Gary Horton | We Can’t Stand a Trump Supporter in Washington

Gary Horton
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Ask yourself, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
For weeks now, our mailbox has been saturation-bombed with 8×10 postcards screaming, “Fighter Pilot Mike Garcia” – the war hero who flew more than 30 combat missions during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Mike flew those missions, dropped those bombs, and is leveraging the experience to fight a new war against Christy Smith. 

Mike Garcia parlays his military tenure as a can-do fighter pilot who’ll be loyal to Donald Trump. With a phonebook-thick pile of campaign fliers (ripping off the logos of the movie “Top Gun”), Garcia militantly pledges himself to Donald Trump — that very president with the corporate tax giveaways at middle-class expense, the president with all the ruined international relationships, the president with a partially built wall that can be cut down with a $100 Home Depot saw, and now, the president with a delayed and botched COVID-19 response that’s thrown the country into Great Depression-level economic upheaval. Amidst this devastation, Mike Garcia pledges loyalty to the host of this unreality show, the impeached president who’s had the most associates convicted and sent to prison since Nixon.

Really? We want a public servant with military-grade loyalty instincts pledging allegiance to Donald Trump? 

Everyone understands and respects the commitment, service and patriotism of Mike Garcia as a Navy fighter pilot. It takes guts and drive and smarts and sacrifice. It also takes unyielding submission to orders, no matter what. And fighter pilot Mike Garcia has pledged his loyalty to our destructive commander in chief. 

In a sane world, candidates pledging loyalty to Donald Trump would never fly. But these are upside-down times — when oil sells for negative $37 a barrel. Who but Donald Trump could pull that off?

Remember “Drill, baby, drill?” Not unlike smarty pants Sarah Palin, Donald Trump promised to make America’s gas and coal industries great again. “The biggest, the best — blah, blah.” Well, here we are, three years into Trump’s reign, opening new wells and drilling away, and the American oil industry is going BK like hell in a gas-swamped handbasket. 

Check one more box for, “All friends of Trump eventually get burned.” Now it’s all of America’s turn…

And now, to run for Congress foremost as a Trump loyalist in these times? The GPS in the flight computer must be haywire! It’s like hitching a ride on the Titanic, after it hit the iceberg. 

In Trump, America has never seen such ruckus, such embarrassment, such banality, such uncouth behavior, such ineptitude, such injustice and inhumanity, such cruelness, and such economic devastation. The “businessman” who’s now got half of America bankrupt – all while borrowing a deficit now at $5 trillion and rising fast! Yet Mike Garcia tells us, over and over, that he’s loyal to Trump. Build the wall. Like anyone cares about walls anymore. They care about their jobs and their families and their dying and dead relatives and friends. 

 Fighter Pilot Mike Garcia knows loyalty and knows how to follow orders. Admirable qualities in a solider, but that’s not the exact skillset America needs now. America can’t suffer another Trump follower in Washington during such perilous times.

We need thoughtful, independent leaders, prudent in judgement, to construct the required plans to pull America out of the mess into which we’ve been excreted. We don’t need Trump rubber-stampers. We need creative, collaborative, new leaders to build America out from this morass and actually… make America great again. Heaven knows, we actually do need to make America great again…

In the end, this election isn’t about Mike Garcia. It’s about countering Donald Trump. It’s about making sure Trump’s delusions of grandeur are held in check. It’s about saving the republic from further decay and destruction.

Mike Garcia is surely a swell guy and an American patriot. But for this particular mission, Garcia’s Trump loyalty obsession blows him out of the water — and Christy Smith must fly on to congressional victory.

Gary Horton’s “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.

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