Don’t let the name fool you. Garrison Keillor may be your friendly “Prairie Home Companion” narrator, but the 74-year-old radio host brought out the rhetorical knives to slice and dice Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in a new op-ed.
“Your eyes look dead and your scowl does not suggest American greatness so much as American indigestion,” Keillor writes. “Your hair is the wrong color: People don’t want a president to be that shade of blond. You know that now.”
Keillor doesn’t hold back throughout his open letter to the billionaire businessman, mocking his “Make America Great Again” cap and writing off the entire Trump campaign as one big, emotional play for respect from the Manhattan elites. “You wish you were that person but you didn’t have the time,” he writes.
It’s been a tough August for Trump, with his poll numbers falling and even his fellow Republicans showing reservations about associating their campaigns with his. However, with a new campaign manager and team of strategists, Trump appears to be throwing a Hail Mary, perhaps best exemplified by his trip to Mexico to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto.
But Keillor says none of that will work. In fact, he argues that Trump’s appeal stems from his base knowing he’s already a loser – that his inadequacies reflect their own employment anxieties and declining social status.
“Profanity is your natural language and vulgar words so as not to offend the Christers but the fans can still hear it and that’s something they love about you,” he writes. “You are their guy. You are losing and so are they but they love you for it.”
And when it’s all over, Keillor says Trump will walk away empty-handed – no institutional respect, a damaged corporate brand, and, of course, no keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:
“Meanwhile, you keep plugging away. It’s the hardest work you’ve ever done. You walk out in the white cap and you rant for an hour about stuff that means nothing and the fans scream and wave their signs and you wish you could level with them for once and say one true thing: I love you to death and when this is over I will have nothing that I want.”
