L’il Rubio. Big Don. Lyin’ Ted. They’re all a bunch of choke artists. And Mitt? He’s a choke artist, too.

Oh, you don’t speak Republican? This is how the conservative gang running for president talks now. It’s the new jargon – or gibberish, depending on your perspective – for members of the Peter Pan set who want to make America white again.

D-Money, Shifty and Smoothie are no match for Big Don Trump, who was in Portland on Thursday at the Westin Portland Harborview hotel before Thursday night’s debate on Fox News. People spent hours waiting in line for their “outsider” to arrive on his plush private jet and talk about the billions and billions of dollars he’s made on the backs of foreign workers. It was beautiful. Everybody had to wait and freeze – a testament to Trump’s egalitarianism.

“Nobody has done so much for equality,” he said. “You take a look at Palm Beach, Florida. I built the Mar-a-Lago Club, totally open to everybody.” Everybody! Even women who can pony up the $100,000 membership fee are welcome.

“To me he’s a breath of fresh air,” Marie Sherwood of Old Orchard Beach told the Portland Press Herald about Trump. “He speaks as it is. He says what people think.”

“Fresh” and “air” certainly sum up Trump in simple English, and “simple” is what this simpleton says.

“You politicians, you are all talk and no action,” he during last month’s CNN debate in Houston. “I’ve been watching it all my life. I mean, what I’ve seen up here. I mean, this guy is a choke artist and that guy’s a liar.” Trump pointed first at L’il Marco Rubio and then at Lyin’ Ted Cruz.

Big Don Trump uses small words, but he has big bucks and big hands – and don’t mess with his endowment.

Look what happened to poor Rubio. He challenged the size of Trump’s hands, and it wasn’t pretty.

“Look at those hands, are they small hands?” Trump asked, raising them for viewers to see Thursday night on television. “And he referred to my hands – ‘If they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”

But that wasn’t all. “He called me ‘Mr. Meltdown!’ ” cried Rubio.

Mitt Romney tried to take Trump down a notch from his home turf in Utah, but his pedigree got lost in translation. Romney is old school and doesn’t speak “chap rap.”

“Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities, the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics,” said Romney, making no mention of his hands. “We have long referred to him as ‘The Donald.’ He is the only person in the entire country to whom we have added an article before his name. And it wasn’t because he had attributes we admired.”

“I could have said, ‘Mitt, drop to your knees’ and he would have dropped to his knees,” Trump barked.

“Mitt is indeed a choke artist,” he fired on. “He choked. And he choked like I’ve never seen anyone choke.”

One thing is certain: Big Don Trump is one mean dude. Yeah, torture is a violation of international law – so what? When Trump is president, he’s going to waterboard suspected terrorists, kill their families – and “worse” – and no puny five-star general is going to stop him.

“They won’t refuse,” Trump said of the United States military. “They’re not gonna refuse me. Believe me.”

“I’m a leader, I’ve always been a leader. I’ve never had any problem leading people. If I say, ‘Do it,’ they’re going to do it,” he boasted, puffing his chest.

Believe him? But Rubio said Trump is a “con artist” who wets his pants, and Romney said Trump “is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.”

Wait, everybody who votes for Big Don Trump gets a hat?

That explains why L’il Marco Rubio, Lyin’ Ted Cruz and the other still-standing Republican presidential candidate, John Kasich, all pledged to support Trump if he wins the nomination.

Cynthia Dill is a civil rights lawyer and a former state senator. She can be contacted at:

dillesquire@gmail.com

Twitter: dillesquire