Pressing For A Presser

It seems that MAGA folks are obsessing over the fact that Joe Biden hasn’t stood at a podium and taken questions from the media some 50 days after taking office. I don’t think it’s because they are so eager to hear from their new president. Nothing like that. They are annoyed that Biden (as they see it) is escaping scrutiny from the same press that gave Donald Trump such a hard time throughout his presidency. Of course, that doesn’t include Fox News, which was always a safe space for Trump.

Or, maybe more likely, they think Biden is being prevented by his press shop from making a fool of himself by talking unscripted in front of cameras, since Biden (as they are convinced) is borderline senile, a fact that will instantly be obvious to even hard-core Democrats once he has to field real questions from a real reporter. He’s hiding, they would say, in a way that a "real" president like Trump would never to.

They like to point out that Trump wasted no time in getting before the cameras to spar with the media by holding his first solo press conference on Feb. 16^th after only 27 days in office. He didn’t hesitate, they would say, to face the press and deliver any unscripted remarks that happen to pop up in his head, not holding back, putting on full display his scattershot thinking on any number of topics. They see this as a feature, not a bug.

And Trump willingly took reporters’ questions, they would point out. He happily defended and justified the actions of his administration, they would say, and explained the intricacies of his policies to a hostile media. As if. 

Recollections may vary, as Queen Elisabeth might say. I remember that first press conference as a hot mess. To remind myself exactly what it was like, I took a look at the transcript (a whopping 13,000 words long). Some things stand out. First, Trump starts by announcing the nomination of Alex Acosta as Labor Secretary (94 words) and the confirmation of his pick for head of Office of Management and Budget, Mike Mulvaney (43 words), which Trump whines was “weeks late”, “weeks, weeks late”. Biden’s choice for that spot had to withdraw due to the hurt feelings of Republicans and Joe Manchin, so that now even weeks later than for Trump, it remains unfilled. Haven't heard Biden whine about it yet.

Then Trump goes on to talk (91 words) about how, Paul Singer, a GOP donor, had just visited the White House, and how Singer, who had been a Never Trumper, has now gotten onboard the Trump Train, a hopeful is a sign as Trump saw it of the kind of unification (abject loyalty?) that he inspires in people. When I first read it, I thought Trump was referring to Singer as Mulvaney’s predecessor, so unclear was Trump's unscripted way of speaking.

Next, he says “I think I’ll say a few words and take some questions.” Some 3150 words (!) later, he takes the first question, which is about Mike Flynn, the National Security Advisor he had just fired for lying to Mike Pence and the FBI, one of the first scandals of his administration. Flynn was in the job a mere 24 days. Here’s how Trump responded to the reporter’s question:

“Mike Flynn is a wonderful person, and I asked for resignation, he respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President Pence, who’s with us today, and I was not happy with the way that information was given. He didn’t have to do that because what he did wasn’t wrong. What he did in terms of the information he saw. What was wrong was the way that other people, including yourselves, in this room, were given that information. Because that was classified information that was given illegally. That’s the real problem.

“You know, you can talk all you want about Russia, which was all, you know, ‘fake news’ fabricated deal to try to make up for the loss of the Democrats and the press plays right into it. In fact, I saw a couple of the people supposedly involved with all of this. They know nothing about it, never in Russia, never made a phone call, never received a phone call. It’s all fake news. It’s all fake news.

“The nice thing is I see it starting to turn where people are now looking at the illegal — I think it’s very important — the illegal giving out classified information, and let me just tell you, it was given out so much.

“For example, I called, as you know, Mexico. It was a very confidential classified call, but I called Mexico, and in calling Mexico, I figured, oh, well that’s nice, I spoke to the president of Mexico, had a good call, all the sudden it’s out there for the world to see. It was supposed to be secret.

“Supposed to be either confidential or classified in that case, same thing with Australia. All of the sudden, people are finding out exactly what took place. The same thing happened with respect to General Flynn. Everybody saw this.

“And I’m saying, the first thing I thought of when I heard about it, is how does the press get this information that’s classified? How do they do it? You know why? Because it’s an illegal process, and the press should be ashamed of themselves, but more importantly, the people that gave out information to the press should be ashamed of themselves. Really a shame.”

Whew! That was a long-winded way (380 words) of saying it’s the media’s fault that I fired Mike Flynn for lying. I especially like, the bit “He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President Pence”. Seems he has trouble expressing himself. Anyway, this is the performance that MAGA folks hold up as a shining example of how presidents should talk to Americans. 

It’s worth noting that Trump was so stung by the negative response to this presser, he didn’t hold another one for almost a year. That long dry spell must have been pure torture for those folks now losing their minds over Joe Biden's heart-breaking absence from the briefing room. 

Bonaparte Wannabe

Joe Biden has been president for a week now, and it is certainly refreshing to have what seems so far to be a normally competent administration in place. Even more refreshing is not having Donald Trump in our faces every day non-stop. Suddenly, one day – like a miracle – it disappeared.

It is somewhat comforting to know Trump’s hidden away, almost in exile down in Mar-a-Lago for now, though I hear Palm Beach may be take legal action against him for breaking the agreement he made not to permanently reside there (and not stay more than seven days at a stretch) when he turned the place into a resort in 1993. I’ve also heard that some paying Mar-a-Lago residents are abandoning the resort because of the “dispiriting” atmosphere that descended after Trump moved in. Maybe can’t blame them.

It must be torture for Trump not to be in the public eye, which is surely what drove him to form the so-called Office of the Former President. As if he is THE former president, neglecting the four other former presidents who didn’t feel the need to create a fake “position” when they left office. At least he admitted he’s a *former* president.

I can almost imagine him brooding down there in Florida like Napoleon in exile on the Isle of Elba. With that in mind, it’s a little disconcerting also to remember that Bonaparte eventually escaped from Elba, raised an army on the mainland and marched on Paris to rule for another 100 days. (We once drove along part of Napoleon’s march on our way from the Riviera back to Geneva. Scenic route, to be sure.) Trump may dream that he too has such an army awaiting his return, but if so, it might be a bit reduced – some 150 of the insurrectionists he sent off to storm the Capitol have now been arrested, with we can hope more to come.

Trump might well be disillusioned with them anyway. Or at least their appearance. After all, he reportedly called them “low-class” after seeing them on TV rampaging through the halls of Congress. (Has he NEVER met his most ardent grass-roots MAGA supporters? Maybe not, since I doubt many would be allowed to set foot within the confines of Mar-a-Lago.)

So perhaps he can’t count anymore on that motley camo- and fleece-wearing “army” of rioters. But they’re not his real army anyway, not the one that will do him any good. That would be the jacket-and-tie-clad clan in Congress (well, in the case of “Gym” Jordan, made that "no jacket") who, by refusing to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, seem determined to give him another shot at the White House in four years. They have no morals, no scruples, no backbones – in other words, just Trump’s kind of guys.

Napoleon's second exile on the island of St. Helena.
Perhaps Trump's next one will be on the island of Rikers.
(painting by Franz Josef Sandmann)

Biden vs. Trump: The Soft Punditry of Debate Expectations

It is an article of faith among Trump and his followers that Joe Biden is too old, feeble-minded, and physically weak to be president. (File this under “pot calling the kettle black”.) I see MAGA folks saying this all the time, and maybe they believe it, but I’m not sure Trump himself believes it. In this case, he might just be more cynical than delusional, using anything he can to cast doubts about Biden’s fitness.

Of course, Biden is all-too aware of Trump’s attempts to paint him as an old geezer (a whopping three-and-a-half years older than Trump!). At public events, Biden seems to make a point of jogging out to the podium. Trump never jogs, Trump lumbers onstage.

I can’t ignore the fact that Joe is an old guy and he apparently does sometimes say goofy things. But it’s hard to be greatly disturbed by that when the alternative is a man who has made incoherency a defining feature of his persona, virtually a trademark – Covfefe ®. Many people note that Trump’s slandering of opponents is a form of projection, basically accusing his rivals of the very thing Trump is guilty of. I think it certainly applies here.

In any case, it seems like a weird strategy for Trump to be downplaying Biden’s mental state, especially before a debate. Normally, politicians play the “expectations game”, stressing how sharp and capable their opponents are and how tough it’s going to be going up against him (or her). You set the expectations low, so that when you outperform them, if only by a little bit, it looks like a big win for you. Trump isn’t doing that with Biden, and he may regret it if it turns out Biden appears NOT to have one foot in the grave, as Trump has been promising.

You almost think Trump’s followers truly expect Biden to totter around the debate stage, confused, disoriented, drooling, literally drooling. This is what they have been led to believe in their MAGA echo chambers. And if Biden comes off as alert, well-informed, coherent, even presidential (as I hope he does), then Trump’s followers will have some conflicting feelings to deal with.

Or not. They may, rather than admitting they have been misled, simply refuse to believe their eyes. Or they may make excuses for a good performance by Biden, excuses which Trump and his allies have already helpfully provided beforehand with accusations such as Biden will be "fed" the questions before the debate or that Biden is taking drugs to sharpen his mind. 

You would think the first claim would be harder to make for the first debate, which is being hosted by Fox News. But I'm already seeing folks on social media hinting that Fox moderator Chris Wallace will be teaming up with Biden to rake Trump over the coals. It's as if they see the writing on the wall and are bracing themselves for a dismal performance by Trump, which will be (in their minds) entirely no fault of his own. Of course. 

The anti-dementia drug claim is also a little desperate and especially telling, since many people see signs of abuse of the cognitive enhancing drug Adderall in Trump’s own behavior, with some people even accusing him of “snorting” the drug. That could explain the chunks of white stuff that came flying out of his nose on camera recently. Pieces of Adderall, perhaps? Or maybe it was just snot. He is, after all, almost as old as drooling Biden.

Anyway, I guess we’ll be able to judge all this for ourselves in the debate tonight.

Trump Care BS Overdrive

So, after almost four years as president (and decades of hard work by Republicans before Trump), Trump finally announced the big GOP healthcare overhaul to replace Obamacare. It seems basically to consist of:

1) a promise to cover pre-existing conditions (after first ensuring the SCOTUS takes that coverage away). No details of how that promise would be fulfilled, what laws would be enacted to force insurance companies to take all comers. But no worries. As we all know, you can take a "promise" from Donald Trump to the bank!

2) a one-time redistribution of $200 to everyone on Medicare to help pay for prescription drugs (because Trump couldn't manage to force drug companies to reduce their bottom line and lower the price they charge for drugs). The fact that this payout will happen just before election day is only a coincidence, surely. I mean he could have done it Jan. 21, 2017, but I guess it wasn't a priority then.

3) a promise to stop doctors from charging for services not covered by a patient's insurance policy, in other words "surprise billing". It's about time the government stepped in and controlled what doctors bill for services or insurance will cover. Can we hope to have complete price controls on all medical services eventually? Anyway, it’s a good first step, though it does seem that all Trump is doing now is “investigating” how this might work. I guess we need to give him for time to figure it out.

Maybe that's why he needs another four years. It took four years to come up with an outline of plan. With another four years he and the GOP can come up with the actual plan. Maybe just before election day 2024.

Not a History to Bragg About

Lately some folks in the US (especially in the South, you could even say the Old Confederacy) have become outraged over the idea of renaming military bases that have been named after Confederate military officers, such as Fort Bragg or Foot Hood. Often these folks equate such removal of CSA-related names as “erasing” or “ignoring” history.

This has even gotten the attention of Donald Trump, no doubt an aficionado of the Civil War (in addition to his many other intellectual pursuits) – no, I’m joking, he doesn’t even seem to know who won that war. Still, Trump has weighed in on the issue, declaring he will NOT allow the honor of men who fought against the United States to be desecrated in such a way. His press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, went so far as to evoke the horror that renaming Fort Bragg would bring to soldiers who were based there and later died in combat, as if being dead wasn’t torment enough.

This is, of course, closely related to the dreaded "cancel culture" and the controversy over removing statues of CSA generals from prominent public spaces, again an attempt (as some people see it) to prevent modern-day Americans from learning history. They have a point, of course, because the best way to learn about Civil War history is to stand before a statue of Robert E. Lee and stare at his visage in bronze, or lead, or stone, or whatever, just stare and stare at that image of a man on horseback long enough until suddenly all the details of his life, his battles, his strategy come flowing, like a beam of invisible light from the past, straight into your brain and, boom!, you’ve learned something about history.

Maybe that’s the way some people do it. Normally, I read books. Or Wikipedia. So, naturally, all this fuss about renaming Fort Bragg made me turn to my main source of book-learning on the Civil War, James McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom”, to find out more about the man Fort Bragg is named after. Because, honestly, before all this controversy erupted, I can’t remember ever hearing anything about Braxton Bragg unlike, for example, Stonewall Jackson.

Turns out Bragg was not a stellar general. He was hot-tempered, constantly fighting with his subordinates, not an inspiring leader. He’s best known for leading the Army of Tennessee in a failed invasion of Kentucky, followed by inglorious retreats from the Battles of Perryville and Stones River, an evacuation from Chattanooga, a less than decisive victory in the Battle of Chicamauga, and then a decisive (even humiliating) defeat in the Battles of Chattanooga. It was the last one which opened the door for US general William T. Sherman to begin his March to the Sea through Georgia and for Bragg to be relieved of command of his army. McPherson labeled him a “bumbler”.

And for this legacy, this heritage of not only treason against the United States, but also incompetence in military execution, Bragg gets a major military installation named after him, an installation that’s supposed to inspire pride in the fighting men and women associated with it? Honoring Bragg this way in 1918, forty years after his death, was surely a form of consolation to politicians in the Jim Crow South butt-hurt over losing the war, which amazingly many modern-day politicians still seem to be 155 years later.

Bragg was a losing general for the losing side in a war against the United States, and this is the guy whose heritage Donald Trump -- not known for admiring losers -- is happy to preserve, as long as that’s what his supporters in the Old Confederacy want. Maybe if he actually knew some of the history, he'd change his mind. 

Sorry, joking again -- no chance that would happen. 

Gen. Braxton Bragg, loser extraordinaire.

Unknown author, restoration by Adam Cuerden.
Copyright US Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division.