Happy Sunday,
Ordinarily, Sunday is the day I focus on the communications barrage from our President from the prior week, but today a picture is worth 1,000 words. Here is our leader, seated behind the Resolute desk, hawking beans because the company’s CEO is a Trump supporter. At first I thought this was a photoshopped picture. What president, after all, would actually demean and commercialize the office like this? Alas, it’s real:
By the way, the Resolute Desk has a rich history. The HMS Resolute was salvaged by the U.S. Navy and returned to Britain in 1856, as a gesture of good will. As a reciprocation of that act, the Queen presented the Resolute Desk to President Hayes in 1880. It has been the Presidential desk on and off. Mr. Trump knows it must have an important history only, as usual, he only pretends to know it and misstated it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2018/04/26/trump-told-the-french-president-that-the-resolute-desk-was-from-1814-try-again/ Of course it’s easy enough to learn the history. After all, it’s in a book. Oh, wait, that explains it…
Meanwhile, the following is Mr. Trump’s tweeting condemning those who published books about the President. Among the many questions to ask is whether Mr. Trump knew John Bolton was a “dummy” or “a war mongering fool” when he appointed Mr. Bolton to high office:
"I am the ultimate member of The Book of the Month Club. First I have lowlife dummy John Bolton, a war mongering fool, violating the law (he released massive amounts of Classified Information) and an NDA in order to build badly needed credibility and make a few dollars, which will all end up going to the government anyway. Next up is Mary Trump, a seldom seen niece who knows little about me, says untruthful things about my wonderful parents (who couldn’t stand her!) and me, and violated her NDA. She also broke the Law by giving out my Tax Returns. She’s a mess! Many books have been written about me, some good, some bad. Both happily and sadly, there will be more to come!"
I think we can agree with the President that there will be more books to come. And I believe they will uncover even craven, selfish, narcissistic behaviors than we are aware of today. We will see a White House preoccupied with electoral advantage, ratings, and avoidance of bad news (see, e.g., the concerns with reporting too many cases of COVID-19), all at the expense of human lives and increased suffering. I have little doubt that Mr. Trump will go down in history as an even worse president than James Buchanan who, for all his mistakes leading to the Civil War, had some semblance of duty and prior service to his country. I can’t wait for the books.
On another note, isn’t it remarkable the extent to which the President and his minions are fighting the disclosure of his tax returns? He promised us they would be released when the audits were completed (they have been). Yet lawsuit after lawsuit. What, exactly, is he hiding? And is the hiding itself reason enough to reject him? We will learn when they are released, perhaps not until years hence, that he paid little in taxes, manipulated tax law to the extreme, earned far less money than he claimed, and borrowed money to stay afloat from nefarious folks, including Russian oligarchs. I have no doubt.
Happy Sunday,
Glenn
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