We are witnessing what might become the most curious re-election strategy ever concocted.

Donald Trump seeks a second term as president by campaigning against his own record. He will say he has done things he hasn’t done. Trump will insist that all is going well in a country beset by a killer pandemic and an economic collapse. Trump will contend that we have ended street violence when in fact it is as bad as it’s been in 50 years.

All of this demonstrably verifiable. How in the world does Donald Trump seek to tell this nation that life is good when it clearly is nothing of the sort?

He cannot do it. Does that guarantee that Joe Biden will defeat him in the presidential election that is just 47 days away? Not at all. Trump has proven himself capable of electoral magic tricks, which he pulled off in winning the White House in 2016.

Trump keeps boasting about creating the greatest economy in U.S. history. He didn’t create a thing. He inherited an economy on the rebound. What happened? Well, the pandemic arrived in early 2020 and it all went straight to hell. Meanwhile, Trump talked it down, fed us a ration of lies about how he had the virus “under control.” Yep, and the nearly 200,000 deaths that have ensued didn’t really occur.

Street violence? He told us in his 2017 inaugural that the “American carnage” would end. It hasn’t. African Americans have died at the hands of police officers. Other Americans have protested those deaths. The protests have turned violent. More Americans have died. And, oh yes, we also have suffered through mass shootings in churches, night clubs, shopping centers. Yet the president insists he will restore “law and order.” If not now, when?

I am waiting to hear a vision from Trump about what he intends to do in a second term, which I hope with all I have within me won’t occur. Instead, I keep hearing about what he has done in the unfinished term when my own eyes and ears tell me a totally different story.

The record is out there for all to see.