Paging Deep Throat 2

Jan 12th, 2017 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog
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Richard Wolffe has a few observations on Trump’s appalling press conference.

Donald Trump is not what he seems. The supposed master of media manipulation stumbled so often at his first press conference, it is hard to recall why anyone thought the TV star was good at this stuff in the first place.

That one doesn’t make me wince with embarrassment, because I never did think Trump was good at this stuff. I didn’t think about him at all until a few months ago, and when I started I certainly never thought he was good at anything.

Judging from Wednesday’s trainwreck press conference – the first since July – Trump and his handlers have no self-discipline and no strategy to deal with the Russian crisis that has been simmering for the best part of the past year.

If his handlers had any of that kind of thing they wouldn’t be his handlers. Nobody with any sense would have anything to do with him.

They also have no sense of irony or, apparently, reality. The press conference opened with Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary, condemning the media coverage of Trump’s compromised relationship with Russia as “frankly outrageous and highly irresponsible”.

It seems churlish to have to recall this tweet from Trump in the closing phase of the recent election: “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a US citizen so she could use her in the debate?”

Ah yes, that. It may be churlish but I’m glad he did recall it, because I hadn’t. He called a powerless woman “disgusting” and cited a “sex tape” that never existed – he made that up out of whole cloth. He’s an evil man.

Without any sense of shame or patriotism, the president-elect celebrated the Russian hacking of the DNC and all those leaked emails. He even bragged about his closeness to the Russian president before claiming – somehow – that Hillary Clinton was the real poodle.

“If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what folks, that is called an asset, not a liability,” Trump said. “Do you honestly believe that Hillary would be tougher on Putin than me? Give me a break.”

Yes, Mr President-elect. The intelligence reports are indeed calling you an asset in the context of Russia. You may keep using that word but, as in the Princess Bride, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Trump will never learn from his mistakes. Suspecting the recent Russia revelations are the work of the intelligence agencies, Trump continues to wage war on his own spies. He could offer no proof of such a betrayal but continued to trash the CIA in public all the same.

This kind of struggle does not end well for sitting presidents, as Richard Nixon discovered. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s biggest source, known as Deep Throat, was in fact the deputy director of the FBI.

That’s a genuinely comforting thought.

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