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Let Them Eat Cake

by GrayMatters
Trump - let them eat cake.

I’m still processing the testimony yesterday from James Clapper and Sally Yates. I’m grateful for the information they were able to provide, from what was said and from what wasn’t said. I’m grateful for Clapper’s and Yates honesty and strength, for their courage. I’m especially grateful for Yates’ handling of Cruz. She kicked him right in his mansplaining teeth; it was glorious. It felt like a much-needed personal victory, in a way. Meanwhile, we break down the recent tweets from the Liar-In-Chief, and the differences between us and the kleptocracy are magnified.

It’s never been unclear just how different life is for a Trump than it is for the rest of us (poor, poor Ivanka). All the wealthy American leaders who came before tended to downplay their wealth to try to look like they come from a humbler background than they do. Recall Mitt Romney, talking to a small group of jobless people, saying “I’m also unemployed.” Those gathered around were to conveniently forget all the people he’d fucked while with Bain Capital, to think of good ol’ Mitt as just one of them. Hillary Clinton knew to downplay her wealth. Even the Texas Bush family knew to downplay their interests and wealth. Trump, on the other hand, is happy to share pictures of his gaudy penthouse in New York with all the gold and marble. He brags about being rich though it strikes me that we don’t actually know if he’s wealthy after all the times he’s squandered his wealth and had get help to start over. It could just be a show put on by his backers in Russia.

Elected officials who came before the current administration (aka the “numpties”) did what they could to explain or disprove negative information when it came to light. They looked for character witnesses, witnesses and news stories about the actual event in question, to help their case. The accused would do what they could to dig up facts and reasons to support what they did or didn’t do. Those who came before, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Clintons, at least had enough respect for the American people that they’d try to appeal to our reason, our logic, our humanity. And they’d apologize if they screwed up. They could feel shame, or at least, they could fake it. They recognized that they serve at our whim and that the Constitution is there to keep it that way. We were a priority to our leaders.

Last week White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus admitted they are looking to mess with the First Amendment. His people whined to the FCC about Colbert’s cock holster joke. The president filled Twitter with lies about the tax bill he wants to replace the ACA with, about jobs, about hate. He’s completely fine with taking health care away from Americans and saving a couple of coal jobs for his coal and oil friends while gutting environmental protections and putting thousands more out of work. Instead of showing us what they plan to do to Dodd-Frank he’s rooting for religious discrimination with a photo op in the rose garden. This week the president is filling Twitter up with more lies about his apparent collusion with Russia to affect the outcome of elections including his own.

 

At this point, we all know that Russia spent a lot to spread fake news stories in order to affect public opinion and get Trump elected. The Trump campaign changed the GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine. We also know that Trump’s comments about what was coming out of Russia and wikileaks, were timed with what was actually going on. Coincidence? I think not. We know that Trump was warned at least twice about Flynn, but he had no concern that his national security adviser was compromised. His concern is that someone might not be loyal to him. He’s worried that someone is not interested in lying to cover his corruption and greed.

I am seeing that the difference between this president and the numpties, the difference between this administration and all others before, isn’t the hate or the lies or even the corruption. We’ve always had a fair amount of that even in government. The difference is priorities. Their priorities don’t line up with ours in any way. Not even close.

Priorities.

And so we look back on Trump at his Palm Beach resort, bragging about eating the “most beautiful” piece of chocolate cake while casually telling Chinese President Xi Jinping “We’ve just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq, and I wanted you to know this.”

Syria. He meant Syria, but who cares really? Beautiful cake.

9 May 2017

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