President Donald J. Trump
After yesterday’s Presidential press conference with Trump and Columbian President Juan Manuel Santos, which devolved into a crackdown of the press hijacking their facetime with Trump to ask him about the Russia investigation, I’m beginning to think we’re watching a great tragedy unfold to a satisfying conclusion.
Donald Trump, who holds the office of President, whose life defines absolute greed and ambition, who has won the ultimate position of authority in the world, which by definition (and which he could never understand) demands accountability.
And this is the one characteristic he’s avoided in life like the plague. As a private citizen he’s built an empire hiding behind lies and accusations that benefited him when driving those narratives in private board rooms and in the press. The mainstream media would print his bold and defamatory statements as if he were dictating to an iPad. Over many decades he learned how to manipulate and control his message.
Now tactics he’s used for a lifetime, impulsive grand deceit, defamation of character, denials which stymied lawsuits, obstruction which confounded creditors, forced court cases to settle and pressured laborers to take drastic pay cuts, are having the reverse effect. He’s living in a nightmare where every one of his actions is tracked. There are endless documentations of his every move. Sources mention that he asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation which is obstruction of justice. He’s taken more than one golf trip a week in first 100 days, far outpacing the previous President whom he criticized for it, and is on track to set a new record in travel expenses that will exceed Obama’s eight years in his first. His TrumpCare health bill which he promised as superior to Obamacare would knock 24 million off insurance. He allowed Russian ambassadors into the oval office without American media but with Russian media. The exhaustive list of unethical misbehavior goes on and on.
Every one of his statements is compared to the last, every raucous tweet and declaration catalogued and archived and his lying pathology is now in full relief. As White House officials find themselves constantly responding with excuses for each blunder, the firing of Comey, which he actually imagined would be welcomed by the Democrats and the press, is the poison dart from which there is no recovery.
It is a self inflicted spider bite from one of the deadliest spiders out there. And he doesn’t have the antidote for his own poison. The same vitriolic bile that he has sprayed at accusers and enemies in the past with skilful precision to move the spotlight from him to anyone else, is precisely the toxin that is killing his current office. Unable to learn, adapt, or admit the necessity of either, as by his definition that would appear weak, he doubles down on the same misguided moves that have saved him in the past. The media that he has counted on to be continually muted and mindlessly impartial in the face of a torrent of deceit, has suddenly turned to fact checking and demanding clarity where as a private citizen he never had to concern himself with either.
He knows how bad it is. A lifetime of back channel dealing with a casual disregard for laws and regulations don’t deprogram easily. And none of his tricks have derailed the investigation into what appear to be historic treasonous actions by him and his campaign staff with Russian assets many times during the election cycle.
After aides issue statements subscribing reason to this irrational move, Trump reversed his position hours later throwing all his supporters under the bus.
This flailing wildly is the mad exasperation of a control freak trying to change a media narrative he’s always been able to control, but which now defiantly remains fixed on his transgressions. His stale playbook of impulsive twists and turns that shattered his enemies strategies in the past, are only making his current situation worse.
His panic and bad judgment increase in magnitude with each day. His continued protestations to being investigated now only serve to increase the focus on him; and what is becoming the tenuous grip he has on retaining his Presidency.
His reign will be one of the shortest lived, and he will, like Nixon before him, attempt to dodge the bullet he loaded, aimed at himself and fired, slinking off stage and out of history as the most inept, divisive and abusive President who ever attained office.
The memory of inadequacy, cruelty and ineptness at the job will fade in time, until his name is reduced to nothing more than a slang term for incompetence.
Satisfying indeed.
