Trump went all the way to Alabama, and helped the Crimson Tide lose at home. The way Football games work is not a mystery. LSU showed up and beat Alabama, and now have a good shot at winning a national title. What will sink into the collective understanding of Bama fans is that they lost at home at the only game Trump ever attended in their stadium.
Huh, they said, collectively. How’d that happen?
Bama was supposed to win at home. They were supposed to win and keep their title hopes alive. Oh, they could still win something. But, now that Trump came to town and brought his existential doom with him, well, who gives a shit now?
It has rubbed off. Trump’s doom will start to infect everything. It will snowball. It will become something else entirely. And this movie doesn’t have a happy ending. Nope. You couldn’t make this up if you tried. You couldn’t make this the plot of any story that you wanted to write because it’s too obvious, too implausible, too lazy to contemplate.
Trump couldn’t find a friendly crowd anywhere, and so he flew all the way to Tuscaloosa on a Saturday to attend a home football game. There were threats to the people who attended—boo the President and you could lose your access to football games, lose your season tickets which, in collegiate sports, are, literally, a birthright. Lose them through some sort of malfeasance, and you have brought wretched shame to your whole lineage.
He thought he could latch on to the sacred thing that is Alabama football, a Saturday spent in the Deep South amongst one of the few constituencies that will vote for him next year, en masse. They’ll pull the lever for Trump in that part of Alabama, oh, hell yes, because one does not vote for a Democrat, no sir. The salt of the Earth down there wouldn’t do such a thing. They’ll vote for any Republican, no matter who, even a Mitt Romney, but they won’t vote for anyone with a (D) near their name.
Those are Trump people. That’s Trump country. If it wasn’t for the fact that there is a shortage of gold toilets in that part of the world, Trump would probably live there. He would put up with the shabbiness and the backwoods asses, if only to get a break from the horror of trying to go back to one of his failing properties. In Alabama, there would always be a friendly face, albeit one missing some teeth and with one too many blubbery chins. The neighbors would wave at him instead of flipping him the bird. Hell, the golf is actually fantastic, probably better than goddamned Florida, where the bugs are bigger than your smallish hands. Just make sure you keep the riff raff away, Mr. Agent.
Trump ruined a football game. He jinxed it. He fucked those good people. He brought his poison, his snakebit ways, all of the curses put on him by a thousand Voodoo women, the hex upon him from the Devil, the condemnation of a billion decent people, and he dragged his slapdick bullshit to a part of the country where they don’t want anything to do with politics right now (it ain’t Election Day, it’s Football Saturday, dagnabbit). He ruined their home winning streak. He brought his flop sweat and the agony of his predicament and the failure of his deranged ‘presidency’ to Bama.
They lost. At home. To rival Louisiana State University. If it had been to Clemson by 50, that would have been preferable.
It isn’t so much that all the things Trump touches end up dying. It’s that he knows he is doomed. He is swimming in the fetid, bubbling horror of his doom, and he doesn’t have the decency to sink down in it and only ruin himself. He’s the jackass pulling everyone into the cauldron as everything spins and circles the massive drain below him. Women, children, old friends, donors, even hapless Republicans who hate Democrats more than they love the rule of law—he’s dragging them into the depths and he’s taking everyone into the boiling, screaming nothing. Those little hands of Trump’s just holding on to everyone and bringing them down with him, what a debacle. What a fiasco.
The next politician who shows up at a Bama home game ought to have his or her head examined. Jesus, the Karma that comes with what happened today. It’s enough to make you want to tear down the place and go play football somewhere else until the whole thing can be removed and built somewhere friendlier.
