Dealing with President Pinocchio
The president’s nose is growing longer every day, just as Pinocchio’s did when the wooden puppet lied about his deeds in the famous children’s story made even more famous by Walt Disney.
Television pundit Ana Navarro, a Republican, though no admirer of President Donald Trump, refers to Trump as “the Pinocchio president” for his many tales.
Some are long, some are short; many are just plain fabrications.
At the end of the fairy tale, Pinocchio learns to tell the truth, and as a result, the boy puppet becomes his own dearest wish, a real boy.
Can a 70-year-old president learn to tell the truth and become a real human being instead of the showbiz charlatan currently residing in the White House?
Does he even know the difference between truth and lies?
Is there no difference between the truth and that golden monument to glitz on Fifth Avenue, Trump Tower? Does he even care? After all, he won the presidency, as he reminds us almost daily, as if nervous about the legitimacy of his victory.
Former President Barack Obama once said that “elections have consequences.” He was right; they do. In November, the American people elected Trump president of the United States by means of the Electoral College, not by means of the popular vote.
Since his inauguration Jan. 20, the American people have been living with the results of that electoral decision — results that have been both dismaying and alarming.
This week, the president’s penchant for lying reached a new intensity when he fired James Comey as director of the FBI. The actual firing was a disgrace.
Comey found out about it in an FBI office in Los Angeles as he was giving a pep talk to FBI agents when the news of his firing suddenly appeared on a television screen in the same room. There was shocked silence as the news spread.
No one in the White House or the Justice Department had bothered to give Comey a simple heads up that morning that he was to be fired.
That would have been an act of common courtesy.
Perhaps they tried but couldn’t reach him.
Then again, Comey has his own specially equipped plane that he is required to use when traveling on government business.
Apparently, no one called the plane.
It was an exercise in appalling bad taste or just plain incompetence, which is fast becoming the hallmark of the Trump administration.
It was a stunning development in that Comey was the leading government official conducting a wide-ranging investigation into whether Trump’s advisers colluded with Russian officials during the election campaign to swing the election in Trump’s favor.
In other words, the president had just fired the man investigating him.
Then began a breathtaking change in stories as to why Comey had been fired.
First, Comey was fired that morning because of the recommendations of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein.
They objected to the unfair way Comey had handled the private email server case against presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, though, at the time, Trump had cheered on Comey.
A few hours later, the story changed to say that Trump had always had reservations about Comey and had been considering firing him since the early days of the administration.
By the next day, in an interview with NBC News, Trump was saying he had wanted Comey gone almost from the beginning and that Comey was “showboating.”
There might be some truth in this last story because everyone knows there can be only one star in the Trump show.
Many of Trump’s critics, Republican and Democratic alike, say the firing is a cover-up to deflect attention from the fact that Comey was pushing ahead with the Russia connection investigation despite Trump’s repeated denials that there is a shred of truth to the story. But what if there is? It is nothing short of extraordinary the lengths to which Trump will go to avoid criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin or Russia.
In my view, the greatest evidence against Russian interference in our affairs is the great amusement displayed by Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (considered to be Europe’s top diplomat).
“We should be so lucky” seems to be the attitude when asked about the U.S. investigation.
Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not.
Can a 70-year-old president learn to tell the truth and become a real human being instead of the show-biz charlatan currently residing in the White House?