If you frequent the same type of internet sites as me, you have no doubt seen many posts that remark that this or that is “not the Onion”, but is in fact real. It makes you feel a bit sorry for the actual Onion, whose proprietors must be working overtime to come up with things that arethe Onion, and are somewhat more offbeat than everyday reality.
The latest example I stumbled upon was this post at Daily Kos, which notes that the following actual quote from the very stable genius is not the product of any imagination at the Onion, though it is precisely, practically to the letter, what one would expect to read there:
Trump: They have great beaches. You see that whenever they’re exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said, ‘Boy, look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo? You could have the best hotels in the world right there. Think of it from a real estate perspective. You have South Korea, you have China and they own the land in the middle. How bad is that, right? It’s great.
Warning: This is not a cartoon. It was not lifted from the Onion. This is reality.
The Injustice Department recently argued that the emoluments clause is only triggered by a direct quid for quo bribe, an ahistorical reading if ever there was one. The above quote, which apparently really is real, shows that the genius is already thinking about how he can cash in on his friendship with yet another dictator. Will Trump Tower Pyongyang be built while he’s president, or will he wait until he leaves office?
But this raises another question about the genius. The previous undisputed champion White House criminal was, to give him his due, quite crafty. Of course you don’t have to be terribly crafty to realize that you oughtn’t to come right out and admit that you have engaged in, or intend to engage in, impeachable behavior. I have seen speculation that there is some method behind the genius’s madness, and the quote above, along with so many of his tweets, raises the question of whether this could be so. Usually, the argument is that he says and does these things in a calculated effort to distract from some other bit of criminality, but why would one distract from one crime by admitting to another?
I think that for the most part statements such as the above are byproducts of his mental illness. The truly scary thing about it is that while no one in their right mind would behave like he does, he has been the catalyst for the creation of a political order that, at a minimum, tolerates this behavior, and, particularly in the alt-world of Fox and Russian bots, rewards it. There is not a single Republican who calls him out for this behavior (“I’m sad about this” tweets don’t count) and the Democrats have utterly failed to develop a narrative that highlights and effectively attacks his mendacity, criminality, and authoritarianism.
As a side note, my current book is Robert Dallek’s biography of FDR. Dallek notes that throughout FDR’s presidency the Republicans attacked him as a potential dictator, and though FDR, in fact, stayed pretty firmly within constitutional bounds and norms, the attacks were often politically effective. The Democrats should certainly concentrate their fire on issues like health care (particularly given the recent gift of Session’s refusal to defend the pre-existing conditions provision of Obamacare), but that shouldn’t stop them from developing a line of attack that makes the point that Trump’s criminality and authoritarianism, and the criminality and corruption of his cabinet, are hurting everyone. Think back to Republican’s smears of Democrats like Max Cleland, tying him to Osama bin Laden. It worked. It would be no smear to say that Trump’s best pals are the worlds worst dictators, at the same time that he can’t get along with a Canadian.
Anyway, back to my main point. I think Trump’s tendency to say and do things that we would ordinarily expect to read about only in the Onion(or maybe Mad), are byproducts of his mental illness. But then, Hitler’s actions were probably byproducts of his. If our system can’t effectively deal with a mad president, then we are in serious trouble.
UPDATE: I saw this after the above was written. More proofof some sort of mental problem: Trump tells the truth about his intention to lie when Kim doesn’t live up to the promises he never actually made:
In a press conference on day two in Singapore, Trump told the media that he trusts Kim will begin to dismantle his nuclear weapons program as well as its testing site.
But if the president is wrong, he may never admit it.
“I may be wrong. I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong,’” Trump told reporters. “I don’t know if I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse.”
Also not from the Onion.