Your bag is empty.
For 40 minutes on Tuesday afternoon two dozen reporters in the White House press corps waited for Donald Trump in the Rose Garden.
It was over 90 degrees, muggy and there were enough mosquitoes in attendance that some blades of grass looked black.
Finally Trump came out to speak, and for about an hour what was billed as a news conference became a campaign rally speech. There was little news. Just the president using the White House press corps as props while he ranted about Joe Biden, the European Union, China and coronavirus. He praised the stock market and what a great job he’s doing and complained that Democrats want to tear down our statues and the Great Wall of Trump.
Trump said he might take questions and, friends, he did—a few of them. He took one from Steve Portnoy at CBS Radio about the presidential race, one about China and one from One America News Network about what a great job Trump’s doing. I sat in the third row. CNN’s Jim Acosta sat directly in front of me. ABC’s Jon Karl was ahead of me and to my left; Jeff Mason of Reuters ahead and to my right. Yamiche Alcindor of PBS sat directly to my right, as did Weijia Jiang from CBS. It was a “murderers’ row” of reporters. We’ve all been known to ask Trump pointed questions. He stared at us individually during his rambling tirade and winked at me but never called on me. He didn’t call on anyone who might push back hard against him.
President Donald J. Trump wants you confused. He definitely doesn’t want you informed.
So I shouted, “When are you going to stop lying to the American people about the coronavirus?” I got no answer. He smirked and waved as he left.
The White House staff bobbed their heads up and down in unison.
“Great speech,” one of them told me.
“It sounded vaguely familiar,” I said.
“All of his speeches sound vaguely familiar,” I was told. “That’s why they’re great.”
I guess I have a different definition of greatness. I do not consider constant lying and abuse great at all—but then, I could never work for the president.
The United States reached a tragic milestone this week. For the first time since the pandemic began, more than one in every 100 Americans has tested positive for the coronavirus. Trump has bungled the pandemic response and continues to lie about it. As the number of infected Americans continues to grow, how long until most of us know someone who died from the virus? Many of us already do.
Trump doesn’t want to talk about it unless it is to claim his administration is “using the full power of the federal government to fight the China virus.”
When he said that on Tuesday, he seemed unusually lethargic. It’s the first time I’ve been close to him in more than a month, and while he can still ramble on for an hour without much encouragement, Tuesday he seemed particularly inept and out of sorts. He consulted notes it was obvious he hadn’t previously read. He mispronounced words. He seemed listless and repeated himself frequently.
He said the European Union was formed to take advantage of the U.S. He decried “fake news” while in the same breath praising a media outlet for a story he liked, then following it up by saying the media never reports the good stuff.
Confused?
President Donald J. Trump wants you confused. He definitely doesn’t want you informed. He will do anything to guarantee the former and hinder the latter.
Think it can’t get worse? Wait until tomorrow.
The crazy bastard has a corrupt enterprise to run and, let’s face it, he doesn’t need any pesky questions about what he’s doing. Just sit down. Shut up and listen.
And ignore the coronavirus. The only reason we have more cases in this country is because we’ve been testing more. Or as director Rob Reiner tweeted, “Donald Trump says if you test, you create cases. Donald Trump is out of his fucking mind.”
Call it a hoax. Say it will magically disappear. Tell us to inject bleach. Say all is well. Whatever he says, the fact remains Trump has handled the pandemic with no heart for the fight and no courage to flee it. He can’t understand what he’s doing and just wants someone else to take the blame.
His latest target, besides China, is Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the world’s leading immunologists and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. Trump says Fauci has made “a lot of mistakes” regarding coronavirus, but what really upsets Trump is Fauci keeps contradicting him and won’t toe the company line. Trump’s team has blocked Fauci from appearing on television, belittled him and derided him.
So who does Trump trust when it comes to the pandemic?
Original Wheel of Fortune game-show host Chuck Woolery.
Trump happily retweeted Woolery earlier this week: “The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it,” Woolery said.
The idea that a president of any country would ignore a scientist who’s spent his life studying pandemics in favor of a line tweeted by a game-show host is ludicrous, dangerous and insane.
Amazingly, there are people who still believe Donald Trump. He has deepened his commitment to the most extreme members of his base and hasn’t widened his appeal. But if you’re still a Trump fan, then you are buying everything he’s selling.
Finding die-hard Donald Trump fans isn’t tough.
Consider the conversation I had with one recently. We were outdoors. I wore a mask. He didn’t and was upset others did. He called the virus a hoax and told me I was giving up my liberty by wearing one. I told him I considered it respectful of others. He countered that the president didn’t wear one—he actually has been photographed twice in a mask—and what was good enough for Trump was good enough for him.
“If the president says it, then that’s the truth,” he told me.
“Kind of like Pharaoh,” I replied. “So let it be written, so let it be done type of thing?”
“Who?” I got a blank stare.
“It’s from a movie. Never mind,” I replied.
He constructs new narratives around his buzzwords but seems convinced that merely saying the catchphrases is all he needs to generate love among his cult followers.
As the Ten Commandments reference sailed over his head, he jumped back in, talking about the real problems facing our country. “If they really cared about social distancing and their loved ones they’d support border security.”
“Excuse me? What?” I felt like I was talking to my son before he knew how to say more than three words.
“Open borders is the ultimate virus spreader. It’s evil to blame Trump for Covid,” I was told. “You have China lying. You have a virus yet you blame Trump?”
Later in the conversation he admonished me for using the scientific method of investigating the cause of so many Americans coming down with the coronavirus. “Try some real digging and not that ‘scientific’ crap,” I was told.
In short, the Trump fan sounded like Trump himself.
Trump’s response to anything these days is so incoherent you can barely pick out words and phrases like “stock market,” “economy” and “law and order,” as he maintains the far left is attacking American institutions and statues that represent our history. He constructs new narratives around his buzzwords but seems convinced that merely saying the catchphrases is all he needs to generate love among his cult followers, who seem unbothered by the people with whom he surrounds himself.
As the never-Trumpers at the Lincoln Project said this week: “Trump’s campaign manager is a felon. His deputy campaign manager is a felon. His national security advisor is a felon. His foreign policy advisor is a felon. His personal lawyer is a felon. His long-time advisor is a felon.”
Trump remains a cartoon villain, and his White House staff are like the Joker’s henchmen in the 1960s Batman television show.
He wants you to believe he’s the lovable rogue who wants to make our country great again. You know, like Han Solo’s bluff: “Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh… everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?”
But he’s not.
Last week Trump made a huge push for reopening schools. There are a greater number of Americans getting the coronavirus now than when we closed the schools. But for economic reasons Trump says we should send kids back to class, and he threatened to withhold federal funds to school systems that do not comply. He’s no Han Solo. He might be an Emperor Palpatine wannabe.
When press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held one of her notoriously brief propaganda sessions last week, I asked her, “If it’s safe sending kids back to school, is it safe to send Manafort back to prison?”
McEnany did not answer. And that in itself is an answer. She, like Trump, is running out of steam.
Tuesday’s horrifyingly inept Rose Garden appearance showcased what some of us have been saying for a long time—Trump is not well.