Back on October 10, Matt Zapotosky and Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post reported that President Trump was in discussions with Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff Matt Whitaker about possibly replacing his boss as Attorney General on either an interim basis or perhaps even a permanent capacity. When the president appeared that day on Fox News, Steve Doocy asked him about the article in the Post.
Trump wasn’t particularly forthcoming but he did clearly vouch for Whitaker’s character based on the fact that he knew him. Yet, when reporters asked him about Whitaker today at the White House, Trump said, “I don’t know Matt Whitaker.”
So, here we have two quotes from the president. They are both short and succinct and as uncomplicated as statements can be:
“I know Matt Whitaker.” –October 10, 2018
“I don’t know Matt Whitaker.” –November 9, 2018
Those two statements would not necessarily contradict each other if they came in reverse chronological order. After all, when you spend some time with someone you had not previously met, then it’s no longer true that you do not know them, but it remains true that you didn’t know them at an earlier period of time. But you can’t know someone in October and no longer know them in November.
Trump was telling the truth the first time, which is well-documented and can be verified all over the internet.
Trump, contra what he’s saying right now, does know Whitaker. Many meetings in Oval. One reason he picked him was because he liked him so much, per several Trump aides. (And saw him as skeptical of Mueller probe.)
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) November 9, 2018
There are a lot of people discussing the constitutionality of putting Whitaker in charge of the Department of Justice and speculating about why it was done and what it might mean. Those are all interesting angles on this story which should be discussed. But I just want to pause for one second to point at those two conflicting statements from the president of the United States.
“I know Matt Whitaker.”
“I don’t know Matt Whitaker.”
He has absolutely no conscience or shame, no pangs of guilt or any possibility of feeling remorse when he contradicts himself like this. Say what you want, but this isn’t normal.
There is something broken in Donald Trump and because almost half the country is in his corner and taking his side for whatever self-interested reasons they may have, the entire country is breaking as a result.
From an earlier diary …
Simply wonderful–concise and irrefutable. And if we had an actual corps of professional journalists, this would be the lead story for several days, with extensive reporting on the fact that the deranged democratically illegitimate prez is a pathological liar with a severe personality disorder.
It’s quite clear after the midterms that we have a national cult on our hands, one that has abandoned all reason, and that the absurd figure of Der Trumper has (however implausibly) become a cult leader–whose followers are every person still voting “Repub”, including most especially the horrendous monsters in Mitch’s Menagerie.
The obvious and open bad faith lying about the “Caravan”, which has now dropped as quickly as “Ebola!” did from the national news, shows that the entire “conservative” movement is operating in bad faith, with the parroting of known lies the proof of membership in the National Trumpalist cult. Yes, indeed, Acosta “laid hands” on the little lady! All that’s left is the choice of a symbol of the movement–and, yes, Trumpalists, the swastika is taken! While one could perhaps understand a national cult led by a unique charismatic figure like Hitler, our Trumper cult led by a blustering buffoon is simply not comprehensible.
Also, too, wonderful work on the disgusting “Caravan” propaganda, corporate media, I will await your in-depth coverage of how and why exactly this “national emergency” story evaporated so quickly after the election? And where exactly is the vocal outrage from our elected Dems over this abusive scandal? Where’s the denouncing of Der Trumper? or Kemp? or Scott?
We have staved off our 1933 moment for a couple years, perhaps. But I prophesy that the 1789 constitution as developed in practice over the course of time will simply not survive the Trumpite cult that has now poisoned the nation. Whatever emerges from this calamity cannot be seen at this point, but the “conservative” movement (in its final iteration of National Trumpalism) has effectively destroyed the national government that had steered the course of the nation for the past 200+ years.
I absolutely agree. I’ve already shared that last paragraph with a couple of folks and plan on sharing with lots of others. Including the link as well.
Thank you, Booman.
. . .
. . . there’s be no room/time to cover (literally!) anything else. In fact these lead stories would be continuously overlapping and obscuring each other.
That’s already happening.
Even Fox News called this out. Today, on Shep Smith’s show.
Doesn’t count. He’s their token reality-speaker.
Here is the explanation.
Two days ago:
“I know Matt Whitaker. Matt Whitaker is a friend of mine. And you, Jeff Sessions, are no Matt Whitaker.”
Today:
“Let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind.”
Not convinced it’s sociopathy. Still think it’s his Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Apparently someone with that problem lies constantly, doesn’t care if anything he says is true, only cares what people think of him and if what he said gets him applause or off the hook.
In other cultures Trump’s actions would be recognized as “Satanic.”
“The father of lies.”
Sounds about right…
AG
The donald is a man who believes he can say anything and face no consequences. Remember he said he could shot someone on 5th Ave and no one would care. I took that as a challenge…..seems like i’m the only one.
Plus, in other news (regarding the Stormy Daniels case), we’re reminded that this is a guy who ended up paying a million dollars for sex but attributes his “success with the ladies” to his charm and good looks–also, too, financial genius.
This.
Except “Who’s ‘we’ white man?” –Tonto (allegedly!)
Trump’s sociopathy isn’t becoming mine. And it isn’t becoming yours.
But your main point that it’s a critical (I’d say existential) threat to the nation (and beyond) the more and longer it’s normalized and embraced, and the larger the minority embracing it . . . especially while that minority increasingly, illegitimately holds most of the power . . .
. . . spot on.
Trump sociopathy is the dying bleat of the ageing white bigot class “Young people are entitled! Things cost more than they used to! Immigrants are coming to kill us all in our beds! With Ebola!”
But, here’s the most encouraging article I’ve read yet on this election: Finally… The Youth Vote Was Real This Time Turnip isn’t winning them at all.
It’s a must read, but here’s just one point:
The GOP is utterly dead to the younger generation and they know it. That’s why the growth in fascism. The future is ours and they have to short-circuit that future before it can sink old white conservative evangelical privilege forever. Which it will.
But, ONLY if we nominate candidates who will openly court and appeal to issues younger voters care about. That’s why Nancy Pelosi announced Gun Control is a key issue in the next Congress, although all the pundits will bleat that passing gun control is impossible with the GOP in control of the Senate and Trump in the White House. It’s a key issue for younger voters, who keep getting killed in clubs by crazed MAGA lunatics. Democrats MUST address it if they are to have any credibility at all.
It’s not 65+ year olds who go to clubs and theaters. They are staying in their homes watching Matlock reruns and ranting along with Fox News.
Gun control doesn’t appeal to them at all. But, it’s a key issue to key Democratic voting constituencies. And if we don’t try and address it in a serious way we will lose all credibility with them. And then we’ll get the “screw the Democrats, I’m voting for Nader!” psychology again, and the GOP will run the country for another ten years by which time they will have launched the Apocalypse they keep predicting from the Book of Revelations.
I turn 65 in a few months. I can confidently assure you that I will not precipitously start staying home watching Matlock reruns and “ranting along with Fox News”. Nor will gun control suddenly stop appealing to me on my next birthday. I’m also confident I have a great deal of company . . . millions of us! . . . in this respect.
Also too, friendly amendments:
“…I will not precipitously start staying home watching Matlock reruns…”
Perry Mason, on the other hand, is a different story.
I turn 64 in May, so we’re almost exactly the same age! If it’s “ageism” it’s AGEISM against ME! Don’t give me that crap!
We Baby Boom generation done F’d up! “We’re the Pepsi Generation! Blah, blah, blah!” “We are the World! We are the People!” Blah, blah.
And now people 60 years and over. OUR generation elected Donald Trump. When I think of the promise of our youth, to have fallen like this? If you told me in 1968 we’d be here in my old age, defending the very existence of democracy in the face of a fascist attack by the very forces that seemed to have been defeated. Our victory seemed totally imminent. To me anyway.
The campaign of Bobby Kennedy promised all of that. And then it all unraveled on two fatal nights in Memphis and Los Angeles. Over. And done before we’d even begin. Not that we knew. Not yet. That dire knowledge being born in darkness had yet to ripen. The Rude Beast had yet awhile to arrive at Bethlehem.
That’s how it feels to me and millions of others. What the hell HELL happened to my generation! What Hunter Thompson so aptly called “a Generation of Swine”
I always thought, then as an idealistic youth, that by now things would be very different.
I thought that too. All the war freaks and old, angry men who brought us the Vietnam War would simply die out eventually and leave us in peace. We’d raise our children in peace and finally have the prosperous peaceful society we yearned for.
Now, here we are. The President of the United States openly praises Nazis, and a majority of my generation votes for him anyway.
Do you not see we’re actually living in that world, right now. Are not the preachers among us, with their hordes of abused children? There are things not even the good doctor ever imagined, like that we’d be tearing young children away from their mothers and putting them in cages. And doing it, because we can, because we like it. To inflict suffering. A majority of my generation enjoys it. Like the blood sport of the Roman coliseum when the innocent were torn apart by lions. They see the evil, and lick their lips and cheer.
I used to think it was a shame that Hunter Thompson didn’t live to see Obama elected. He might have changed his mind, I thought. I don’t think way that anymore.
No, I don’t think I’m just “ageist.” My generation began in glory and is expiring in infamy and shame!
. . . “that crap”.
This very long wail of frustration and disappointment (much of which I actually share and agree with, as I’ve commented right here in these very pages on multiple occasions) does not negate the fact that your blanket statements I pointed out were ageist are exactly that. Not merely gross over-generalizations but, as stated by you, not even allowing for any exceptions whatsoever to your broad-brush stereotyping. Not you. Not me. Not a number of other folks hanging out here whom you likewise defamed with that ageist brush.
Nor does the fact that you likewise defamed the you that you’ll be in a year or two in the process. The claim that your ageist statements can’t be ageist because they’d be ageist against yourownself is just silly, has no rational/logical basis or validity at all.
This looks like a failed attempt to defend what you did say with a very long defense of what you really meant, but didn’t say (and thus, while mostly unobjectionable, also irrelevant to the valid objection that I actually raised. Generally, very broadly stereotyping over-generalizations are best avoided. Sweeping, universal stereotyping of the kind you engaged in here, not even allowing for the possibility of any exceptions, should be avoided like the plague, as it’s nearly impossible to imagine one such that could be other than both inaccurate and defamatory.
The word “lie” is (like most words) used carelessly, especially in a political context.
The carelessness is of two kinds, but they both have to do with motivation.
Most political “lies” are actually stories. THAT DOES NOT EXCUSE THEM, let alone make them true (or true-ish, or thruthy, or relevant, or sympathetic). But it is a category error to classify them as statements of rational discourse. Stories are not rational discourse. They do not live on the spectrum between truth and falsity. Judging them as if they did completely misses their purpose and their effectiveness-or-otherwise. They are literary, and typically allegorical. The objects that they appear to refer to are symbols. Political stories also typically have multiple audiences. Now think about all this, and then STOP looking at the storytellers and start looking at their audiences.
But then some lies are really lies, and the important thing to understand baout them is that in EVERY case, with no expections whatsoever, they are not told for gain. They are told to humiliate. They are rhetorical weapons. They are a form of violence. When Donald Trump, or any conservative, lies — as distinct from telling stories — it is because the audience is deemed unworthy of the truth. To tell someone the truth is to grant them equal status — and that is something that no conservative can ever do.
Here I expose the limits of my imagination: what I can’t comprehend is how two people out of five in this country have chosen this caricature as their cult leader. I can understand hero worship, or the need for some kind of inspiring figure to rally behind in straitened times, etc., but it seems to me that candidacy for the job would require some attractive strength of character, spark of intelligence, what have you, and Dolt And Rump is so obviously, so transparently a full-on @$$hat in all respects; how could any remotely sensible person fall for that? Well, these idiots–and they are idiots–want to fall for it. They want to be fooled. By a hateful, cowardly, incoherent buffoon! (This is what those courageous people doing grassroots work, such as MikeInOhio, have been hitting their heads against day after day.)
While I cannot understand the mentality of the blind follower, I do understand very well that this social/political phenomenon happens, and that history tells us again and again how hideously it ends.
And here we are, on the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
We’re due soon for–in the sterile language of the financial people–another market correction. The last hardship eventually birthed the peaceful Occupy (which was ultimately eradicated by Mr. Obama’s DHS and largely Democratic mayors working together), and if there was an object of animus, it was the 1%. Given the Repugnican hate project carefully cultivated over the last decades, I’m worried that the next hardship will turn violent and will see the usual populations targeted. The thugs are always there, but now they have validation in the halls of power.
Should it come to that horror, I hope the police act more in the public interest than they did about a year ago in Charlottesville when they stood by, watching their fingernails grow while fascists rampaged, just as their German and Austrian cousins did eighty years ago.