Trumpian language, like that of so many actual and wannabe-strongmen, is always overwrought, hyperbolic, and self-aggrandizing. Listen to Trump’s language or that of his surrogates and staffers, and it’s always the biggest, best, first, only. All his actions are perfect, all his thoughts are genius, all his ideas are born fully formed and intellectually unassailable. He also hits a hole-in-one every time. Oh, wait. That’s the ex-dictator father of his new bestie Kim Jong Un. The disregard for truth is also another hallmark. No one conspired with Russia. The harvest was amazing. There are no children in cages. We built more tractors than ever due to the Stakhanovite workers’ determination to exceed the Five Year Plan. The Trump family charity isn’t a criminal enterprise, but rather a source of hope for millions. Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort fetched coffee, at best.
Every authoritarian hellhole—pardon me, shithole—needs a state-run media to salute the Father of the Nation for exceeding the Five Year Plan’s Beet Harvest totals, or to praise the construction of the 3,000-mile, 500-foot tall pure-titanium Glorious All-Peoples Border Wall. State-run media must offer not only praise for His Umber Majesty but also scourge and punish any apostates. The surreal outing when a Fox News host bot demanded Marco Rubio retract his critique of Kim Jong Un because it might reflect badly on Donald Trump was one of those, “Screw it, the Westworld robots are loose, and it’s only a matter of time before they get us all” moments.
The constellation of talk radio, Fox, Infowars, Breitbart (It’s English for “Der Sturmer”), devote every moment of bandwidth not spent fellating Trump to punishing and pursuing his critics. Sean Haw Haw of Fox News spends his nightly 43 minutes of airtime between commercials for catheters, reverse mortgages, stairlift, and survival food screaming into the camera like a turgid ham with a series of denunciations that would make Beria lean back and say, “Oh, easy there, tovarish.” Judge Jeanine Pirro needs only a pink hanbok to rival North Korea’s Ri Chun-hee for paint-peeling agitprop in service to Kim Jong Don. Authoritarian states also require the sick infrastructure of informers, and enforcers, petty zampolits, petty commissars and chekists do what they do; punish deviations from the constant worship, adulation, and praise of the Dear Leader. The White House is Hobbesian snakepit, and Republican politics has become filled with denunciations of any deviation from the True Faith.
President Donald Trump reliably tells the truth on one thing: He likes the way dictators do business. “He speaks, and his people sit up at attention,” Trump said on Friday morning of North Korean despot Kim Jong Un in an interview with Fox News — a network where he receives no shortage of praise. “I want my people to do the same.” Some of the people who worked for Kim have been fired, “Fox & Friends” hype man Steve Doocy pointed out. Trump corrected him: “Fired may be a nice word.” Some less nice words: Poisoned. Blown apart by anti-aircraft guns. Sent to work camps.
It’s not that Trump isn’t aware. Fox’s Bret Baier reminded the president of Kim’s record earlier this week during their Air Force One interview en route home from the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore that Kim is “clearly executing people.” But the president blew Baier off. “He’s a tough guy. Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, tough people, and you take it over from your father I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have. If you could do that at 27 years old, I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that,” Trump explained. “I think we understand each other.” Vladimir Putin’s also a tough guy whom Trump praises for running his country well. So is Rodrigo Duterte, whose executions of drug dealers without trial in the Philippines is something Trump has said he’s looking into.
He’s spent the three years — to the day — since riding down that escalator in Trump Tower demanding loyalty, fantasizing about torture, dividing the country into “followers” and enemies. “Using even language like ‘the enemy of the people’ — it’s a Stalin phrase. People say, ‘He’s a loudmouth, he’s never had the governing experience,’” said Eric Edelman, President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Turkey during the early days of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s consolidation of power. “But what he has done is begun to stress these norms and stress them constantly, and people become inured to it.” Edelman went on: “I’ve seen this play out in Turkey, and that’s how this stuff gets normalized. And after a while, people say, OK, that’s the way it is.” This is perhaps the most important aspect of Trump’s approach: Make it seem normal. Old guardrails become distant memories. Is this time that he declared himself above the law such a big deal, or is it old news already, since he also said it last week or last month or last year?
He stocks his staff with supplicants and family members, then pits them against one another to watch them fight for his favor in a nonstop West Wing soap opera. His lawyer says, echoing Trump himself, that he could murder people and no one would be able to do anything about it unless they impeached him first. Political enemies should be investigated and jailed, Trump says. He’ll pardon whom he wants to, whomever gets his attention by running to a Fox News set. He blames it on a justice system he undercuts. He says the Department of Justice inspector general’s report “blew it,” but also that it “totally exonerates me,” with the same logic that has him attacking NFL players for kneeling during the anthem but also saying he would pardon Muhammad Ali for refusing to be drafted on his own beliefs (although Ali’s conviction was already overturned by the Supreme Court, so he doesn’t need a pardon). Debate over whether special Russia prosecutor Robert Mueller could be fired becomes a general acceptance that he probably will be — and then, among Republicans vying to demonstrate their fealty, an inevitability. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with whom Trump has openly feuded, has gotten into the act, saying that he believes Mueller should “wrap it up.”
“We should definitely be concerned,” said Steve Levitsky, who included a dictator litmus test in the first chapter of the book he co-authored, “How Democracies Die.” “Unambiguously, Trump checks off all the boxes for a very authoritarian figure.” If you’re offended, Trump and his aides say, if you disagree, if you want an explanation, you’re either an idiot or not a patriot. Free speech, by the White House’s definition last week, doesn’t cover protesting police. Trump’s press secretary and secretary of state both personally attacked reporters this week for asking for details on what the administration was doing, and in the course of it, said a number of things that were completely and clearly not true. Or maybe you didn’t realize Trump was joking. That’s a go-to line for the president and his aides.
More on the topic of fascism in America being a real threat. See this important conclusion to fall-of-the-american-empire:
So all the things happening now are of a piece. Committing atrocities at the border, attacking the domestic rule of law, insulting democratic leaders while praising thugs, and breaking up trade agreements are all about ending American exceptionalism, turning our back on the ideals that made us different from other powerful nations. And rejecting our ideals won’t make us stronger; it will make us weaker. We were the leader of the free world, a moral as well as financial and military force. But we’re throwing all that away. What’s more, it won’t even serve our self-interest. America isn’t nearly as dominant a power as it was 70 years ago; Trump is delusional if he thinks that other countries will back down in the face of his threats. And if we are heading for a full-blown trade war, which seems increasingly likely, both he and those who voted for him will be shocked at how it goes: Some industries will gain, but millions of workers will be displaced. So Trump isn’t making America great again; he’s trashing the things that made us great, turning us into just another bully — one whose bullying will be far less effective than he imagines.
Tony Schwartz, the author who ghostwrote President Trump’s famous 1987 book “The Art of the Deal,” said Saturday that the president would act like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if he were given the same authority. Schwartz, who has been highly critical of Trump’s political career, accused the president of possessing the “lack of conscience,” “sociopathy” and “inner sense of emptiness” to go down the road of a dictator if he were permitted to do so. “If Trump had the power that Kim Jong Un does … and the lack of consequence if he, quote, ‘breaks the law,’ I believe that Trump would be murdering as many enemies as Kim Jong Un does,” Schwartz said on MSNBC’s “AM Joy.”
But here’s the thing – the people who are standing by Trump right now are not people who are interested in arguments or facts. They’re supporting a man who lies with every other breath, a man who calls the press the “greatest enemy” of our country while he lauds an authoritarian dictator and shrugs off his human rights abuses. Someone who looked at a march of white supremacists where one woman was killed and said there were “very fine people on both sides”. Who called countries inhabited mostly by people of color “shitholes”. This is a president who deserves a bit of profanity. Expecting those of us who are scared and angry over what our country is becoming to speak with civility is absurd – civility died the day Trump took office. It’s like telling a woman to smile as she’s being sexually harassed on the street: we’re not just supposed to put up with injustice, we’re meant to be cheerful through it, as well.If you’re not angry enough to curse, to scream or name-call, then you’re not paying nearly enough attention. As the New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino tweeted in 2017: “Never forget to be extremely wary of every person in your life who has not experienced this last year as a personal moral emergency.” Meeting extreme injustices with polite banter plays right into the hands of this administration, because it paints their outrageous actions as just being on one side of a well-meaning debate. They’re not. This is not about disagreement, or political discourse. This is about fighting for what’s right over what is clearly and demonstrably evil. Being spittlingly angry will not drive more people to Trump and will not diminish us – the high road is about morals, not a few curse words.
Trump also misrepresented the agreement he signed with Kim, saying that it contained detailed steps for denuclearization of North Korea—it doesn’t. The other most notable moment came during the gaggle, when reporters asked Trump about a statement to The New York Times concerning a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort, along with a Russian lawyer. The president dictated the statement, as his lawyers acknowledged in a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller. That statement was false and quickly debunked. “That’s irrelevant,” Trump said Friday. “It’s a statement to The New York Times, the phony, failing New York Times. That’s not a statement to a high tribunal of judges. That’s a statement to the phony New York Times.”
In short, the president is saying that it’s totally acceptable to lie to the press, and by extension the public, as long as he is not under oath in the justice system. (As I’ve reported, Trump is far more honest under oath.) As a matter of law, this is true, but as a matter of character and leadership, it is not. The president is freely telling the public that he has no compunctions about lying through his teeth. Why does anyone still debate whether he means it? There were other dishonest statements peppered throughout his remarks. He said that the inspector general’s report found “total bias” in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails; in fact, it found the reverse, saying political bias did not affect decisions. He said that the report “totally exonerated” his statements; in fact, it rejected the entire thrust of his statements about Comey. Trump said that Comey acted criminally; the IG report does not say that. He said Mueller’s team has no Republicans; Mueller is a lifelong Republican who has served under GOP presidents as well as Democrats.
Trump also continues to misrepresent the reasons why children of unauthorized immigrants are currently being separated from their parents at the border, creating a political firestorm. That decision, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions has acknowledged, is the direct result of a policy change that Sessions implemented in May. Nonetheless, the president has falsely blamed it on a law passed by Democrats, ignoring that Democrats do not control Congress and have not passed any new laws about separations, yet the change began only last month. “That is a Democrat bill. That is Democrats wanting to do that,” Trump said. “And they could solve it very easily by getting together but they think it’s a good election point.” There’s a long list of these lies, both in what Trump said today and running back for months. It becomes tiresome to fact-check them, trying to prove that Trump is not telling the truth about them. But there’s no need to take reporters’ word for it: The president makes no secret that he thinks it’s OK to lie to the public. After all, he said so himself.
It seems so long ago now. Almost immediately after Trump took office, the denial of reality began. The president’s and his spokesperson’s insistence that his inauguration crowd was the biggest in history — and certainly bigger than Obama’s — belied what everyone could see with their bare, lyin’ eyes. At the time, I wondered whether the president was psychologically unwell. Three thousand lies later, we have a fuller picture. The president believes what he wants to believe, creates a reality that fits his delusions, and then insists, with extraordinary energy and stamina, that his delusions are the truth. His psychological illness, moreover, is capable of outlasting anyone else’s mental health. Objective reality that contradicts his delusions is discounted as “fake news” propagated by “our country’s greatest enemy,” i.e., reporters. If someone behaved like this in my actual life, if someone kept insisting that the sea was red and the sky green, I’d assume they were a few sandwiches short of a picnic. It’s vital for us to remember this every day: Almost no one else in public life is so openly living in his own disturbed world.
This past week was a kind of masterpiece in delusion. It was a long version of that surreal video his National Security Council created for Kim Jong-un. It was crude, crass, and absurd. I can’t begin to unpack the madness, but it’s worth counting the bizarre things Trump said and did in such a short space of time. Trump clearly believes that Canada’s milk exports are a verifiable national security threat to the United States. He thinks Justin Trudeau’s banal press conference, reiterating Canada’s position on trade, was a “stab in the back.” And he insists that the nuclear threat from North Korea is now over — “Sleep well!” — because he gave Kim the kind of legitimacy the North Korean national gulag has always craved, and received in turn around 400 words from Pyongyang, indistinguishable from previous statements made to several presidents before him. For good measure, he took what was, according to The Wall Street Journal, Vladimir Putin’s advice — I kid you not — to cancel the forthcoming joint military exercises with the South Koreans. More than that, he has offered to withdraw all U.S. troops from the peninsula at some point, before Pyongyang has agreed to anything. He regards all of this as worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, his Reagan moment. And he is constructing a reality-television show in which he is a World Historical Figure.
This, in fact, is the poignant and quite bonkers script in Trump’s head: that the economy was in free-fall until he took office, after which it soared; that he alone has brought black and Hispanic unemployment down; that his administration has accomplished more than any other at this point in its term; that the Democrats colluded with the Kremlin to try to rig the election; that Robert Mueller is a closet Democrat; that climate change is a hoax; that the American-created international trading system was designed to hurt the U.S.; that you can borrow over a trillion dollars in a full employment economy with no consequences in inflation or debt; and that sabotaging the ACA will lead to lower premiums, greater choice, and better health outcomes for all. Each one of these assertions is what he wants to be true. And so they are true. As the chairwoman of the GOP just explained to any skeptics left in the formerly conservative party: “Anyone that does not embrace the Donald Trump agenda of making America great again will be making a mistake.”
The bad news is that a vast chunk of the American public wants all this to be true as well. If you had any doubts that the GOP is now a cult, this week’s primary results should put them to rest. Republican voters have decided that they will follow their leader no matter what he says, and if that means changing their minds on a dime, so be it. Take Canada. Not so long ago, it was funny to attack our benevolent neighbor to the north. Countless episodes of South Park wouldn’t have worked without the baseline of reality that Canada is about as good and boring a neighbor as you can possibly imagine. But Trump has the power to change minds instantly. So in February this year, 94 percent had a favorable view of Canada. Now, only 66% have a favorable view, with 13 in opposition and 22 percent suddenly unsure. Only two years ago, free trade was as solid a shibboleth for the GOP as it gets; now, it’s anathema, even for Larry Kudlow! And watching every Republican senator, apart from McCain, Flake, and Corker (all retiring), stay utterly silent after their president praised a mass-murdering dictator and gave him a global PR coup … well, it’s no longer surprising, but it should remain shocking.
A recent poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute placed white evangelical approval of President Donald Trump at 75 percent, a level of adulation higher than when he was elected. Anyone who doesn’t see a moral conundrum in that figure can stop reading.
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