In a world in which everything has devolved to threats of Mutual Assured Destruction of the "if something does not happen then the world will end" variety observed most notably with the scaremongering campaign over Brexit in which David Cameron recently went as far as suggesting that war could break out should the UK leave the EU (as well as currency collapse, recession, and some of the worst parts of the bible), it only makes sense to take whatever works and run with it.
That's what former GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, and the first of Trump's former foes to endorse him, said on Monday when he told "Fox and Friends" that America is like a "cruise ship" about to tip over "Niagara Falls," unless Republicans rally around Donald Trump.
BEN CARSON: America is like a cruise ship that is about to go off of Niagara falls with tremendous carnage and deathhttps://t.co/cVRp45XbJq
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) May 30, 2016
In other words if Hillary wins, nothing short of the apocalypse would follow according to the neurosurgeon.
"America, right now, is like a cruise ship that is about to go off of Niagara Falls with tremendous carnage and death," Carson said: "What you have to do first is recognize the problem, stop the ship, turn it around and then move in the other direction."
Carson also warned that Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, and any potential third-party candidate that gets into the race are stealing the spotlight away from Trump because of “petty little differences.”
Carson's bashing of the potential Libertarian Party threat continued: "A quarter of a century ago, another Clinton was running for the White House and it was the entrance of a third-party candidate, Ross Perot, that made it possible for him to win,” Carson said. "Now, wouldn’t it be ironic if the same thing happened this time? Wouldn’t we be smart to learn from things that have happened in the past?”
"I’m hoping that whoever that third-party candidate is will stop for a moment and think about what the implications are of allowing Hillary Clinton or someone like her to get in there,” he continued. “They get two to four Supreme Court picks and completely change the nature of this country and destroy the prospects for their children and their grandchildren to have the same opportunities that they had."
Considering the Libertarian Party, in its current iteration, feels the odd urge to sabotage itself in the most disastrous manner, such as last night when the candidate for chairman decided to do a striptease on live TV during the party's Orlando convention and got undressed to his underwear, Carson probably has nothing to fear from a libertarian party third party challenge.
Meanwhile, as Carson was predicting doom and gloom should Trump not win, across the Atlantic the most famous physicist alive today, Stephen Hawking, also chimed in on the US presidential race, when he called Trump "a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator,” during an appearance on the United Kingdom’s ITV network. He added that the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is a mystery.
We can understand Hawking's confusion: after all it was only a month ago when official polls discovered that Hawking was in fact dead wrong when as Reuters reported, among Trump's supporters were America's "wealthiest, best-educated voters":
Trump's sweep of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island on Tuesday included wins in some of the richest and best-educated counties in the country - like Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Newport County, Rhode Island - and added to victories in his more traditional strongholds of white working-class neighborhoods.
Exit polls from Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland showed Trump winning about half of Republican voters with college degrees, and over half of Republican voters making more than $100,000 a year.
“On its face, it is hard to believe he’d be improving with a demographic group that has been so averse to his style, his denigrating language,” said Randall Miller, a professor of American politics at Saint Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania.
It appears that in addition to making a mockery of the mainstream media, Trump also managed to stump even the supposedly smartest person alive on earth.
But while Hawking may be truly a brilliant mind when it comes to cosmology and theoretical physics, his political beliefs seem to be shaped by mainstream media: during the same television appearance, Hawking urged British voters to vote in favor of keeping the U.K. in the European Union. The much-discussed “Brexit” vote is scheduled for June 23 and a vote to leave the EU would cost Great Britain in terms of its economy, national security and scientific research.
"Gone are the days we could stand on our own against the world,” he said. “We need to be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security and our trade."
At least Hawking refrained from postulating of an alternate reality in which Trump is president and a terminal cosmological event is the consequence.
Threats about the end of the world in which a majority has elected Trump (or vice versa) aside, we are more curious what Trump's reaction to Hawking's statement will be, in what will hardly be a fair contest. And speaking of unfair contests, much more than Trump vs Hawking, we are already looking forward to the inevitable slamdown that will follow once Trump unloads on the Keynesian clown himself because as of today, none other than Paul Krugman just decided to join the anti-Trump fray. Please don't disappoint us Donald.