Donald Trump morphs into Evan Mecham
Break out the tin-foil hats. Be on the lookout for laser beams. It has happened. Donald Trump has morphed into Evan Mecham. If you live in Arizona, you knew this was possible. Like me, however, you probably didn’t think it would happen so soon. With Mecham, it was interesting and entertaining, even comical. He was only a governor. Trump is the leader of the free world.
There was no Twitter in 1988. But there was paranoia. There were conspiracy theories. And there was a highprofile politician who spouted wild, unsubstantiated accusations of eavesdropping. In late January 1988, I wrote this: On Monday, while thousands marched on the state Capitol in support of a Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the governor, who had rescinded the holiday, was at home in Glendale listening to a local all-talk radio station.
He telephoned the station three times. Three times.
Even the desperately lonely, strangely neurotic people who are attracted to radio talk shows don’t often call three times in a single day.
Then, on Tuesday, Mecham revealed to a group of lawyers with whom he was having breakfast the reasons that he listens to the radio.
One of those present quoted the governor as saying: ”Whenever I’m in my house or my office, I always have a radio on. It keeps the lasers out.”
When asked, ”What lasers?” Mecham is reported to have said: ”The lasers for eavesdropping. They’re eavesdropping on me. They’re shooting lasers through the windows.” He didn’t say who ”they” are. At least until Friday, when Mecham was quoted in the Tucson Citizen as saying that the conspiracy to remove him from office includes The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, an unidentified leader of a utility and, according to the article, ”behind-the-scenes people with ties to the drug and pornography industries.”
This is not much different from President Trump’s accusatory series of tweets about former President Barack Obama wiretapping his offices. Claims that have been denied by FBI Director James Comey and Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper.
Mecham, like Trump, peddled “alternative facts.” He attacked the media, once declaring Phoenix Gazette columnist John Kolbe a “non-person.” He even told a journalist, “Don’t ever ask me for a true statement again.”
Among other things, Trump tweeted: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
Here’s the thing Trump doesn’t seem to understand: Pointing fingers at people and claiming bizarre, illegal, un-American behavior without providing a shred of evidence IS McCarthyism.