Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
The latest Trump episodes really mark a drop down the rabbit hole. We were in “post-Truth” mode, but now we have switched over into an alternative reality.
I’ll leave ABC’s Rick Stein to sum up this week’s events:
Trump used a rambling news conference to equate the intelligence community to the Nazis and pronounced himself a germaphobe; men in dinosaur outfits roamed the hallways outside rocky hearings for Trump’s secretary of state pick; the president-elect’s promise of a “blind trust” for his assets was announced to be neither blind nor a trust; and the Senate started to repeal Obamacare, in the middle of the night. It was a dizzying day, though it’s worth noting that the Trump team seemed to control the terms of the chaos – sometimes literally. Trump’s declaration that news organizations – specifically, Buzzfeed and CNN – are “fake news” is an appropriation of that term for his own means. It’s in league with a Trump marketing style that’s morphing into a Trump governing style. When the distractions are intentional, they are part of the strategy. That might not be chaos at all.
To add to the chaos, some of Trump’s picks for cabinet roles have been contradicting some of his key policies in their Congressional confirmation hearings.
I have noticed one thing which has accompanied this final descent down the rabbit hole – Donald Trump is now regularly tweeting in capital letters, a sure sign he has lost the argument:
Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017
The next four years are certainly going to be entertaining – but, I suspect, in a painful way. It’s all very different from the quiet competence of Obama. I suspect there will be a whole legal industry whirring away around the new President. All good fun – NOT, as the President-elect might tweet. There are such low expectations for him I wonder whether he might flip the whole thing and end up perceived as a Reaganesque President, with requests for his image to be carved into Mount Rushmore.
Stranger things have happened. Ask Alice.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Find Halloween and seasonal gifts in my Etsy shop today.
Weekly Road Report - West End Ward #dundeewestend
Sue Gray: Beware of beat-sweeteners and source-greasers
Is Kemi Badenoch still in the lead? - The Week in Polls
Belljar
England urged to bring in minimum unit price on alcohol as deaths rise 10% a year
David Warren
David Allen
Steve Trevethan
John Waller
Vince Thompson
26 Comments
What are the odds on impeachment, Paul ? John McCain is formidable in the Republican Party and he’s on Trump’s case.
Boy, am I going to miss the intellectual elegance and grace of Barack Obama despite the spide’rs webb the Republicans wrapped round him to frustrate him.
Paul and David
Good comments. My mother in law in the States is so sad at the loss of Obama in the White House, she watched his farewell speech twice !
I believe Trump is so basically terrible , the only way , is up , with the correlation of expectations and achievements, not as normally,the one so low , the other met by merely not being a disaster ! Reagan, in ability if not ideology always underrated, he had run a union successfully as a moderate Democrat , and California successfully as a moderate Republican. His move to the right might have not happened had he not married someone not only conservative but from a very conservative family, and was rooted in an understandable anti-communism.Latest studies show in his latter years he reverted so thoroughly to moderation, his alliance with Gorbachev was seen as leftie by rightwingers , and he supported modest gun control in a bi-partisan approach as recent ex-president, with Ford and Carter! For all his faults , his good performances in movies , when younger,and good moves in politics when older , mean , in my view , the comparison with Trump is like comparing Frank Sinatra with a Karaeoke act !
David, according to oddschecker, you can get odds of 11/10 on Trump leaving office by impeachment or resignation.
Lot’s of this kind of rhetoric was aimed at G.W. Bush and the fact is he was in power. for 8 years. The Russia stuff is just tin foil hat paranoia mixed with the old pig trick “who cares if it’s not true, I want to see him deny it”.
I’ve been defending Trump this week because I watched his news conference then went on Twitter and it was like they watched a different news conference. People were saying it was “terrifying”. If people thought that news conference was terrifying then they don’t know what terror is.
People were also talking in a matter of fact way about him breaking the constitution. Different legal experts say different things and the idea he has to completely divest of all his private business assets is silly anyway. How is he supposed to find a buyer and train up a CEO, other than his sons or people he knows, by January 20th? It might make the company go bust. It’s not a responsible path.
Trump is also less hawkish on Russia than Hillary was, so another reason why I don’t understand this terror of a Trump presidency. Yes I understand ethnic minorities being afraid, but lets balance it with what Hillary was like too.
I have to say that after experiencing how partisan reporters have been treating Trump I understand why many Americans have partly switched off from mainstream news. It doesn’t mean I’d vote for Trump though, I wouldn’t.
“I’ve been defending Trump this week” – well there’s a surprise – birds of a feather….
Perhaps Trump ought to have thought about these issues before running for office, oh he had, he was going to set up a blind trust, he hasn’t.
Caracatus, who is going to run the blind trust? You can’t get these things in place with so short notice and the American public knew of his wealth before he was elected.
I think it’s an unrealistic demand and would set a bad precedent and put anyone who owns a business off running for president.
I have been trying to think of businessmen who became successful politicians and have been unable to come up with anyone of any significance. I think that is probably because the skill set required for being a politician is very different from that required to run a business. When you run a company you implement strategies which have measurable outcomes, even in the short term. To be a successful politician requires a far more complex and subtle approach if you want to succeed in changing anything. In my lifetime the US president who achieved the most was LBJ. He had a total grasp of the intricacies of politics at every level, and used flattery, nepotism, bribery, charm, trickery, deceit, and outright fraud to achieve his goals – and he changed America for the better. Beside him, Trump is a cardboard cutout, a man with some of LBJ’s flaws but without the skill to use them to his advantage. Perhaps behind the backdrop is a team of competent men and women who know how to operate in the US political system and are able to interface with Trump, work out what he wants, and find ways of implementing his strategy – if there is one – but chaos and sclerosis seem more likely outcomes.
tonyhill
“I have been trying to think of businessmen who became successful politicians ”
Michael Bloomberg? Berlusconi? Harry S Truman? George HW Bush (oil executive)? Jimmy Carter (peanut farmer)? Hoover? Harding? George W Bush?
The issue is that most of these had some intermediate political experience before they became President (except the first two).
Paul – yes, that is an important caveat which I should have made. Berlusconi is probably the most similar to Trump, but I hope that America’s less compromised political structures will ensure that Trump has a shorter time to inflict damage on his country than Berlusconi had.
There, behind you! I’m sure I saw a smiling cat….
Eddie Salmon – gosh you have a world exclusive there, given that Trump hasn’t released his tax returns or let anyone audit his wealth. Personally from what is available in the public domain, I don’t find any evidence that Trump is a great businessman, just that he is greedy and unscrupulous.
I fail to see what your personal opinion on what is silly or not has any bearing on Trump breaking his promises. If Trump can’t stand the heat, get out the kitchen.
If Mr Obama was that good, why was his preferred candidate reject by so many?
Mr Obama’s achievements appear to include:
bombing Libya
extra–judicial killing [including USA citizens]
not backing George Mitchell re. a Palestinian state
refusal to insist on a public option for his healthcare bill
continuing Mr Bush’s bank bailout
failure to help the fore-closed thousands
failure to address climate change
ditto Gitmo
keeping some 50,000 troops in Iraq
continued military activity in Afghanistan
persecution of whistle-blowers
forced mass expulsions of illegals
Worst, perhaps, of all, was his support of Mrs Clinton. If there had been an honest Democrat pre-presidential competition we would be looking forward to the term in office of Mr Bernie Sanders.
“By their deeds shall you know them.”
I don’t like what I’ve seen so far regarding Trump but I, nor anyone else, can define what his presidency will bring….All we have to go on is rhetoric and, like all politicians, that means ‘squat’…
As for Obama’s ‘quiet competence’????? Obama’s presidency has been, at least to me, a great disappointment…
Like Blair, he came to power in a blaze of glory, promised so much and delivered so little…
Trump and his advisors refer to the UK as a close friend who will be at the front of the queue for a trade deal. Hopefully a Trump led America will be a better friend to the UK than Obama was. If he is I’ll gladly buy a hammer and chisel and spend my weekends working at Mount Rushmore!
Steve Trevethan: Mr Obama’s preferred candidate got almost 3 million votes more than Donald Trump. In most democratic states she would have won. In the USA you just need to win the electoral college. How can a Democrat president achieve things with a Republican Congress ?There system makes change very difficult as it is designed to do.
Steve Trevethan: Mr Obama’s preferred candidate got almost 3 million votes more than Donald Trump. In most democratic states she would have won. In the USA you just need to win the electoral college. How can a Democrat president achieve things with a Republican Congress ?Their system makes change very difficult as it is designed to do.
@ Malc “Trump and his advisors (sp) refer to the UK as a close friend who will be at the front of the queue for a trade deal”.
To paraphrase the old Kennedy campaign against Nixon, “Would you buy a second hand car from that man?”
His business dealings in Scotland have not been a happy experience.
nvelope2003 14th Jan ’17 – 10:43am….Steve Trevethan: Mr Obama’s preferred candidate got almost 3 million votes more than Donald Trump. In most democratic states she would have won….
That is the system…
BTW, In 2015, using PR, Con..204, Lab…199, UKIP..82, LibDem..51, SNP..31, Gns..24 ..
A Tory/UKIP coalition?
Obama’s preferred candidate was simply not popular enough with enough democrats to tip the balance. I thought Hilary Clinton would have made a fine president, but for whatever reason she just didn’t gel. Really, the election should stand as a lesson about the dangers of picking someone because it is their turn and ignoring abundant evidence that suggested they were not trusted.
Mrs Clinton did not gain enough votes to win in the electoral college. Therefore she either did not get enough votes or did not plan the gaining of votes well enough.
Perhaps, if Mrs Clinton and her team had put less into undermining Mr Sanders and more into an efficient campaign, the Democratic candidate might have gained more electoral college votes.
Expats, Steve Trevethan: Mrs Clinton may not have been the right candidate but a “system” that denies victory to the candidate with the most votes by a considerable margin is not democratic. In the USSR the”system” guaranteed that the Communist Party always won. Most people in the West thought that was wrong.
Clinton and Trump together polled 94% of the votes cast so it was possible to have a clear winner even in a first past past the post election. In the UK the opposition parties were divided between Greens, Labour, Liberal Democrats, the SNP and various other Nationalist parties therefore the Conservatives won without the need to rely on UKIP or Unionist MPs. Maybe we should be grateful for that …….or not….. ?
A growing number of US figures are now saying a Trump presidency would be illegitimate. I am beginning to wonder if something will come out that stops Trump’s inauguration.If so I presume Pence will become President which would be bizarre.
Expats: I think the figure for the Conservatives should be 241 and Liberal Democrats 52 as otherwise the total comes to 612 when Plaid and N. Ireland are included.
nvelope2003 16th Jan ’17 – 9:55am….Expats: I think the figure for the Conservatives should be 241 and Liberal Democrats 52 as otherwise the total comes to 612 when Plaid and N. Ireland are included…..
Apologies…However, your figures make a Tory/UKIP government a sure thing…We all should be careful what we wish for…
expats: Well at least it would have received as near as possible half the votes and no other likely combination would have achieved that when you allow for abstentionist Sinn Fein and very small parties whou woul have failed to gain seats even with PR.
Before 1906 the Liberals often received over 50% of the votes even when they failed to get a majority of the seats in the House of Commons which seems to indicate that FPTP favours Conservatives, although it is possible that unopposed returns might have affected the figures as safe seats were often not contested. Maybe the Conservatives were more astute in determining the boundaries.
Eddie, you seem to be under the misapprehension that this isn’t standard practice and hasn’t been done countless times before.