Donald John Trump, self-identified as “The Donald” when he can get away with it, did something highly unusual late last month. He gave a real interview. On television.
Naturally, the lucky recipient of The Donald’s time was what we on the left have jokingly called Trump TV.
Fox.
There The Donald’s good luck ended because he drew Chris Wallace, the éminence grise of the hardy band of real reporters at Fox. This is a band so small that it was diminished in double digits when Shepard Smith left.
As an illustration of how a real reporter prepares, when the POTUS swung into the brag he had been floating on for some time that he was given a test of his mental faculties and “aced it,” and this was offered as more proof that Mr. Trump is “a very stable genius,” Mr. Wallace had dug into the content of the test and had taken the test himself.
For Chris Wallace, it was a professional doing what professionals do. For me, it was sheer luck, but I, too, have taken that same test myself within the last two weeks. My wife had observed — correctly — that I am not as quick as I used to be. Worse, from my point of view, is that I forget things I should not forget and sometimes I have to be rescued by Professor Google.
When I got my cancer diagnosis. I put my Texas law license on inactive status and that had the effect of taking my name off the list of former judges available for assignment. For the first time in over 40 years, I was not “Judge Russell.” I guess I’m still “Professor Russell” because my emeritus designation by Indiana University is a lifetime gig, but I can still feel my mental state. It would be easy to get my law license back but I am no longer quick enough to try a lawsuit either as a lawyer or as a judge.
My wife, observing my slowdown, notified the doctor who was about to conduct my yearly Medicare physical. The test my doctor sprung on me was the same one Mr. Trump “aced.” I, too, was able to identify an animal, repeat a string of numbers backwards, remember a string of unrelated words while I was answering other questions, but I did make a slight stumble where my family doctor rescued me by allowing me to rescue myself. After I drew the clock showing the time in the question, she showed me what I had drawn and asked me,
Did you intend those two lines to be the same length?
“Oops, no, the minute hand should be longer (spoken as I extended the line).”
Did I ever tell you how I got a B instead of an A in freshman zoology because I couldn’t draw what I was seeing in the microscope? My lab partner (who was also my girlfriend) saved me from even worse by asking me the kind of questions you just asked me.
She’s been my primary care doctor for 38 years, so, on reflection, I’m fairly certain I’ve told her that story before. What can I say? I’m a geezer and I repeat myself. If you ding me for the question the doctor asked, I got 34 correct answers and Mr. Trump got 35. I suppose that’s why he’s in charge of the nuclear codes and I’m afraid to reclaim my law license.
Much of the time with Mr. Wallace was burned with Mr. Trump touting his intelligence and trying to weasel out of his gross exaggerations about the test doctors use to identify early signs of dementia. I’m going to play the geezer and repeat something that I’ve written before about Mr. Trump’s fixation on his intellectual prowess:
I have been blessed to be surrounded by extremely intelligent people, many of whom were smarter than me. But in 17 years as an active judge and 15 years teaching in two universities, I never, not even once, encountered an intelligent person who found it necessary to inform others of their intelligence.
Maybe they have different customs in New York.
Think, just think, what kind of a mess our country would be in if a pandemic struck at a time when we did not have a genius in the White House.
Professor Google tells me the United States contains 4.23% of the world’s population. As it rolls north of 140,000 souls lost to the coronavirus in this country, that makes about 23% of world fatalities from the same cause.
When the European Union quit allowing persons traveling on U.S. passports automatic entry, that could have been those snooty Europeans trying to get even for past slights. But that explanation is beginning to ring flat.
I carry a passport card in my wallet, and it’s good for entry to Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean. Or, it was. Now, I wonder if I can get my money back? I just heard today that persons traveling on U.S. passports are being denied entry to The Bahamas. For crying out loud, The Bahamas?
Everyone who has been there will understand why excluding Americans blows my mind. Employment in The Bahamas is in what we call “the hospitality industry.” Visitors come to dive the last few living coral reefs, to fish, and to do whatever it is people do in casinos besides enjoy the air conditioning.
The Bahamas used to be part of the British Empire; now they are part of the British Commonwealth. This means their official language is English and they drive on the wrong side of the road. With an economy so completely tourist-dependent situated where you could swim from Ft. Lauderdale to Freeport, it would appear that our failure to contain that rogue virus will send unemployment up and tax collections down…sort of like here in the mainland U.S.A.
This is one more example of what will put Donald Trump in the history books. He brings down entire nations that never had an election with Trump on the ballot. Unlike the United States, in which Trump’s incompetence was on display for all to see. At least it was when he gave a press conference, and that’s why the presser was such a rare event.
The first requirement for a successful democracy is an electorate that pays attention. Candidates who hide from the media often have good reason to hide. I’ll be making book on the contents of Mr. Trump’s tax returns — as well as whether he’s been “under audit” for the last ten years of his returns for the last four years.
Mr. Trump’s historical footprint will probably be re-sized in one direction or the other, depending on how his PR professionals decide to meet the horrors of the pandemic that are so horrible as to rule out ignoring them.
The RNC demonstrated that the Trumpian line will not change from what it’s been: Mr. Trump has done a wonderful job fighting off Covid-19 and we should all be thankful for the guidance we’ve received from his stable genius….or his genius stable, as the case may be. I have known smarter horses.
Just before the vote, we have a new literary assessment of Trump from the New York Times’ Brian Stelter, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.
I have not yet read Hoax, but from advance materials there will be great temptation to produce a work of fiction. One allegation is that as the genius has deteriorated, he has become unable to process even the Fox News conspiracy theory-as-news. This is so even though the schedule contains six hours every day for watching Fox, described as “executive time.”
It is alleged that the POTUS is down to two major programs, “Fox & Friends” in the morning and Hannity in the evening. Even worse, he is more likely to draw his policy positions from the chyrons.
Suppose, for the sake of a story, that the mechanical task of loading the chyrons were turned over to college student interns. I assume that is not already the case. Picture the lights popping up behind those undergraduate eyes when they realize the POTUS has become a player in the sense of humor called (for good reason) “sophomoric.” They would not be ordering the President around but rather having him order his government around in his genuine voice, principally his Twitter feed.
Imagine the hijinks that could ensue!
Or, if the students were not as swift as their stable genius boss, how they could get us crosswise with Canada, Mexico, Germany, and France. They could put the NATO organization in jeopardy.
Meanwhile, they might be getting “love letters” from Kim Jong Un, allying us with Russia, congratulating Philippine President Duterte on how many citizens he was able to kill without trial and then brand them “drug dealers.”
This comedy will not be as easy as I thought. It will take some thinking to define the lines between what is strictly true and what is only true in our new political construction — post-truth politics could be dangerous with your finger on the truth trigger.
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Previously Published on medium
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Rick Obst on Flickr