Making ego great again
Credit where it’s due: Donald Trump’s is a seminally redefining presidency. He has established empirically what perhaps we previously might have suspected. It is that one need not be decent or responsible or honest or thoughtful or studious or redeemable or sensitive or humble—or possessed of good character at all, one could generalize—to hold the office acceptably.
The economy is all right. North Korea may be coming to the table. The president is an egomaniacal outrage. And it all works.
On Monday, our president chose to use his Twitter feed to send a Memorial Day message. He of collegiate and bone-spur deferments during Vietnam tweeted that our nation’s dead combat soldiers would be thrilled with the way the country was faring.
On Memorial Day, President Trump placed a wreath at the shrine of the raging ego.
In case you question my shorthand and paraphrase, here’s the tweet itself, complete with the usual exclamation points, inexplicable capitalizations and irrepressible self-absorption: “Happy Memorial Day! Those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud at how well our country is doing today. Best economy in decades, lowest unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics EVER (& women in 18 years), rebuilding our Military and so much more. Nice!”
Yes, what a nice day to honor Donald Trump.
They died in France, and in Italy, and on Okinawa, and in Korea, and in Vietnam, and in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, so that he might live to brag on himself.
For the record: Trump delivered a speechwriter’s appropriate remarks later at Arlington National Cemetery, and those were posted on Twitter to try to compensate for the president’s real self.
Speaking of the harmonious blend of outrageous presidential behavior and acceptable outcome, let us go back a few days—an eternity in Trump time. Let’s return to that recent hour when Trump accused the nation’s greatest newspaper of inventing an unidentified source to lie about him.
Either Trump himself lied or he has no idea what’s going on in his own White House. Dishonest or incompetent, it doesn’t matter. North Korea may yet come to the table, and you’ve got to like that prospect. Trump put on Tweeter that the
New York Times told a blatant lie when it quoted an unidentified White House aide as saying it would be impossible to get the North Korean summit back on track by June 12 after the president’s canceling of it.
Trump’s point was that his canceling the summit had not really canceled the summit, because what he says one hour doesn’t mean anything the next, which was, rare in his case, true.
What had happened was that the White House conducted one of those “background briefings” in which a well-informed administration official talks to the press corps in the press room on a specialized subject pursuant to an agreement that reporters may use what the official says but not that it came from the official.
It’s a time-honored practice of many administrations and many White House press assemblies. It’s based on the understanding that sometimes the White House wants information out, and the press wants to report information, but the press can’t oblige that mutual desire if it insists on identifying the person knowing and sharing the information.
Trump either didn’t understand any of that or didn’t give a hoot. It’s near-impossible to say whether his misstatements are more likely to have arisen from ignorance or dishonesty. I see a pureed mix myself. Trump tweeted that the comment pooh-poohing a June 12 achievement was a made-up lie from a phantom person, and that the failing Times was nothing but fake news and should find real people instead of phony sources.
Confronted with that unprecedented development—the president accusing a newspaper of fake news for quoting something one of his aides had said to a roomful of reporters— some reporters found it appropriate to nullify the background agreement.
They produced tape recordings containing that very statement from the background briefer, a National Security Council staffer named Matt Pottinger.
Pottinger is a person, not a phantom.
We know what he said. It’s on a tape recording.
As for what our slain combat veterans say about Trump’s job performance … we’ll have to turn to the president’s ego for that. You can count on its always being there.