TRUMP DEPARTS WITH A DARK LEGACY OF LIES AND DECEIT

A mob blinded and misled by a president

IT BEGAN and ended with a lie. The shameless birther conspiracy – seeking to blow away his predecessor, President Barack Obama – set the mendacious snowball rolling down Capitol Hill. For four years it gathered momentum as it careered across the US. By the time it thundered back to Washington, the ‘post-truth era’ was established.

Without a blush, President Donald Trump would claim the election was a fraud. ‘The Big Steal’ was burnished into national consciousness. No, there was no evidence; but in Trumpworld none is needed. Fake news or alternative facts blossomed and flourished and any who dared root them out were discredited and belittled.

Blizzards of lies are the same as any other: they stick and they harden. Those caught in them have their vision blurred and skid in all directions.

The mob that descended on Washington had been blinded and misled by a snowstorm of deceit.

Ever loyal to their commander-in-chief, there was total buy-in to the rules of diversion and division. Disaffected and disillusioned, they followed. No folly was too flagrant, no character flaw too deep for them to lose faith in their “very stable genius”.

In this fantasy world, the opposite of right tended to be the most likely direction to follow.

In the Washington Post recently the author Tom Rosenstiel, who is director of the American Press Institute, suggested there is now an obligation to “create a public square with a common set of facts”. This “square” used to be called reality, but that was in another time.

No commander-in-chief has ever so conflated the national interest with his own as Mr Trump.

He claimed the pandemic was a contrivance and spread the suspicion that masks make you more vulnerable to Covid-19, not less.

This, he freely admitted, was because if the public truly understood just how much Covid-19 was ravaging America, it could damage his election prospects.

All the while that his self-serving cultivating of “the base” was in overdrive, the Republican Party let him loose in its wheel-house.

His demonising of Muslims, pulling out of the Paris Accord, building a wall, and trampling all over long-revered international relationships will keep the midnight oil burning for the new President Joe Biden from the beginning.

Polarising to the end, today – the last of Mr Trump’s tenure in the White House – will be met with either a sigh of relief or a cry of indignation.

Many may also be hoping it marks the end of the line for the twice-impeached president.

The only thing that was spinning faster than him was the revolving door of staff exiting the Oval Office at warp speed. Now he too bows out in ignominy.

His last act of bad grace was to refuse to attend the inauguration of his successor.

Perhaps more than anything, the barricades around the White House and the troops on every corner around the Capitol speak best to the dark shadow Mr Trump has cast.