Not that he is inclined to take any advice, quite obviously, but I have some for the president of the United States to get him out of this political corner he has painted himself into.
As discussed in this space a few weeks ago, Donald Trump’s insistence that the federal government, with our willing tax dollars, bankroll a fantasy he conjured during campaign rallies that was supposed to be paid for by Mexico and that no one involved on a professional level thinks we need or that will actually work is a dead end. His wholly manufactured border crisis, easily verified by merely asking people at the border, (for instance his 4,000 terrorists — there have been six — or “massive drug smuggling,” which is mostly done on airplanes and through legal entry in cars or vans) has also queered the deal considerably. And now that the purse strings in congress has been taken over by the opposition party with a mandate to put the brakes on foolish Trumpian bromides, there will be no funding for The Wall. And, unfortunately, since our game show president works most comfortably in a delusional construct — his reasoning, statistics, and overall dire depiction of issues all originate from a demonstrably false base — it therefore provides a flimsy foundation for any cogent argument. This has all led to this current impasse that resulted in the shutdown of a portion of the federal government for, at the time of this writing, 21 days.
Hence, political corner painted.
Now, Trump’s first mistake — and this has been repeated throughout his first two years in office — is he misunderstood the entire idea of a partial government shutdown, at first living under the other delusion that these 800,000 federal workers were somehow merely liberal democrats that can suck it, or part of the pork-fat, anti-government rhetoric the Right has depicted for a century, or that these jobs would not also affect key elements of national safety like Homeland Security, Air Traffic Control, farmers, and even people receiving tax refunds. He also miscalculated how much people would accept living without paychecks and working for free for what he deems patriotic reasons. This is an excellent symbol for his cracked ideas that somehow the American people would endure trade wars and pay more for products to save a couple of thousand jobs, or the kind of thing hippies believe, not purported titans of industry.
But alas, as is my wont, I digress.
Trump being an idiot is not what we’re about this week. It is what he has available to him as president to switch the narrative of this madness — and by available, I mean, not salient compromising points or even a modicum of mature meditation. He has shown a specular incapacity for any of that. What Trump can do, and must do, is declare a state of emergency and send the military down there to do “build a wall”, whatever the hell that is. There really is no other way for him to pull out of this and do what he does best, claim victory, whether its draped in ignominious embarrassment or not. Congress is not going to budge on this, nor should they, it is insane.
Now, I realize there are some constitutional purists who would bitch about this, but really there are copious examples of the commander-in-chief blowing past congress and ignoring facts to enact some crazy shit. For example, just in my lifetime we have Viet Nam, a completely made up crisis — the Gulf of Tonkin incident, emanating from a false narrative, the goofy “domino theory”. What was reported by the Pentagon never happened and whatever the LBJ administration thought about the spread of communism in Asia or Nixon’s “secret plan to end the war” no one after the initial advisor stage and troop build-up thought it was a sound move. Ten years, two administrations, and 60,000 American lives, including thousands mutilated and mentally destroyed, and millions of dead Vietnamese and Cambodians later, well you get the point. And we now know that there never were any weapons of mass destruction nor a scintilla of enriched uranium in Iraq, but well, the war, long after “Mission Accomplished,” is still going on, after hundreds of thousands dead and trillions of dollars wasted, blah blah blah.
There are certainly more of these throughout our history, proving without a doubt that Trump has every right to make something up and then use our money and kids to make it happen. Even if some judge sees it differently, because there will be lawsuits, Trump can claim he did everything he could to satiate the weirdly racist desires of his 35 percent base and whatever other delusions he has about how drugs and gangs get into this country.
Because Trump is a neophyte at this, he’s overplayed his hand. He was unaware that his minions and their radio and FOX News voices were going to hold him to this lunacy. He used to do things like claim the Central Park Five were guilty as sin, when they were not, or that he had evidence that the president of the United States was born in Kenya, he did not, but eventually he went back to mocking Rosie O’Donnell, cheating on all of his wives, or hosting game shows. Now, as president, his blurting of claptrap becomes reality for the great unwashed, and it comes with consequences. After blowing the House at the midterms, Trump has gone from “Maybe we’ll get to it” when the Republicans could have handed him funding (except many also thought this was goofy) to whatever nonsense he laid on the American people for ten excruciating network minutes this week, which I have to give an Associated Press colleague credit for describing as “something like watching a monkey trying to fuck a greased football.”
Trump is probably going to get impeached anyway. Things are looking grim. Yesterday his fixer decided he’ll go in front of the new congress and the American people and describe those crimes he helped Trump commit in NYC for years and the special counsel has evidence his campaign manager shared opposition stats with Russians. These are just the first of many dominoes to fall. My advice is take this last ditch effort to blow things up and go to the military. As Al Haig told Nixon in his final hours in the Oval Office when the beleaguered president was facing impeachment, “There’s always the army, Mr. President, Lincoln used it.”
Then send everyone back to work.
You’re welcome.
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James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey”, “Fear No Art”, “Trailing Jesus”, “Midnight For Cinderella” and “Y”. “Shout It Out Loud – The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon”
And coming in June, 2018; “Accidentally Like a Martyr – The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon”
