September 20, 2024 10:40 AM UTC

Delusional Mayor Mike Says He Can Change Trump's Mind About Aurora

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• by: Colorado Pols

As we await the details of ex-President Donald Trump’s promised campaign visit to Aurora, Colorado, motivated by discredited “crisis comms” PR on behalf of an out-of-state slumlord has “fallen” to Venezuelan gang members, the city’s Republican Mayor Mike Coffman has a serious problem. After initially helping spread the false story that apartment buildings in the city had been “taken over” by foreign gangs, Coffman has tried to change course and reel in the wildly inaccurate and economically damaging misinformation spreading about his city in predominately conservative national media outlets.

At the same time, Coffman says he will vote for Trump in the upcoming election despite Trump having turned his city into a talking point of chaos and destruction, and avoids directly criticizing the former President while making his case that Aurora is safe and open for business. As the Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul reports, Coffman and Trump have a difficult personal history that Coffman seems to have set aside, even as Trump targets his city directly:

In 2018, Coffman, a Republican, lost his seat after five terms in Congress in large part because of Trump’s unpopularity in Colorado. Coffman did his best to keep Trump at arm’s length, but 6th Congressional District voters still booted him from office, choosing Democrat Jason Crow by 11 percentage points. Crow has held the seat ever since and is expected to cruise to reelection this year…

Coffman and Trump are meeting on the political stage once again as Trump repeats the lie that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has taken over Aurora. Trump even mentioned it earlier this month during a nationally televised presidential debate as he also made false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating cats and dogs.

Trump has used Aurora and Springfield to attack Democrats on immigration.

While there have been a handful of members of the gang arrested in the city, claims that they have taken control have either been exaggerated or totally debunked. “Based on our initial investigative work, we believe reports of TdA influence in Aurora are isolated,” Aurora police said in a statement.

It’s true that Coffman tried and failed to differentiate himself from Trump during his last two runs for Congress in 2016 and 2018, and Coffman like a number of other Coloreado Republicans including Sen. Cory Gardner called on Trump to withdraw from the 2016 presidential race in the wake of the Access Hollywood revelations. But sometime between then and now, Coffman came home to MAGA. And with Trump on the way to tell his version of Aurora’s story, as Denver7’s Brandon Richard reports, fact and election-year fiction are on a collision course with Mayor Mike haplessly in the middle:

Mayor Coffman on Thursday said he is “excited” about a potential visit from the former president.

“I think it’s a great opportunity to show the president that we are not a city that is overrun by Venezuelan gangs,” said Coffman. [Pols emphasis]

In order for Coffman’s continuing support for Trump while Trump trashes his city to the entire MAGA movement to be morally conscionable, it’s necessary for Coffman to maintain the pretense that Trump cares about the truth, and might therefore be persuaded during an on-the-ground visit to Aurora to take the stage and instead tell the world that the story of the “takeover” of Aurora was totally overblown, Aurora is actually a great place to buy a home and raise a family, and sorry for stirring up such a fuss.

If you really believe there is the slightest chance of that happening, you need your head examined. Trump does not care if the stories about Aurora being “taken over” by Venezuelan gangs are true, any more than J.D. Vance cares whether the lies he’s telling about legal Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio are true. Nothing Coffman or the Aurora PD can say to Trump will change his mind, because Trump doesn’t want to change his mind. This is a campaign talking point now, and the only thing Trump will accept is confirmation of his bias.

Suppose Mike Coffman really doesn’t understand this after all these years of Trump’s depredations, of which Coffman was himself a casualty. In that case, he’s so clueless that he has no business running any major enterprise including a major American city. Because we don’t think Coffman is that stupid, the only other reasonable conclusion is that Mayor Mike thinks all of America is stupid.

When Trump comes to Aurora and sees only what he wants to see, Mayor Mike’s game will be up.