Next Saturday, August 17, Photo Opportunist Dan Forest will officially launch his campaign for governor. We say "officially" because running for governor is pretty much all Dan Forest has done since he was elected to the least relevant job in state government. Week in and week out, Forest slimes around the state, getting his picture taken by lily white interns standing next to people who seldom realize they're being mugged.

We received an email from the Cooper campaign with a headline that hit the nail on the head: Prepare for the worst. That's because Dan has gone full nativist on the people of North Carolina. He's not just taken a page from Trump's filthy playbook, Forest has memorized the whole damn thing. Lie when you can, and even when you can't. Declare yourself the Second Coming and parade your faux-Christian values like a whore in one of Trump's hotels. Get people to like you by helping them to hate one another. And spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars pretending you're carrying out the people's business.

And that's not even the worst of it. Forest is already sucking up millions from out-of-state Republicans who don't want their tax breaks threatened. It's a simple as that. Those donors don't care about our clown in the lieutenant governor's office, all they want is a stooge who will represent their greedy interests.

To have any chance at all, Forest has to double down on his affection for the Rapist in Chief. He doesn't care about Trump's abject lack of morality and decency, he just wants to get elected, a lesson he got from his Amway mama. But you won't know that from his happy talk, You won't know that Forest was born with a whole table setting of silver spoons in his mouth, he'll be shucking and jiving and ya'lling and hush-puppying 24/7 from now till next November. And you can be sure, some drone from inside his campaign will be there photographing his every move.