Washington is suffering pre-traumatic stress disorder
Maureen Dowd
President Donald Trump will walk into the Oval Office and be stunned.
First, it will be a shock to work in an office decorated with images of men other than himself. Second, he is bound to be suffused with awe as he looks around at the Remington bronze bronco, the Rockwell “Statue of Liberty,” the portraits of Washington and Lincoln, the Swedish ivy on the mantel that has eavesdropped — and leaves dropped — on so much history.
The new president will suddenly realize that Joe Biden is right. He needs to grow up. Chuck Schumer is right. He has to stop nonsense-tweeting and name-calling. John McCain is right. He needs to stop fawning over Vladimir Putin, his BFF whose eyes flash “KGB.”
Donald Trump will, at long last, assume a mantle of dignity. NOT! The capital has never been more anxious about its own government. The town is suffering pre-traumatic stress disorder. This guy is really going to be president.
Finally, there is bipartisan consensus: It’s time to flip out.
Everything is turned inside out into sauerkraut. Democrats are appalled that Trump is challenging the CIA. Republicans are cuddling up to Russia. Mitch McConnell says the American people will not tolerate the Democrats’ holding up a Supreme Court nominee. WikiLeaks is protesting leaks.
The city’s mood is “surreal,” as Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told the Times’ Carl Hulse on “The Run-Up” podcast.
“I spent months never believing that he would be elected president,” Durbin said. “I sincerely hope that the office makes the man.”
As Congress was officially certifying Trump’s election Friday at the U.S. Capitol, the intelligence services were meeting with Trump and essentially decertifying his election.
For Trump, every humiliation is a small death. So you know he was furious about the searing report — reflecting rare unanimity by the turf-battling intelligence agencies — implying that he did not win on his own, given that Putin ordered up a cyber-campaign designed to help Trump.
Outsiders in a corrupt political establishment meddled in the U.S. election by painting Trump as an outsider victimized by a corrupt political establishment. Russia tried to rig our election in favor of Trump even as Trump was decrying a rigged election.
The intelligence report ascribed a motive: “Putin has had many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.”
Back in 1987, I interviewed Trump when Mikhail Gorbachev made his first visit to America. Trump was very suspicious of the Evil Empire then and warned that the U.S. should not be too eager to make a deal with Gorbachev. But then the Soviets invited him to a business round-table and softened him up by telling him they loved Trump Tower and inviting him to build a hotel in Moscow.
A year later, Trump heard that Gorbachev was back, out in front of Trump Tower, and rushed down from his office to shake hands with the communist, who turned out to be an impersonator from New Jersey named Ronald Knapp.
Trump was easily fooled that time. It remains an open question how gullible and malleable he is.