2017 May 31^st

Every day we learn a new thing about our new President. Today we discovered that no one is scanning his tweets, not to determine if they are accurate, but even to determine if he is spouting gibberish. Minutes after midnight, (Does that sound like the intro to a mystery story?) Trump tweets, “Despite the negative press covfefe.” That phrase with its non-word, covfefe, stayed up for six hours. Perhaps he posted it before he went to bed and then after waking, decided to remove it. Who knows with the Donald?

Everyone to some degree alters their perception of the world to please themselves. In Trump’s case the alterations become obviously false to fact and borderline pathological.

His inaugural crowds were not larger than President Obama’s; his electoral college majority was not the greatest ever but was in fact rather modest. His loss of the popular vote to Hillary Clinton was not due to aliens illegally voting for her. There are many other examples.

These are all attempts to salve an ego; they are personal and his exaggeration and misunderstanding of them do not put the country at risk. That is not the case in other situations: It seems likely that we will join Syria and Nicaragua in rejecting the Paris Climate Accords. Trump does not believe that greenhouse gases have anything to do with climate change. Many of his cabinet appointees agree with him. Secretary of Agriculture Perdue strongly rejects man made climate change. EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt sued the EPA he now heads over its regulation before he became its chief. Do you believe he will actively enforce those regulations now? Former Texas governor Perry is Secretary of Energy. Remember the debate in which Perry said as president there were three cabinet positions he would abolish and then the poor man could only remember two of the three, well, the Department of Energy that he now heads was the third.

More recently, Trump has declared his overseas trip a great success. Many of his White House employees have said so too. He said nothing when he was in Saudi Arabia about their support for Wahhabism; in fact, he was specific about claiming that he hadn’t come to lecture anyone. He can’t have it both ways; Wahhabism is responsible for much of the terrorism we face and Trump was so enamored by his red carpet welcome and the sword dancers that he chose to ignore the Saudi’s support for the very evil he rails against.

Then in Europe, he shoves the Premier of Montenegro out of his way without a word of apology. He personified the ugly American as he was on his way to a front row photo-op. The only adjustment he made was to his suit jacket. It was important to him that it hang just right.

Not a word did he utter about the agreement that an attack on one of the NATO nations is an attack on all. His comments were in fact themselves an attack on NATO nations because he believes “they aren’t paying their share.” We didn’t seem to care about that when they sent troops to support us when we went into Afghanistan after 9/11. My, how our national priorities have changed. But to hear Trump tell it his overseas trip was a great success. The awful part is that he believes it.