Who’s a ‘sucker?’ Depends on who you believe
When Ray Donovan, former Secretary of Labor under Ronald Reagan, was acquitted of corruption charges, he had a reaction that has become legend. Asked by a reporter if he felt relieved, Donovan replied: “What office do I go to, to get my reputation back?”
It was reminiscent of Cassio’s lament in “Othello.” After losing his military rank because he engaged in a drunken brawl, Othello’s lieutenant cried out:
“Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”
My thoughts turned to Donovan, Cassio and anyone who has ever been slandered, particularly when the accusations are launched from the shadows by anonymous enemies, as I watched certain members of the media, the Democratic Party and even some Republicans accuse Donald Trump of calling dead soldiers “suckers.”
It doesn’t surprise me that there are people who believe the claim. Trump has alienated more Americans than perhaps any president in recent times, and some of my countrymen are so angered and repelled by him that they will cling to anything that discredits him. They are like survivors of a shipwreck, holding on to the driftwood of their hostility to survive the storm. Trump is their perfect storm, and they are holding on to that hostility until November (if not beyond).
There are others who try and justify the truth of these unsubstantiated claims by saying, well, we know he attacked John McCain as not being a true hero so we absolutely have every right to believe he called dead soldiers “suckers.” For them, I have a bit more respect because at least in their minds they are trying to be fair. Their search for other evidence of cruelty in the president is a tacit acknowledgement that they reject anonymous sources and nameless accusations.
And I can even agree with them to a certain extent: Trump did disparage Sen. McCain in a blatant and classless manner. I’ve written more than one column attacking him about it. But there is a difference: Trump insulted a specific man he didn’t like. He did it in front of cameras. He had a political target with a name. And that target was alive to respond.
But Jeffrey Goldberg and those who support the truth of the Atlantic story want us to believe that Trump is so beneath contempt that he would call fallen soldiers buried in foreign battlefields “suckers.” They want us to accept, on the words of anonymous accusers, that he has such hatred for the men who made the supreme sacrifice that he would openly slander them in a room full of people. It advances their political narrative.
I personally don’t believe he said it. I didn’t need the denials from John Bolton and Sarah Sanders and John Kelly’s assistant and virtually every other “earwitness.” I think it’s just too strange and discordant a comment for even Trump, who isn’t shy about launching insults, to make.
More importantly though, since we are talking about suckers, I think it’s sad that so many Americans allow themselves to believe stories built on shifting sands because the alternative-namely, Trump might not be evil-is untenable. They have abandoned the faculty that I think is even more important than the tragic Cassio’s reputation: their own independent judgment. When that is lost, so is self-respect. Reputation is what others think of us. But to lose the ability to think well of ourselves is, to me, infinitely worse.
In the end, the true tragedy of Suckergate is not whether a president made cruel claims about fallen heros, and how we reacted. He might indeed have made those claims, or they might be the figment of Joe Biden’s imagination.
The tragedy is what it says about everyone not named Donald Trump. It’s that some people will abandon their reasoning and their conscience if they are told a story that pleases their hearts.
Even if the narrator of that story never emerges from the safety of the shadows.