Trump Is Damned If He’s Right, Damned If He’s Wrong

Last night, I wrote a somewhat lengthy (although not really, by my standards) post decrying the willful ignorance of Donald Trump’s support base.

Here are some questions I suggested Trump voters should ask themselves:

• how do you reconcile “draining the swamp” with an inner circle full of Goldman bankers?
• how you do reconcile a pledge to be the people’s President with your son-in-law buying entire baseball teams?
• how do you reconcile protecting Main Street with dismantling Dodd-Frank, the very set of rules that was put in place specifically to protect everyday people?
• how do you reconcile fighting terror with allowing CIA chief Mike Pompeo to present the heir to the Saudi throne with a medal honoring his “counter terrorism” efforts?

Of course there are no answers to those questions – that was the point (although judging by my inbox, quite a few people didn’t get it).

But really, my intent with that post wasn’t to ask a series of rhetorical questions. Rather, I wanted to remind readers (again) of just how batsh*t crazy President Trump’s verbal assault on the judicial branch truly is. Hence the excerpts from a piece in Foreign Policy entitled “Donald Trump Has Put America In Legal Hell.”

Well on Wednesday, Trump took it up another notch. In the wake of Michael Flynn’s unceremonious ouster, the President expanded his conspiracy theory to include the intelligence community (which I guess shouldn’t come as a complete surprise given his conspicuous refusal to admit that maybe – just maybe – there was something to intelligence reports suggesting Russia interfered with the election).

Have a look at how Trump spent Wednesday morning:

This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton's losing campaign.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017

Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?).Just like Russia

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017

The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by "intelligence" like candy. Very un-American!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017

Note the scare quotes around the word “intelligence.” That’s not an accident. He’s essentially applying the same “so-called” label he used to malign a federal judge to the US intelligence apparatus.

So now, Trump has accused not only the judiciary but also the intelligence community of conspiring against him.

Perhaps he should consider the following two points:

• if he’s wrong (that is, if there is no conspiracy), he’s a raving lunatic that clearly has no place being President
• if he’s right (there is a conspiracy), it means that the judicial branch and the intelligence community think he has no place being President

Translation: either way, he’s f*cked.

*****

Bonus comic relief Part 1: 

The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017

Bonus comic relief Part 2 (via Paddy Power):