If we can compare politics to wrestling (in that both are fake), then Donald Trump and Jeb Bush are enjoying best hyped-up rivalry since Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler.
Today's beef involves 9/11, for some ungodly reason: the two "candidates" are sparring over who's to blame, who could have stopped it, and what the definition of "blame" is. And this is where the wrestling analogy kind of falls apart, because there's no good guy in this feud. They're both heels without a face.
It started with Trump telling Fox News — basically a 24-hour wrestling event only with everyone in suits — that George Bush made 9/11 happen. And then, in perfect Trumpian fashion, went on to add that he's not blaming him.
"Look, look, Jeb said we were safe with my brother — we were safe," he said. "Well, the World Trade Center just fell down! Now, am I trying to blame him? I’m not blaming anybody. But the World Trade Center came down."
This is an amazing bit of mind-bending rhetoric: hey, the guy was in charge when something terrible happened! Now I'm not saying it's his fault. I'm just reminding you, for some other, completely unrelated reason, that he was in charge.
Jeb, for his part, responded on CNN, responded with "Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you hope a president would do."
Yes, of course he did. Nothing to second-guess about Bush's response, no sir. Great job, A+++++ would invade again.
Let's cut back to Trump for one more bit of crazy. Regarding the terrorists: "I am extremely, extremely tough on illegal immigration. I'm extremely tough on people coming into this country. I believe that if I were running things, I doubt those families would have — I doubt that those people would have been in the country."
Yes sure of course. If only we'd entrusted our lives to Donald Trump before September 11th, none of that nightmare would have happened.
Then both candidates called each other "pathetic" on Twitter, a bald eagle cried, and America was saved, the end.
Ultimately, of course, this feud benefits both candidates. It keeps them in the news (look, I'm talking about them right now) and ingratiates them with their own respectively crazy supporters.
If you like Donald Trump for making insane claims about how he could have stopped 9/11, well hip hip hooray, he just executed the political equivalent of jumping into the ring and smashing Vince McMahon with a folding chair that he brought with him from home.
If you like Jeb Bush because your fortunes soared during the last Bush administrations, well hip hip hooray, he just gave you another reason to hold up a sign and scream the next time he struts into the ring.
Of course, if you step back for a moment, none of the rivalry makes any sense. Why are these bozos debating the blame for 9/11 right now? Why are they calling each other "pathetic" on the internet? What does this fight have to do with anything that matters to the election? It's just a dumb feud cooked up for internet chatter.
Polling shows Trump well in the lead in Iowa: 24% to 7%. Jeb's strategy seems to be drawing out as much of Trump's craziness as he possibly can, in the hopes that voters will be turned off by it. But of course, the crazy guy has three times the support of the Bush, so good work America.
Nicely done, guys. If there's anything the victims of 9/11 would have wanted, it's for two lumpy potatoes to use them as a political football.
