Michelle Goldberg writes that Bob Woodward's tapes of Donald Trump reveal something we didn't know about him:
The president doesn’t sound ignorant or deluded. Rather, he sounds uncommonly lucid. On Feb. 7, Trump described the virus as airborne and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” adding, “this is 5 percent versus 1 percent, or less than 1 percent.” It’s not clear whether Trump thought that Covid-19 had a 5 percent case fatality rate — a number that seemed plausible in February — but he clearly knew that compared with the flu, it was several times more likely to kill.
There a common perception that Trump is a bumbling fool. And, while it may be true that he was a fool to talk with Bob Woodward, the fact remains that throughout the pandemic Trump has known what he was doing:
Publicly, Trump kept insisting that the virus would disappear. Privately, he told Woodward: “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
Trump lied to the country about the calamity that would soon overtake it. His administration didn’t ramp up a national testing or contact-tracing program. He and his supporters pressured states to open up prematurely. A July Pew poll found that only 46 percent of Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican Party considered the coronavirus a major threat to public health, compared with 85 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners. Trump could have made Republicans take the virus seriously. He chose not to.
It’s now clear that just because Trump is lying to us, that doesn’t mean he’s lying to himself.
So what does that tell us? Put bluntly, it tells us that Trump is truly a malevolent force. Woodward's book comes on the heels of Mary Trump's book. Former FBI agent Peter Stzrok has just published a book. And there will be more books published before the election. Americans can't claim that they didn't know who the man was. If they refuse to send Trump and his enablers into the dustbin of history, they will stand convicted of collective malevolence.
Image: You Tube
8 comments:
I was struck by that same impression when I heard the recordings. Trump did seem quite lucid. Then again senility can set in slowly beginning with intervals of confusion between longer periods of normalcy.
Whatever it's clear that Trump was clear-headed in his call with Woodward. He knew all he needed to know and thereafter he knowingly lied to the American people. There aren't many countries where the populace is brought up to revere their president but Trump has managed to transform that reverence to transform his presidency into a cult. The Gullibillies are just that. He speaks, they heed. That's a sickness.
The illness goes far beyond Trump, Mound. It's a collective illness. We should remember that all republics have been destroyed from within.
"There a common perception that Trump is a bumbling fool. And, while it may be true that he was a fool to talk with Bob Woodward, the fact remains that throughout the pandemic Trump has known what he was doing . . . "
That's the puzzle, isn't it? Trump displays much psychotic behaviour yet we get snippets that he is so smart. Are we watching an act? If an act, which is it, the dementia or the brains?
Madness is a strange malady, Toby. Madmen veer between intelligent insight and complete gibberish.
After Trump's rally in Tulsa, I thought that he may be evil. But "evil" goes beyond what we can know about another person. Most certainly he is VILE, and maybe because he seduced an entire political party to support and protect him regardless of what he did, he might be considered a kind of Anti-Christ.How do you suppose his religious base would respond to that description?
CD
Don't forget this is the same guy Tillerson called a "fucking idiot." Others have been equally outspoken about his limited attention span and other mental issues.
Trump's cooperation with Woodward on 'Rage' after Woodward's earlier book 'Fear' has been put down to Trump's instinct that the way to fix problems is 'more Trump.' This was apparently a call placed to Woodward by Trump. In that case Trump would have prepared points he wanted to convey to Woodward. I expect he would have been able to do that coherently even if it was lunacy to say these things at all.
I have observed, CD, that much evil has been done in Christ's name.
It's remarkable, Mound, how the maddest of madmen can sound perfectly sane.
Post a Comment