"Trumpy Trumpy North Philly."

Did you see Overblower Don in funky funky North Philly the other night? Did you, then, perhaps, also mark the triple-decker peanut-butter deluxe Clif Bar nutburger behind him? Yes, the gentleman on the right (Trump's left) with the quaker beard.

I feel like Trump employs the former casting director of Justified to get crowds behind him at rallies. It's as though he singles out the most snaggletooothed [sic], outre, Southron Gothic nondescripts he can get to attend his rallies. It's like he's thinking, "Who are the most ridiculous, upsetting-looking vermin I can locate and exploit?" In the old days Barnum loosed good Johnny Greenwood on the wider world to "curate" exaggerations and distortions from humanity's terrific warp, woof and tapestry. Barnum had "agents" to plunder the exotic countries for the shock of the new the exotic the unprecedented.  Does Trump have a John Greenwood hired exclusively to chase up these hare-lipped cloven-hoofed wights wyverns and mermen? Or –– awful thought –– could it be a natural fact that anybody who attends a Trump rally does so because they are already warped, distorted, exaggerated, possess tails &c. &c. &c.? Made vile and mean by the poxy souls within them?

Like in comics shops, are the faithful brethren there every Wednesday (in the "variants queue" even) because they were teased at school and did they became comics readers as an inevitable result? Or did reading comics stunt and gnarl their natural growth &c. &c. &c.?

* * * * * * * * * * *

Trump at CPAC. He went "off-script" and started rabble-rousing the audience (or, if you are unkind, the "rabble"). In his delirium he flailed wildly about for a Nazi flag but couldn't find one alas. A thing that he did instead was to make a quip and then point at people in the audience. "I see you." "I see you, laughing with me." "You and I are alike." "You and I are kindred spirits." When did this pointing motif begin and what is its purpose? I know Hillary Clinton did it too. But Trump is the most blatant demagogue ever. He is like demagoguery from central casting. When he had quite  finished pointing at the audience, he clapped gently with a smug look on his face, before crucially playing with his mic and mic stand.

By the way, did you see Rick Gates's contrite look? He grew a beard. It suits his new mood of gravity and candour. Is he to go out also in sackcloth and ashes, a penitente even, flogging himself in the street with a cat o' nine tails?

Meanwhile... Laura Coates looked great this week on Don Lemon.

"Melanesia."

"Love is lovely."  U-ROY.

Irritated my wife badly by perfectly reasonably pointing out that Melania is the best looking First Lady in the history of the "form".

"Say what you will..." I began –– always a bad start.  I put all the obloquy on hold for a moment to remark, magnanimously, "He's a lousy feral shitbird of a Prez, he's a spoilt child AWOL in possession of a golfcart on the world stage, he possesses a negative Amazon rating for charm, wit and a hairstyle, he wears clown shoes in bed, all that I concede, but it remains that his wife is the best looking wife a President ever had. I don't like it any more than you do –– I wish with emotional sincerity that his wife was butt-ugly! –– but there it is. She ain't. She fine."

"Did you ever see Eleanor Roosevelt? Or 'Lady Bird' Johnson? More like 'Stag Beetle'! Sheesh, the previous holder of the title was Mistress Bush. No not that amateur sumo wrestler Barbara –– I'm talking about Laura! Jackie Kennedy was not even in the running. She wore her eyeballs on the actual sides of her head."

I resisted saying, "It is what it is."

I also wisely resisted continuing by arguing with my wife that Stormy Daniels is not, as my wife claims, a "hook-nosed blowtard," and that I actually albeit very sheepishly found her quite attractive too.

I will say absolutely nothing about Ivanka.