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The leading GOP presidential candidate declared his passion for violence on Thursday during a morbid, 95-minute, stream-of-consciousness rant in Fort Dodge, Iowa, a speech that was truly bananas, even by Trump’s standards. What separated this invective from so many others, though, was Trump’s near-psychotic advocacy for war, torture and killing. At one point, he even invited an audience member — any audience member — to stab him in the stomach with a knife. At Tuesday’s debate, Trump doubled down on his absurdly cruel proposal to deport all of the nearly 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally. Mexican immigrants were deported by ship in conditions comparable to that of “an eighteenth century slave ship,” according to a congressional investigation. Hundreds of thousands of people were dumped across the border in extreme heat that killed some of them. Trump made his indifference to suffering and death even more clear on Thursday, when he ticked off the punishments meted out to immigrants in other countries. “If you cross the United States border illegally, you get a job, you get a drivers license, you get food stamps, you get a place to live, you get health care, housing, child benefits and in many cases education,” he continued. Captured by the Taliban, he was beaten, confined to a cage and locked in chains. Released last year in a prisoner swap, Bergdahl was charged with endangering troops and desertion. To demonstrate his incredulity, Trump proceeded to flop his own belt up and down onstage in a spurt of folly that in a sane world would become the Donald’s very own Dean Scream doom story.
