"Garbage"--Gaffe Or Not?

Readers may have noticed that I’ve been paying little to no attention to the political campaigns. However, yesterday I was listening to Tom Luongo’s latest exposition of his Theory of Everything. Alex Mercouris showered Luongo with praise for being right about everything leading up to the current debacle of the West. For his part, Luongo did his best ‘Shucks, ma’am, tweren’t nuthin’ performance. The reason I bring that up is because, in the course of an overall fascinating discussion, Luongo made what struck me as a shrewd observation. Noting Trump’s publicly stated openness to a pardon for Hunter, Luongo suggested that Zhou had done a deal with The Donald: Undercut Kama Sutra in return for the pardon of Hunter that no Dems could promise.

Well. That seemed interesting, but where was the beef? Yes, it was true that Zhou had become more or less a persona non grata on the campaign scene—a combination of his record, his gaffe’s, and his doddering persona. But was that deliberate? Part of a plan? Was it sufficient to fulfill a commitment to Trump?

Then came the “garbage” gaffe, following in the grand tradition of Progs telling Americans what they really think of them: first we had “deplorables,” then “bitter clingers”, and now “garbage.” Yesterday evening was supposed to feature Kama Sutra’s final big pitch to America to close the deal. My wife tells me that nobody’s talking about that today—it’s all about who’s gonna apologize to half the American population. It’s all about Zhou’s “garbage” gaffe. Which raises the question whether that was a gaffe or something else. Earlier gaffe’s could pass as gaffes, but the “garbage” line couldn’t have been better calculated to steal the thunder from Kama Sutra’s supposed big moment. Well, maybe “thunder” is a bit over the top as a description of Kama Sutra’s typical delivery—the usual mixture of word salad and cackles—but you get the idea. This “garbage” gaffe was major league stuff.

The thing is, who can say whether or not this was a gaffe? As a gaffe by Zhou, it works—no one can say Zhou is incapable of this. Again, there’s so much precedent for this as the usual Prog slip of the mind. But as a knife in the back, as sly payback, or as a quid for a pro (apologies to Latin scholars), it works beautifully. I take no position, but it’s an intriguing possibility.