The ‘rig’ is up

If the system is rigged against Donald Trump as he claims, it mucked up yesterday when the Department of Health and Human Services which is, if I’m right on this (and I am), headed by an appointee of President Obama who is supporting Hillary Clinton, announced that those on Obamacare are facing a rate hike.

If you’re a good conspiracy, that’s not something you want announced two weeks before Election Day when the momentum is with you. A good conspiracy would hold that news at least 14 days.

And that is something that seems to have reminded Trump that elections are largely about policy or at least the hint that policy is important, a hint he is only just getting it seems.

I don’t want to overstate the case — okay, I do — but if Trump rails, and he does, about the system being rigged — voting, media, policy — against him, why would the Great Left Wing Conspiracy allow such an announcement of rate hikes to be made two weeks before the election when everything seems to be going Hillary Clinton’s way? Would seem to be a buzz kill for her. And a possible momentum changer.

I want to overstate it because the system is not rigged against Donald Trump. Put the media aside a minute…wait, don’t. The media also is not rigged against him. The media was his best friend early in his primary candidacy when they over-covered his rally speeches, giving him hours of free time while he spent very little money to publicize his brand, uh, I mean his candidacy. And, he still is getting the bulk of the air time, albeit it not all positive.

Former President Clinton’s visit with the attorney general on the tarmac some months ago was ill-advised but my guess is not aimed at helping out his wife’s troubles with investigations at the time. The attacks on Mosul are not about the campaign — I hope that if Mr. Trump ever did have a role in war-making putting the lives of our sons, daughters, mothers and fathers at risk — he wouldn’t make such decisions based on the election calendar. (By the way, Mr. Trump, hard to spring a surprise attack on a city surrounded by desert but I know you knew that since you know more than the generals).

It isn’t all a conspiracy, Mr. Trump. And I’m not sure if that’s you talking or your senior advisors who have made their livings off conspiracy theories and will return to that profit-making venture in two weeks. (I’m talking to you Steve Bannon and David Bossie.)

Trump is, as we all know, about his “brand.” That’s why he’s used his properties as backdrops for press conferences and speeches for the last year. That’s why he was at his Miami golf course yesterday when he called upon his employees to speak highly of him in public — I won’t even go there on how objective these folks were being with the boss and national media looking on. And that is why he is appearing at the (second) grand opening of his swanky D.C. hotel today. (Uh, Mr. Trump, you aren’t going to win the District of Columbia in next week’s voting, so why not go to a state where you have a chance? Oh, I know, because you have a new hotel that’s already lowering its room rates.)

So let’s forget about the “rigged” system. There’s no more a Great Left Wing Conspiracy now than there was a Great Right Wing Conspiracy when Hillary Clinton was talking about one when the shoe was on the other foot some decades ago.