Early on Monday a colleague of mine messaged me with a link to a Politico article detailing how Russian intelligence has allegedly gathered kompromat on about 2,300 well-known American media personalities and politicians, apparently in conjunction with Vladimir Putins ongoing effort to subvert American democracy.
My political writer friend added, This is scary. What do you think will happen?
Nothing, I wrote back. Not as long as Trump insists this is nothing more than a scam by the Democrats because Hillary lost.
We cant repeat this enough: The United States and our democratic institutions were attacked by a hostile foreign power, yet President Donald Trump refuses to do a damn thing about it. Not only is he still infuriatingly chummy with the Russians, gifting them (without reciprocation) classified intelligence inside the Oval Office and reopening housing compounds that serve as bases for Russian spies.He wont even acknowledge as legitimate the very basic nut of the story, that Russia hacked the 2015-16 election cycle. Never mind the question of possible collusion for now. The Russians attacked us and theres copious evidence to prove it.
Imagine if, in the wake of 9/11, the George W. Bush White House had refused to accept that the attack even occurred. The entire world would have thought Bush had lost his mind or that our entire nation was caught in the grip of mass delusion.
Either way, Trump is behaving as if a series of ongoing events that were palpably real werent so at all. Those of us who have followed Trumps ridiculousness since the 1980s know that hes perpetually full of crap. For example, theres his statement,Trump Steaks are the worlds greatest steaks and I mean that in every sense of the word. But as a presidential candidate, and subsequently as the countrys chief executive, his world of make believe is unparalleled. Everything orbiting in Trumps universe a universe that includes his 62 million voters along with Fox News is a fantasy.
Everything thats real is fake and everything thats fake is real.
Trump held a Cabinet meeting on Monday morning wherehe asked his department-level secretaries to offer allegedly unsolicited praise for him and to express effusive gratitude for the honor of serving Trump personally. The usually stoic CNBC reporter John Harwood described the meeting by saying,Honestly this is like a scene from the Third World. Indeed. Vice President Mike Pence said serving Trump was the great honor of [his] life. (Pence has three children, by the way, whose births must be way downon the list of honors.) Chief of staff Reince Priebus, whos fighting for his job, said, Thank you for the blessing youve given us. Yes, Im sure its quite a blessing to be in charge of scooping the rhetorical feces from the cage of a clownish supervillain who needed four tries to correctly spell hereby.
The Cabinets gooey, over-the-top praise was cloying and artificial, but in Trumps world of make believe the president and his disciples were sufficiently fluffed, injecting every word of the Cabinets Eddie Haskell-ish ass kissing into the news cycle. Insofar as perception is reality, we can assume it worked on the faithful. If all these serious people think Trump is the greatest president God ever created, then it must be true!
Likewise, Trump expects everyone to believe there might be tapes of his one-on-one meetings with former FBI Director James Comey. Knowing Trump and the mendacity of his online blurtings, its safe to say there arent any tapes even though (to coin a phrase), Lordy, I hope there are tapes. If the tapes exist, hed release them. But releasing the tapes is irrelevant because as long as his base believes Comey is what Trump claimed a crazy, cowardly grandstander whos obviously lying about the meetings then pretending that such tapes might exist is enough for the voters who matter.
What else?
Contrary to Trumps world of make believe, there werent 3million illegal Hillary Clinton voters, nor did former President Barack Obama have Trumps wires tapped. The tax reform bill Trump says is being negotiateddoesnt actually exist. The American Health Care Act (also known as Trumpcare) will not provide health insurance to more people and will ultimately leavetens of millions of peoplewith no coverage, among other terrible things. His tweets about the travel ban wont help his chances in court and only make matters worse for the future of his executive order.
Meanwhile, Trump praised hisrecord on jobs so far: While 1.1 million new jobs have been created since Election Day, 1.3 million jobs were created during the previous seven months during former President Barack Obamas administration. (Trump has also forgotten about the supposedly real unemployment rate he mentioned so often during the campaign.) Trump insists the Democrats are feckless, rudderless failures who cant get anything doneyet theyre also effectively obstructing his entire agenda despite the fact that the GOP controls everything. And sorry, James Comey is telling the truth.
I could do this all day. Nothing Trump says is real or accurate nothing. Even discussing his statements as if theyre mere off-the-shelf political lies serves to only normalize him when, in fact, what hes doing is galactically destructive. The world has lost faith in Americas leadership or is losing it fast. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe Trump has gone bye-bye. Why? Because his fictitiousness is so completely obvious that we have no choice but to wonder whether hes mentally fit to lead. (Hes not.) He seems to sincerely believe that his kooky outbursts and cartoonish threats sound legitimate when anyone with a brain knows hes tilting at windmills even some of his core supporters.
Congressional Republicans are excusing Trumps loony behavior, for the moment, as the consequences of his being new to the job, arguing that his rookie stature is the source of his nonstop flailing. Im all in favor of any excuses that underscore the presidents massive incompetence, thanks. But the GOP seems to forget that Trump has acted like this for his entire career. He sculpts his own reality to compensate for his endless roster of inadequacies.
But before too long and I hope this is true the president and his supporters will be blindsided by reality. Sometime soon, Trump will be fully exposed for his part in the Trump-Russia attack whether as a willing participant or a conspirator after the fact, orchestrating the cover-up. No fairy tales from his Twitter feed will dig him out. The story has to end this way. Trump and all Trumps men have to be held accountable, otherwise we might as well resign ourselves to believing our democracy is owned and operated by the Kremlin. We cant allow Trumps delusions to become American delusions. The bedtime story Trump is telling has to end and end the right way or else.
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