You call yourself a responsible, well-informed citizen, do you? Well, well, well. I just wonder.
Have you really done all you can to stay informed? Have you, may I ask, read all the recent books that have come out describing the incompetence and malfeasance of the Trump administration? Have you, for example, read Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough, John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig’s A Very Stable Genius, Norman Eisen’s A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump, Brian Stelter’s Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, Jeffrey Toobin’s True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigations of Donald Trump, Jim Sciutto’s The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, Michael Cohen’s Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump, Michael Schmidt's Donald Trump vs. the United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President, Peter Strzok's Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump? And finally, have you pre-ordered Bob Woodward’s Rage which is scheduled for release next Tuesday?
You haven’t? Then shame on you.
OK, I’m kidding. Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief. Because, let’s be realistic, there are just too many of these tomes for any of us to read. This is surely the first time in American publishing history that the number of books flying off the publishing house presses with tales of White House criminality and stupidity is so daunting that no normal reader could possibly get through them all. There are literally more accounts of sleazy administration schemes and indecent enterprises than there are masks at a Trump political rally. Even the best-informed citizen does not have the time to absorb them all. And note that I only listed the books published this summer.
Frankly, I don’t take the time to read all these accounts partly because life is too short and partly because they all tell the same basic story, a story that those of us who are paying attention and who are not mesmerized by Fox News’s bubble of unreality know all too well: Donald Trump is a pathological liar, a bigot, a misogynist, and a malignant narcissist who cares only about himself and considers the people who support him a bunch of pathetic dupes.
It’s also worth remembering that in addition to being a grossly unethical individual, he is also an incompetent ignoramus. During a tour of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, where the remains of over 1.000 sailors lie entombed, Trump turned to his chief of staff and asked, “Hey John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?”*
Yes, that is our man in the Oval Office: one of the few American adults who doesn’t understand the significance of Pearl Harbor. But why should he know about Pearl Harbor, given his reported characterization of fallen servicemen and women as “losers” and “suckers?” If you fight and die for your country, or for democracy itself, you’re just another pathetic dupe in Trump’s world.
Now, just after The Atlantic magazine reported on Trump heaping contempt on fallen servicemen and women, along comes another shocking indictment: Bob Woodward’s description of Trump concealing the seriousness of the coronavirus from the public as far back as last February. Trump claims that he concealed what he knew about the virus because he didn’t want to “create panic.” Obviously he is lying yet again, since creating panic – about the Mexican border, about minorities moving into the suburbs, about Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and so forth – is one of his favorite things.
In fact, he really hid the seriousness of the virus because he wanted to nurse the economy along in the hope that an ongoing strong economy would help him get re-elected. For further confirmation of this, see all the accounts (or at least some of them) in the books listed above: story after story of Trump’s pathological lying, malignant narcissism, and utter selfishness.
But his narcissism may be his Achilles Heel. It was his craving to be in the glow of the spotlight that induced him to let Bob Woodward record hours and hours of his ramblings. He clearly thought he was such an impressive guy that only good would come from such an exercise. He was mistaken.
Let me wrap up by mentioning the one book from my list that I actually did take the time to read: Brian Stelter’s Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.
I was particularly interested in Stelter’s work because media analysis is his thing and it’s one of my things too. In fact, I make it a point to watch his Sunday show on CNN, Reliable Sources.
As the book’s subtitle suggests, Hoax highlights the enduring (and un-American) mutual support that Fox and Trump have provided for each other. I say un-American because the way Fox serves Trump is similar to the way The People’s Daily and other government media in China serve the Communist Party leaders. Like Trump, many Fox shows (not all of them) are shamelessly dishonest in their Trump-promoting fanaticism. Two of the worst offenders are Fox and Friends in the morning and Hannity at night. Stelter not only describes the shameful dishonesty of Hannity and Trump’s other Fox friends, but he lays out in detail the way this relationship evolved, starting some 20 years ago. It’s a fascinating tale and a very troubling one.
I believe, that when we think of the damage that Trump has done to this country as a whole, and specifically to the families whose lives were shattered by the coronavirus, we should not forget that he couldn’t have done it alone. He needed, of course, a gaggle of corrupt and cowardly Republican senators, but even more than them, he needed Hannity and company.
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P.S. BTW, I talked about Fox’s pernicious influence in an earlier post, Stupidity Loves Company.
*As reported in Rucker and Leonnig’s A Very Stable Genius.
