When I got home last night, Bob called and asked me if I’d seen Trump’s press conference. No, I was driving home, but I heard the BBC News relay the story of a “bad-tempered press conference” and their network’s analyst say about Trump’s comments about the inflammatory situation in Charlottesville: “He poured kerosene on the fire and danced around it.” (Leave it to the BBC to be both serious and seriously droll.)
I did get to see the press conference in full thanks to MSNBC re-running it. Stunned, yes. Surprised, not at all. After watching Monday’s hostage video, I could tell that this was what was really in him and all it took was a question from a reporter at a photo op about infrastructure to blow the lid off.
If you didn’t know that this was what truly is what he is, then let me say welcome back from the Delta Quadrant; there’s a lot that’s been going on while you’ve been away. We’ve got a Nazi sympathizer in the White House. And I don’t mean a guy who secretly sneaks a peek at “Triumph of the Will” or has a collection of back-issues of Völkischer Beobachter. I’m talking about a person who thinks there were “nice people” marching with tiki torches to rally to chants of “Blood and Soil,” a popular tune from the heady days of Nuremberg in 1938. His attempt to equate both sides and blame them equally is roughly equivalent to saying the Americans were the aggressors when they came ashore on D-Day. And his contempt for both the truth and the people who believe in reality is just the cherry on top of the nutbar sundae.
Charlie, over to you.
All the hinges are gone now. The rails are far behind. The trolley is missing and presumed lost. The president* came down to the lobby of his Manhattan tower, ostensibly to sign an executive order on “infrastructure.” He then took questions and we all went on a magic carpet ride through what he really thinks about the events in Charlottesville last weekend. For three days, whatever sensible people remain at Camp Runamuck have been trying to find some way to run damage control on the president*’s initial, ridiculous non-response to those events, whereupon, on Tuesday, the president* stepped up to the mic and blew all that work into tiny bits. Quite simply, the only president* we have lost his shit so badly on live TV that he’ll never be able to find it again.
It’s been said so many times it’s become like a subliminal hum from under the house: this has got to be the last straw. It was said after his insult of John McCain as a POW; it was said after he went after the Khans at the Democratic Convention; it was said after the pussy-grabbing tape; it was said after the Russian connection blew open; it was said after he fired James Comey, and on and on. But when he normalized Nazis rioting on the streets of America, this may be the time the wheels really ran off the rails. One could only hope, because how much worse could it get? Do you really want to find out?
And still . . . Mitch McConnell went “tut tut, naught boy”. CEOs of major corporations are clinging to their posts on advisory boards and such for the purpose, they say, of getting something done about taxes and regulations. Business before morality or self-respect, apparently.
No Republican in office is really going to let him have it — there will be general statements condemning racism, such as we’ve already seen from the likes of Paul Ryan, and then they’ll get back to the business of poisoning the water and air, putting money in the offshore accounts of the .1%, taking science out of the public school science curriculum — and getting rid of public schools while they’re at it: in other words, business as usual.
And the press will find another shiny object to obsess on.