Resisting the devil’s seduction
If I were a Republican member of Congress, I would be visiting the leadership offices on an hourly basis, asking to be reminded what the hell I was laying down my reputation for.
Speaking of hell, one of my questions would have to do with the remarks President Donald Trump made in Battle Creek, Mich., even as the House debate wound down. Trump suggested that former U.S. Rep. John Dingell, who died in February, might be looking up from hell.
Trump also falsely claimed that Dingell had lain in state in the Capitol Rotunda and that he made that possible. Dingell’s survivors elected to avoid pomp, and even if they had chosen the Rotunda route, Trump would have had no say in whether that happened.
This was all by way of laying into Debbie Dingell who now holds her husband’s old seat and would be casting one of the 230 House votes for the impeachment of Trump. That happened, by the way. Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States was impeached Wednesday. I mention it because one of Trump’s most effective techniques is to create a storm of parallel drama when he’s in big trouble.
Hence his 2,700word (10 times the length of the Gettysburg Address) cuckoo letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Impeachment Eve. You can’t fault Trump on output. Hemingway wrote about 500 words a day, and even Stephen King writes about 2,000. Time magazine recently reported the word count of Trump’s presidential tweets now exceeds the number of words in James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
(Sidebar: Trump used eight exclamation points in the letter. John Breunig, who edits this column, hates exclamation points and would probably have impeached Trump for that alone.)
One person who offered immediate support to Dingell was Cindy McCain, who knows what it’s like to have Trump attack a dead husband. When McCain was alive, Trump questioned his heroism, complaining that McCain had been captured. Since McCain’s death, Trump has continued to disparage him while, once again, making false claims about his own generous funerary treatment of the man.
If there’s a club forming, composed of widows of men you’ve insulted in death, and if it has more than one member, you need therapy.
McCain and Dingell are members of a much larger club: combat veterans upon whom Trump has heaped scorn and invective. He said Gen. Jim Mattis was overrated and not tough enough. He called U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton “a frickin’ coward” earlier this year. Moulton holds a Bronze Star and a Marine Corps Commendation for exposing himself to enemy fire to help wounded members of his unit in Iraq.
Last June, while attending solemn ceremonies honoring the military sacrifice at Normandy, Trump suddenly started complaining to conservative pundit Laura Ingraham about Pelosi and special counsel Robert Mueller. You can see the rows of white crosses nearby as he rips into both of them. Mueller is another combat veteran, highly decorated for his heroism in Vietnam.
That’s just a sampling. There are too many for it to be a coincidence. Like me, Trump never served. He has an obvious need to tear down those who did to make himself feel bigger.
None this is impeachable. It’s the other stuff that’s impeachable. But there is something deeply wrong with Trump. He is not the first morally or psychologically impaired man to be president, but I think he is unique in how little shame he feels about his transgressions.
In a 2016, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Trump about comments Trump made in 2015: that he couldn’t remember asking God for forgiveness. Trump doubled down on that idea, saying that he tried to be good because he didn’t want to have to ask God for forgiveness. He said he had a “great relationship with God.”
If I were a Republican member of Congress, asked by the leadership to close ranks around this man and fight his battles, it would make me sick.
There’s a scene in “Broadcast News” where Aaron Altman, the brainy correspondent played by Albert Brooks, tells Jane Craig, the producer played by Holly Hunter, that Tom Grunnick, the handsome anchor played by William Hurt, is “the devil”
Jane objects.
Aaron counters: What do you think the devil is going to look like? Nobody’s going to be taken in by somebody with a long pointy tail. The devil will be somebody that people find attractive.
“And he will, bit by little bit, lower our standards where they are important.”
I’ll just leave it there.