also refused to go into the “spin room” after the debate to talk to the media. When pressed on this, his campaign justified it by saying Christie never does spin rooms. (Insert obvious low hanging fruit joke here.) One writer came up to me and asked why the debate was so boring. “There’s no Trump,” I said. “You would have seen a better debate if you visited Disney, walked into the Hall of Presidents, and chatted amongst the animatronic presidents.” Ron DeSantis and Chris Christie called out Trump for not attending the debate—but really Trump’s absence had more of a presence than anyone on stage. The lack of Trump itself is a spectacle. No one is running against Joe Biden; everyone is running against Donald Trump. I don't know if anyone truly thinks Biden can survive another election—I mean that politically and physically. I can’t imagine how often the secret service must wipe Biden’s brains as it leaks out of his ears. It’s truly something else to see a man (or a possible clone) disintegrate like that before our very eyes. The White House is a hospice. Jimmy Carter is doing better on his death bed than Joe Biden is doing on his own two feet. (Speaking of the way our ruling class seems to be comprised of zombies in bondage, Dianne Feinstein would die two days after the debate, but not before being propped up and pushed into the Senate to cast one last vote.) If the White House is a hospice, the presidential campaign is mostly made up of morticians and eulogists. Our country seems to have collapsed. I think COVID lockdowns accelerated it. Many of us are just refusing to define it as such. These lifeless-sounding candidates (even with some great track records) sound and smile at us with that overly media-trained door-to-door salesman funeral home tone. At a certain point, the moderators lost control of the debate and the candidates talked over one another with the same shrieking urgency as birds fighting over scraps in a parking lot. There was a moment when Pence shared with us an image of him sleeping with his wife and the entire tent of journalists puked, and we were forced to evacuate. It’s astonishing to think about all the money and cameras and suits and dresses and catering and airplane tickets that went into this charade where a bunch of people got to stand on a stage and say, “When I’m President...” It’s like going to Medieval Times. It’s a banquet where we all get to watch adults cosplay as future presidents. It’s just entertainment. We know it. Everyone on stage knows it. Earlier, as I made my way to the debate, I was told that there were protestors lining the streets. I anticipated confrontation. I assumed I’d be walking through a warzone of quintessential California Antifa types—you know, like radicalized kindergarten teachers and lawyers—the likes of which become our future Marxist politicians. But it wasn’t leftists protesting the debate—it was Trump supporters. I wouldn’t say they were protesting as much as they were showing support for their favorite candidate. I talked to one man named Ron—who made a poster that said VOTE D FOR A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE. The D was crossed out. His shirt said LIBERTY vs TYRANNY. He told me he also has bumper stickers that won’t get your windows smashed. “You never know what they’ll smash your windows for these days,” I said. “Sayin' ‘have a nice day’ will get you punched in the face,” he said. People walked through traffic waving American and Trump flags. There was a group of people waving Ukrainian flags, but they were huddled in the shadow of a much larger Trump flag. On Presidential Drive, someone held a sign that “No to 7 Dwarves.” Look, I think DeSantis was a great, if not the greatest governor during COVID. I wish I had him as a governor over Andrew Cuomo, who somehow, after mass murdering 15,000 people when he decided to throw COVID patients into nursing homes, got MeToo'd out of office instead of standing before a Nuremberg 2.0 type trial. But the DeSantis campaign might be one of the most underwhelming campaigns I’ve ever witnessed. I don’t understand how someone can deflate so quickly. It’s possible he turns it around—but I just don’t see the real-life excitement behind his campaign as much as I do for Trump. Toward the end of the night, Newsom slipped out the side exit as the media descended upon Ramaswamy and Kari Lake. I trailed the California governor hoping to get photo evidence of the demons operating the flesh bag with good teeth and hair. I saw him walk to the edge of a cliff where not too long ago a terrible wildfire surrounded the library. His security made a human shield around him as he morphed into a bat and flew into the dark sky. I stood there beside a statue of Ronald Reagan watching helplessly.
