The Trump Diet

Sixty-eight per cent of the electorate thinks American is on the wrong track, and almost the same percentage of Americans are overweight.

To me, Trump is like a fad diet.  Everyone knows he’s bad for you and ultimately won’t work out, but there’s something so novel about him you want to give him a try.  “The nice man says eating nothing but popcorn and laxatives will give me a bikini body in 10 days!  I should trust him, right?”

I mean does anybody for real think that he’s going to build a wall?  Or deport 11 million people immediately upon taking office?  Or ban all Muslims from entering the country?

Confession: For the past two weeks I’ve been binge watching all the convention coverage and now I feel kind of hung over.

We all knew the Republican convention would be interesting because, let’s face it, Donald Trump isn’t just interesting, he’s train wreck interesting.  I was curious to hear his wife, Melania, speak because she has mostly remained silent and I wondered if she would show a different side to Trump I didn’t know about, but nope!  The best part of her speech it turns out wasn’t her speech at all, but plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s speech in 2008.

If Melania was going to plagiarize anyone, Michelle Obama was a decidedly WTF choice since, according to Trump, Michelle’s husband, President Obama, is actually a Muslim Kenyan who took over the White House as part of a conspiracy that Trump was out to expose. Or something like that.

What gave me an even bigger chuckle was how Team Trump “handled” it.  First they denied that there was any plagiarism at all and even said Twilight Sparkle said similar things.  You have to admit: The My Little Pony Defense from a presidential candidate had to have been a first.  It didn’t hold water (like it probably wouldn’t in 4th grade English class either) and after two days they fessed up that a person from Trump’s business wrote the speech with the plagiarized sections.  But she wasn’t fired.

The convention seats were fairly empty throughout the week.  Both former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush skipped it.  So did the 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, the 2008 nominee John McCain, and Governor Kasich, whose state was hosting the convention.  Plus there was a big fight on the floor the first day between Trump supporters and the #NeverTrump crowd.  For a convention that was billed as a “unity” week, I just didn’t see it.

Six out of seven Trumps spoke and, plagiarism aside, they gave pretty good speeches.  Plus we can’t forget Scott Baio made a speech.  I mean the Democrats might have Meryl Streep, but who can forget Chachi, right?  A wasted opportunity was when a mother who was making a moving speech about her son’s death in Benghazi was interrupted by…Donald Trump…who was giving a live interview at the same time, which cut into her coverage.  This guy’s ego is so huge it even gets in his own way.

Sometimes I felt like I was watching a witch trail.  Rudy Guilini, former mayor of NYC during 9/11, spent his speech literally yelling at us.  Ben Carson implied that Hillary Clinton worshipped Lucifer (I’m not making this up)

and Chris Christie held a mock trial for her “crimes” and had the audience cheer “guilty” and “lock her up!”

The great nail biter moment was when former rival, Senator Ted Cruz, delivered the keynote address and…didn’t endorse Trump.  The crowd went wild with shouts from all sides and then Trump entered and it got even louder.  I understand why Cruz didn’t endorse him – during the primary Trump sent out Tweets saying he would “spill the beans” about Cruz’s wife and sent out an unflattering picture of her next to Melania and then also said that Cruz’s father helped JFK’s assassin. (He really said that.  I’m not making this up.)

But all that aside, I was really interested to see what Trump had to say.  In a nutshell: Trump’s not a happy guy.  He described America as a violent, declining, frightening place to live and said “I alone can fix it.”  Really?  I sort of got visions of a neon TRUMP sign installed on top of the White House, which would soon be repainted gold if he really did get elected.

The Democratic convention the following week was supposed to be the boring one but it started out with the revelation that Russian spies had hacked the DNC and released thousands of emails showing that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was biased against Bernie Sanders, the Socialist Democrat, which led to her resignation that same day.  It’s believed the leaks were released so Russia could influence the election, which is pretty crazy.

If Donald Trump is a fad diet then Bernie supporters are like the organic vegans who are so passionate you kind of want to move away from them at the cocktail party.  The most intense moment was when Sarah Silverman said to the Bernie or Bust crowd, “You’re being ridiculous.”

But Bernie Sanders did not pull a Ted Cruz; he fully endorsed Hillary Clinton and even announced during roll call that she was the nominee to try to get his supports on board.

And if Bernie’s followers were the vegans, Hillary supporters were people at a Weight Watchers meeting. Everyone knew that this was the right thing to do, but no one was really excited about eating chicken and salad, you know? It was way more fun to bash that fad diet.

The convention had an all-star line up including Michelle Obama, President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton, generals, former secretaries of state, athletes, Mother’s of the Movement, stars from Meryl Streep to Katy Perry and tons of individuals who gave testimony of how Hillary Clinton impacted their lives.  The speech that stood out the most for me though wasn’t by an icon, it was by a Muslim father, Khizr Khan, whose son died in 2004 in the Iraq War defending America.

In one of the most powerful moments he questions whether Trump even read the Constitution and said that he has sacrificed nothing.

Whether you like her or not, it was a historic moment to finally have a woman represent a major party in the election for president.  It was quite thrilling for me to tell my daughter that she too could one day become president and actually mean it.

I thought it was no coincidence that Hillary wore white, a visual contrast to Trump’s “Midnight in America” perception of our country.

The problem most people have with her is that they don’t trust her and I don’t know that people can be convinced otherwise no matter who is giving the speech.

I hope the public will give up their fad diet of Trump.  His racist, misogynistic, xenophobic ways blended with an itchy Twitter finger are unhealthy.  His bromance with Putin – saying he won’t come to our NATO allies’ defense if Russia invades their countries, and literally asking Russian spies to hack the computers of his political opponent – are without precedent and are quite frankly dangerous.

People may not be excited about Hillary Clinton, but as Independent former Mayor of NYC Michael Bloomberg said, we should vote for her because “she’s sane.”

Lisa 🙂

Lisa Traugott is a Mom’s Choice Award winning writer, fitness blogger, wife and mom of two….and Original Cast Member of AMERICAN GRIT, starring John Cena, on FOX!!!

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