Maybe Trump Shouldn't Be Quoting a 'Hitler-Lover' When Defending His Policies
President Good Brain's no good, very bad weekend began, as most days now do, with him cooking up WWE beefs over the government shutdown he singlehandedly caused. But soon enough, the problems of Donald Trump, American president, had multiplied. On Saturday, The New York Times reported that the FBI opened an inquiry in 2017 into whether Trump was a Russian asset, which seems bad. The Washington Post compounded that with a report on the "extraordinary lengths" to which Trump has gone to cover up details of his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin-including once seizing the notes of his interpreter and "instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials."
Wow! Why would the American president be so overwhelmingly eager to conceal what he's discussing with the Russian president-the same guy who ordered an influence campaign in 2016 to help the American president get elected? Why would he want to keep those details a secret even from his aides and advisers? Aren't they all on the same side-the side that is only concerned with working on behalf of the American people to Make America Great Again?
Naturally, these reports occasioned an almighty meltdown from our large, adult president. He tweeted 14 times on Saturday, often to monger the fear about the non-existent "invasion" at the southern border-and misinformation about illegal immigrants and crime-which forms the basis of his pitch for The Wall. That's also the basis for the shutdown he caused, and in which he has no leverage to get what he wants because, in polling, at least, a majority of Americans can see that all this is on him.
He responded to reports he has no strategy to end the shutdown with another spasm of He Doth Protest Too Much:
Ah, he does have a plan. We all just wouldn't understand.
The rest was reheated dross about how he's been tougher on Russia than his predecessors-he has not-and some of those surreal tweets where he makes abbreviated reference to 4 or 5 supposed scandals that exist only in wingnut media canon. Things ended Saturday, however, with his promise to appear on The Fox News Channel that night for an interview with "Judge" Jeanine Pirro, a vaunted ally who apparently gives him advice on how to interfere in the Justice Department-a crisis for the rule of law that would have been a major scandal in previous administrations.
This interview did not, ultimately, do what he'd hoped. Pirro asked him, pretty much jokingly, if he was a Russian asset, and this was Trump's response:
I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked. I think it’s the most insulting article I’ve ever had written. And if you read the article, you’d see that they found absolutely nothing. But the headline of that article, it’s called ‘The failing New York Times’ for a reason, they’ve gotten me wrong for three years. They’ve actually gotten me wrong for many years before that.
Trump then called James Comey a liar and repeated his false claim that he has been tougher on Russia than anyone. What you might have noticed is that at no point did Trump deny that he's a Russian agent.
(Finally, on Monday morning, Trump told reporters he "never worked for Russia." Time will tell if this is one of the 15 false things he says publicly each day.)
Then it was time for a Sunday Extravaganza, as Trump made his pitch for Wall funding with more propaganda about immigrant crime and the flow of drugs over the southern border, which no one serious thinks The Wall will stop. He also frequently referenced the fact that he was waiting in the White House to do some Artful Dealmaking.
The subtext is likely that he was not able to go to the sunny climes of Mar-a-Lago because of the shutdown he singlehandedly caused, and we're all supposed to feel bad for him and tell Democrats to yield to his demands on this basis. They're having fun without me, said the 72-year-old man who currently serves as President of the United States.
Mr. President-thanks. He went all out to make the point in a truly gobsmacking conversation with reporters:
"What?" indeed. Rest assured the president's Very Good Brain is firing on all cylinders.
There was some talk about his planned pullout from Syria, and then it was on to the Real Petty Hours. He countered the WaPo reporting by referring to owner Jeff Bezos as "Jeff Bozo"-another classic move from an adult human being who is the most powerful man in the world-and then launched an attack on Elizabeth Warren that took aim at her exhaustively litigated claims of having a Native American ancestor. She is "referred to by me as Pocahontas," he said, using that classic sentence construction we all know and love. In the process of concern-trolling, of course, he disrespected Native Americans in umpteen ways.
But he really had to complete the picture on The Lord's Day by quoting Pat Buchanan.
Out of curiosity, here's what Trump used to say about Pat Buchanan:
So Trump used to acknowledge Buchanan's blatant racism-this quote was taken from a piece The Atlantic's Adam Serwer flagged as a "white nationalist screed"-and even called him a "Hitler-lover."
Look, he’s a Hitler-lover. I guess he’s an anti-Semite. He doesn’t like the blacks. He doesn’t like the gays. It’s just incredible that anybody could embrace this guy.
It's almost like Trump has always understood the appeal of racism on the right, and is now embracing one of its most decorated salesmen because he believes it's to his benefit. "Incredible," indeed.
Most of us would probably try to avoid lining up next to a guy we once called a "Hitler-lover." (There was some reason for that: In 1999, Buchanan lamented the decision by Great Britain and France to defend Poland against Nazi invasion. He thought they should've left Hitler to his devices in there-which, even with the Allies' intervention, involved the genocide of 3 million Polish Jews and three million more ethnic Poles.) But as we now know, some "very fine people" are on the same side as neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. And besides, most of us weren't elected President of the United States.
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