Trump's Big Mouth Tips His Hand

Donald Trump, in a cabinet meeting last week after the GOP passed its big tax bill – the only major legislative achievement of his first year as so-called president – said this:

“But Obamacare has been repealed in this bill. We didn’t want to bring it up. I told people specifically be quiet with the fake news media because I don’t want them talking too much about it. Cause I didn’t know how people would... But now that it’s approved I can say the individual mandate on health care – where you had to pay not to have insurance, okay, think of that, where you pay not to have insurance – the individual mandate has been repealed.”

I think this is a superb example of Trump’s inability to control his mouth – and, in doing so, reveals something he shouldn’t normally want revealed. Consider this:

1. He’s boasting about the repeal of the individual mandate (a GOOD THING from his point of view, right?), at the same time as he’s saying he felt the need to downplay this supposedly GOOD THING.
   
   It’s like saying “We cured cancer, but we wanted to stay quiet about it.”


2. In order to keep the American people from hearing about this GOOD THING the Republicans were doing, Trump didn’t want the “fake news” talking about it.
   
   In other words, he didn’t want the media, which he claims tell only lies, to report (and obsess about) this good, but TRUE, thing. Surely he was afraid that by telling the public the truth about this GOOD THING, the media would make it sound BAD. What made him think his followers would believe the media anyway?


3.  And Trump’s reason for this hush-hush approach (and here is the REVEAL) was that he wasn’t sure “how people would...” Would, would...something. I’m sure he was about to say “how people would react” or “how people would take it” or "how people would like it". It’s like saying “We’ve cured cancer, but I’m not sure whether people will be happy about it.” 
   
   But as he was about to speak those words, Trump suddenly realized where his train of thought was taking him. He pulled back at the last moment and left the sentence unfinished. After all, it would have been an admission that not everyone thinks this GOOD THING is really that good. Maybe even he realizes that – outside the 35% of Americans who will follow him to the ends of the Earth – many Americans, maybe even most, might not actually want him to “repeal Obamacare”.


4. So, while the provision to rescind the individual mandate was being considered (you can’t say “debated”, since there was hardly any of that), Trump didn’t dare talk about it. 
   
   But after the deal was done, after the die was cast, the Rubicon crossed, the point of no return passed, when it was too late to do anything about it, then it was okay to come clean. Hence, his “But now that it’s approved I can say...”
   
   It’s like telling your wife, “Honey, I’ve sold the house and we’re all moving to Mexico. I didn’t tell you before, cause I knew you’d object, but now that it’s too late, I thought you should know. ¡Olé!”

In summary:  Trump didn’t want the LYING PRESS telling the TRUTH about the VERY GOOD THING he was doing for Americans, because he knew that many of those Americans would think it was NOT a good thing, but after it was TOO LATE to change it, he couldn’t help BRAGGING about how he’d tried to HIDE the whole thing since it was such a VERY GOOD THING. 

And what fake president wouldn't be proud of that?

Valeuutiset?

As part of my ongoing struggle to learn Finnish, I have now and then tried reading various books suomeksi. One of these I recently took a stab at (once again) is “The Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf” by the legendary 19^th century naturalist and conservation evangelist John Muir. It’s the account of his walk from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867, just after the Civil War.

One passage I ran across about a man he encountered along the way struck me as surprising resonate to today:

Matkasin muutaman mailin vanhan tennesseeläismaanviljelijän kanssa, joka oli hyvin kiihtynyt juuri kuulemistaan uutisista. ”Kolme kuningaskuntaa, Englanti, Irlanti ja Venäjä, on julistaneet sodan Yhdysvalloille. Voi, se on kamalaa, kamalaa”, hän sanoi. ”Taas on sota alkamassa, ja vielä näin äkkiä oman ison tappelumme jälkeen. No, ei kai sille mitään voi, enkä mä voi muuta sanoa kuin eläköön Amerikka, mutta parempi olisi, jos mitään kärhämää ei tulisi.”

”Mutta oletko varma, että uutiset pitävät paikkansa?”, minä kysyin. ”Kyllä vaan”, hän vastasi, ”sillä mä ja muutama naapuri oltiin kaupassa eilen illalla, ja Jim Smith, joka osaa lukea, luki tän jutun sanomalehdestä.”

I traveled a few miles with an old Tennessee farmer who was very excited about news he had just heard. “Three kingdoms, England, Ireland and Russia, have declared war on the United States. Oh, it is horrible, horrible,” he said. “Again, war is coming, and yet so soon after our own big fight. Well, I don’t suppose anything can be done about it. The only thing I can say is hooray for America, but it would be better if there were no squabbles.”

“But are you sure that the news is correct?”, I asked. “Sure,” he answered. “Me and a few neighbors were at the store yesterday evening, and Jim Smith, who can read, read the story from the newspaper.”

Needless to say, no such war had been declared. Ireland? Really?

In today’s environment -- where reality itself seems to be in dispute at every turn and what you think really happens in the world will depend on which media you consume -- the farmer’s falling for a 19^th century version of fake news somehow feels familiar.

From this you might be tempted to think Muir's account shows that, in this regard, there’s nothing new under the American sun. But, still, you can’t blame an illiterate farmer for trusting his friend Jim’s recitation of an erroneous newspaper story. It’s not as if he could Google “Ireland declares war”!

Today’s Americans, with so many ways to receive and double-check the news, have no such excuse for falling for stories that are demonstrably false (like Trump's claim that at least 3 million illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in the US election, depriving him of a popular-vote victory), while at the same time crying “fake!” every time they encounter legitimate news (such as Russia’s election meddling) that goes against their politics. 

But that doesn't stop many from doing it anyway.