So, the midterms have come and gone, and the big story, pretty obviously, was flipping of the House of Representatives. The Democrats now hold the majority, which, if we’re honest, was probably the best we could have hoped for. But honestly, for me, the more entertaining news came the morning after. Donald Trump tends to go a little train-wreck-y during press conferences, which is always fun to watch, but this time…It was something a little more. I don’t know how to place it, because Donald Trump doesn’t have normal, human reactions to things. His temper was short, and the totality of his bluster was just lots of shouting about how things were basically totally fine. He really went to town on Jim Acosta, and then called a black, female, journalist from PBS, by the name of Yamiche Alcindor, a racist for asking about the empowering effect to White Supremacists of Trump referring to himself as a nationalist. He talked about war stances and threatened everyone under the sun who might possibly investigate him. He was pretty clearly having a moment of reflection at the worst possible time, and I think he came to some troubling realizations. Also, no one seems to have told Trump that the House basically has carte blanche to ask for any tax returns they want. So yeah. It’s been an interesting week.
The popular narrative in recent times that the far right is doing their level best at perpetuating is that the Democrats and the left are a bunch of intolerant, violent, hooligans who love crime and violence. You see, the GOP and Trump can’t pretend that the nation isn’t radically divided. Trump can certainly lie about a lot of things and do it right to people’s faces, but even he can’t tell his base that massive protests over his behavior and GOP politics aren’t happening. But they can tell people that it’s because the Left is angry and violent. And it’s an easy lie to buy into, because the left is indeed angry. We’re angry at how good people are being treated. We’re angry on behalf of the people that politicians are hurting, even if those people aren’t angry themselves. The GOP sell this idea of the liberals and left being the great dividers of that nation, while at the very same time calling democrats criminals who can’t be trusted, calling the media the enemy of the people. And as of last week, it’s pretty clear which side is quick to jump to violence. How many bombs have to be sent or innocent people killed in synagogues before it becomes clear where the problem lies? Even now, conservative media is selling the story that even despite all the violent lunatics who are working on behalf of GOP ideology, it’s the liberals who are really the violent monsters, while encouraging people to deal with liberals violently. Something’s gotta give, and I’m scared of what it looks like when it does.
Donald Trump is trying really hard to convince people that his border wall is both paid for, and under construction. Now, if you take any cursory look at the facts, than you’d know that it isn’t true. It’s not a difficult thing to disprove. And yet his base doesn’t seem to care. The Huffington Post recently did an article talking to Trump supporters about their belief in Trump’s lies over the border wall. Most of them either believed him regardless of the evidence, choosing rather to believe that Trump is more reliable than reality, or they just didn’t care. They didn’t care that he was lying about the border wall, because it’s the lie they want to hear, and the lie, I suppose, is better than nothing, I guess? I don’t know. Their responses were baffling. It goes to show that in Donald Trump’s war on Truth, he’s made more headway than we seem ready to admit. And when truth ceases to matter, than we are all in a lot of trouble.
I feel like it used to be that a Presidential interview would be kind of boring. I certainly never really felt the need to pour through Obama’s interviews when he was in office. He tended to be consistent in his thinking. Bush was mostly the same. I never expected an interview with him to reveal any major bombshells. But with Donald Trump, we’re now in the era where an interview with the President is going to be full of bizarre off the cuff remarks, backtracks, wild claims, blatant fabrications, and crazy amounts of mud slinging. We’ve all seen Trump say a lot of crazy things. We’ve all read his remarks, but one of the most puzzling for me to read was in his recent Wall Street Journal interview. In it, Trump says, without any specific context, that he hasn’t implemented any tariffs. Like…ANY tariffs… His actual words are “Where do we have tariffs? We don’t have tariffs anywhere.” He then went on to say “We don’t even have tariffs. I’m using tariffs to negotiate.” So we don’t have them…but we’re using them to negotiate? And by the way, we do have Tariffs. We have them on all imported aluminum, steel, solar panels, washing machines, and almost half a trillion dollars of imports from China. I mean, is he going senile? Is he lying? Because he’s talked about how great tariffs are like a thousand times! Is this just gaslighting? What is going on?
I would never accuse Donald Trump of being a smart man. He’s petulant, impulsive, lacking in foresight and self awareness, and has the temperament of a toddler. And while I would never accuse him of understanding people on a grand level, he does know how to make people talk about the things he wants them to talk about. Controlling the narrative is a very real skill that Donald Trump possesses. It’s not entirely the media’s fault that they tend to get played by Trump. I mean, the man is the President, what he says is by all accounts the “News”, but the media seems ready and willing to continue running in whatever direction Trump points, and Trump is well aware of that. In what has been a catastrophic week of domestic terrorism that Trump and the GOP can credibly be accused of helping incite, it was in Trump’s best interest to get people to talk about something else in the week running up to the midterm elections, and by openly threatening use Presidential powers to attempt to illegally threaten to quash the 14th amendment and birthright citizenship, he effectively changed the conversation. It’s like the Jedi Mind Trick, except gross and sad.
Trump gave an interview to ABC this week, and you better believe I’m going to latch onto the tiniest fragment of it, because it is the embodiment why he is the absolute worst. “I always try to be truthful,” he said. He expanded very little on this statement, and it is a thing that literally made me shout at my computer screen. Because it’s the ultimate lie. It is the lie at the very essence of Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump is a liar. He lies regularly and blatantly. And it’s important to point out that I’m not just talking about things where he could be credibly accused of being dumb or just not knowing all the facts. Donald Trump isn’t just untruthful. HE LIES. To lie requires an intent to deceive, and he lies are the cornerstone of his presidency. He lied when he said he intended to “Drain the swamp”. We know this because he not only didn’t kick out the people in Washington that he claimed were the problem, he brought more in. The exact same, rich, entitled, classist Wall Street scumbags that he claimed he had no interest in serving. He lies about his intentions, the intentions of his opponents, the consequences of his policies, how the world views him and his actions. And the frustrating thing isn’t even that he does it, it’s that there are still an uncomfortable number of people that still believe him. History will not look kindly back at this point in history. It will be asked how someone like him rose to power, how anyone could have believed his lies, and there won’t be a good answer.
You know, with the plot to smear Robert Mueller, I can practically hear wheels turning in the heads of the monsters trying to exploit the #MeToo movement in the grossest way possible. In the wake of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, right wing operators seemed to have gotten an idea in their heads that creating a sexual assault scandal was as simple as paying people off. They didn’t seem to realize that most people are, generally speaking, decent, and won’t want to accuse an innocent man of assault. The two names you should know about in this plot are Jack Burkman ,a man with a reputation for conjuring right wing conspiracy theories, and Jacob Wohl, a young hedge fund manager/Donald Trump acolyte. These two men allegedly engineered a scam to pay women to make up false sexual assault and harassment claims. I don’t know that they were working in collusion, but the two women in question did forward their correspondence with the people who aimed to pay them off to the FBI. Reporters, who essentially only needed to go as far as Google and LinkedIN, were able to trace these claims back to Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, the two men I mentioned at the start, and, surprise surprise, these two men have been publicly claiming to have statements that would expose Robert Mueller as a sexual predator! Weirdly, it seems like neither of them were actually able to produce the supposed victims though. It’s a rough day when a bad plan falls apart.
You know, I didn’t expect to talk about Clarence Thomas and the current political climate without making a comparison of his confirmation hearing back in the 90s to Brett Kavanaugh’s this last month. But here we are! No talking about Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford! (Except for that). So Clarence Thomas spoke at some random event last week (I think it was the expansion of some judicial building or something…It makes me wonder what kind of events command his attention…) and he spoke about a number of things. Of the topics he brought up, most prescient was probably the importance of avoiding partisanship on the bench, and not being a puppet or mouthpiece for people in power. It’s admittedly hard not to see that as a jab at the Kavanaugh confirmations. Whether that was meant as an unsubtle message at his new coworker remains to be seen.
I feel like in the age of the #MeToo movement, one thing you’re kind of forced to become sensitive to, just based on it’s sheer prevalence, is when a victim is being blamed for being victimized. The idea that someone is responsible for their own harassment or assault because they didn’t act the right way, or in general be the right way is infuriating. If someone get’s attacked, the person responsible is the person who attacked them. So when Trump rails against the media, decries CNN as the “enemy of the people”, and continues to do so after his supporter send them a bomb, the idea that CNN is somehow responsible for their own misfortune is blatantly obscene. You don’t have to agree with or even like CNN, but if you can somehow decide that they brought a bomb upon themselves, and it wasn’t in any way the result of Trump being unable to take unfavorable opinions, then you and I don’t have much to talk about, because your moral compass is severely misaligned.
Let me tell you about Lana Marks. She is a fashionista who designs some of the most expensive handbags in the world. She is also a club member at Mar-A-Lago, Donald Trump’s exclusive resort. If you’re thinking to yourself “that sounds like basis for a political appointment!” then you and Donald Trump are on the same page, because he’s appointing her to be the next ambassador to South Africa. Among the previously listed qualifications, she also brings with her the keen ability to lie about her Tennis career, and a history of not paying lawyers, employees, accountants and landlords…which actually might be a qualification in Donald Trump’s eyes. She has no political or diplomatic experience at all, and she’s known to be an enthusiastic gossiper…so you know, I’m sure she’ll be fine. The lesson here is that if you want to get into politics, but avoid all the grassroots upstarting, just spend millions of dollars at Mar-A-Lago and just buy your way in!
Mind the Exit 