* While we’ve all been reflecting on dystopian novels and movies for what Trump could mean to American democracy, there is another fictional perspective. That of the media, per se, and what its gut response could conceivably be to bully-pulpit harangues and taunts.
In fact, the other night I thought I saw a precursor to Howard Beal in “Network” (1976) when Fox News’ Shepherd Smith went all diatribe about presidential attacks on the media by someone who’s hardly the avatar of accuracy. Smith did, however, stop short of Bealian rhetoric.
But it wouldn’t have been shocking, frankly, had he actually said: “Things have got to change. But first, you gotta get mad. You’ve got to say I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”
*That’s where we are with a president whose ALL CAPS sound bites–from crowd sizes, the unemployment rate and white-nationalism code to Mexican rapists, NATO obsolescence and a Swedish terror incident–sound like last-call babble. That’s where we are with a truth-challenged president who insults and denigrates the non-Breitbart-Hannity-Ingraham-Coulter “scum” media as the unpatriotic opposition that produces “fake news.” That’s where we are with a commander-in-chief with a “life is a campaign” mantra and whose only allegiance is to his hero-worshipping fan base, his sycophantic inner circle and his pathologically-narcissistic ego.
* And that’s where we are with a commander-in-chief who, ironically, owes his presidency to the media, the same one he treats as a prop and a piñata. The same one that fawned all over him as a bombastic celebrity and reality-TV personality. The same one that kick-started his presidential campaign with nearly $2 billion in free media coverage–far exceeding anything that Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or Hillary Clinton received.
A Shorenstein Center report from the fall still resonates. Trump, it noted, was “arguably the first bona fide media-created presidential nominee.” Or as Republican strategist Rick Wilson observed: “Never forget. There was no movement. The media handed him this on a plate.”
Count on it. Nobody in the media is forgetting–both what Trump is saying and how he got into the position to say it.
* After a month of Trump, Bannon, Conway, Spicer and Miller, I miss Haldeman and Erlichman. I’m also recalling that, however dark and duplicitous, Richard Nixon was not unqualified to be president.
* A billionaire populist is the tip of the oxymoronic iceberg. Barely below the surface: what it’s costing taxpayers to support this hybrid Trump lifestyle that includes Secret Service security for presidential getaways to Mar-a-Lago, the Trump Tower residence of Melania Trump and globe-trotting overhead for the sons running the family business.
The biggest expense is moving the apparatus of the presidency to Palm Beach County. Often. The approximate cost, which includes having Coast Guard units patrol the exposed Mar-a-Lago shoreline, is $10 million so far for Trump’s first three post-inauguration visits. As for the First Lady’s Trump Tower digs, New York City is on the hook for $500,000 per day.
* We would be well advised to recall the words of President Teddy Roosevelt, who once observed that “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.” But TR, of course, never proposed “Talking brashly and carrying a big shtick.”
* The Vlad Putin-Donald Trump bromance notwithstanding, Russia has seen fit to park a spy ship in technically international waters off the New England coast. It has also deployed West European-threatening, nuclear-capable cruise missiles at variance with the INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty with the U.S.
Is this Putin sending a mob message to a dossier-haunted Trump or just Putin being Putin? It’s a given that with the Russian economy, which is oil-and-gas dependent and smaller than that of Canada, in the tank, he needs periodic distractions. Crimea’s not enough. He trades in conflict, especially if it weakens the European Union and reminds the U.S. that Russia is still a player.
And as for that psychological report the Russians are reportedly compiling on Trump, wouldn’t you like to see the details beyond “risk taker” and “naiveté?” You will.
And what are the odds that Trump won’t say something about Putin’s plastic surgery a few years ago?
* We can already see a key role being played by Vice President Mike Pence with his appearance at the Munich Security Conference. His mission was obviously two-fold. First, clean up after Trump and embrace NATO–albeit with a key, pay-your-way caveat. And, second, just look and sound, well, normal.