Saturday, September 12, 2020

Doing A Woodward

 


Roger Cohen  -- who is recovering from COVID -- catalogues all the things "you know" about Donald Trump:

You know that ego could not resist 18 interviews with Bob Woodward, just as you know that he spent some of those interviews detailing his lies to the American people about the virus (he preferred “to always play it down”), just as you know that he said in 2018 that the Aisne-Marne American cemetery in France he declined to visit was “filled with losers,” just as you know that in 2017 he said Haitians “all have AIDS” and Nigerian immigrants wouldn’t ever “go back to their huts.”

You know he doesn’t believe climate change is a threat, that he has done his best to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency, that he does not believe in science, that he thought “disinfectant” might knock out the virus “in a minute,” that he has hobbled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that he couldn’t care less about transgender people, that he loathes immigrants he has described as “animals,” and that he authorized the separation of thousands of immigrant children from their parents at the border. You know that in textbook totalitarian fashion, he calls a free press “the enemy of the American people.”

You know Trump thought there were “very fine people on both sides” at the 2017 neo-Nazi Charlottesville rally, and that he thinks any Jew who votes for a Democrat shows “great disloyalty,” and that he winks daily at millions of Americans who believe he is their savior from a takeover by Black and brown people, Jewish finance, cosmopolitans, and leftist radicals. You know Trump is “very much behind” President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt because he has yet to meet a dictator he does not dream of emulating. You know Trump must be compromised with President Vladimir Putin to the point of ignoring Russian bounties on American troops in Afghanistan.

You know all of this, Cohen writes, and Trump wants you to know, convinced that you will give up -- overwhelmed and defeated. But it's not enough just to know. You must also remember:

It’s important not just to know, to be aware, but to remember. It’s hard to remember. It’s like looking for the way out of a labyrinth in the mist.

It’s important to remember that Trump believes he has done more for Black Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln and that he claims he will preserve coverage for pre-existing conditions even as he is asking the Supreme Court to destroy Obamacare.  Because Trump is delusional and a world already on the brink of an armed Chinese-American confrontation may not survive a second Trump term without disaster. Nor will the oldest democracy on earth.

Trump expects to get his way. He expected to get his way with Bob Woodward. But he didn't. In less than two months, American voters can do a Woodward on Trump -- if they so choose.

Image: The New York Times

4 comments:

thwap said...

The fact that he has tried to sabotage mail-in voting during a pandemic completely removes any obligation his opponents ever had to allow him to remain in power.

But he's a symptom of a sick system. What do they put against him as his challenger? A befuddled, corrupt, authoritarian who rouses less enthusiasm than Hillary Clinton did.

A media system that has clearly poisoned the minds of 30% of the population.

Owen Gray said...

Trump is, indeed, the product of a sick system, thwap. Nonetheless, Biden may defeat him.

the salamander said...

.. Trump don't care ..
Deep in Steve Bannon mode, he 'floods the zone with shit' daily, nightly & always. One is left wondering if Bannon watched Stephen Harper do so years back and wondered that the strategy actually worked.. Just lie & cheat daily and mainly via reptilian subalterns for deniability.. "I know nothing of these things' which is now 'What the President was suggesting was blah blah woof woof'

But we should all accept that it works.. i.e. Lying your face off, bald faced with a grin.. Because it does. Credible Main Media can fall upon their fainting couches.. recover from their disbelief at the baldfaced audacity.. write diligently and earnestly.. and inform oh mebbe .001 of the population.. of which a portion will believe or not believe.. Down the road they think and vote.. or they will just vote the Party

C'est la via ..

Owen Gray said...

It's all about constant repetition, sal. Repeat the lie often enough and people get hooked. That's what Trump is all about -- droning repetition.