* Donald Trump, it’s been well-chronicled, has been involved in fake news well before the term achieved media currency. It was simply called lying back in the day.
Ironically, however, Trump even makes news when he, however inadvertently, tells the truth. Case in point: His compliment to Australian President Malcolm Turnbull the other day. The same President Turnbull whom he was less than amiable to earlier in the year. Said Trump: “You have better health care than we do.” It was meant as a vintage make-nice, Trump throw-away line. But every word counts when you’re president, whether it’s fakery, flattery or flat-out factual.
For the record, Australia’s universal healthcare system is administered by their federal government. It’s to the left of the Affordable Care Act. Oops–but who’s keeping count anymore?
Or how about his Rose Garden aside to all the groveling Republicans gathered around for the House health care announcement. “Hey, I’m president. Can you believe it, right?”
Out of the mouth of knaves.
* Trump still does, in effect, campaign speeches when the overload of policy, nuance and something approximating presidential mien prompt a return to his fan-club base. It’s given rise to a new term: “sore winner.”
* It speaks volumes when both the liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof and the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer both label Trump a “charlatan.”
* Not they we needed a reminder, but the person responsible for the “Art of the Deal” telegraphed his philosophical punches years ago. “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole,” said Trump. “But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”
We’re already past “eventually.”
* FBI Director James Comey summed up his reaction about his decision affecting the presidential vote in two words: “mildly nauseous.” Not hard to imagine future historians upchucking at that characterization of the game-changer that made Donald Trump the 45th president of the United States.