He's a psychopath
Eric Boehlert, Press Run, June 10, 2020
Trump woke Tuesday morning and decided to advertise his unstable mind again.Bill Barr Debunks Trump's "Bunker Inspection" Lie To Push His Own Lie Smearing Peaceful Protesters
Pointing to a niche cable TV conspiracy claim made by a former Sputnik reporter, Trump suggested the 75-year-old peace activists who was pushed to the ground in Buffalo last week by two police officers was possibly affiliated with an alleged terror ring. Trump claimed on Twitter that when the old man lay motionless on the ground with blood pouring out of the back of his head, the event was part of a false flag set-up by left-wing agitators to sabotage the police.
It was Trump pushing sheer insanity ... It's presidential behavior that almost defies description. Yet here we are trying to find the words for Trump's heartless, inhumane actions. This, weeks after Trump accused a cable TV host of murder, charged Barack Obama with being a criminal mastermind, and threatened to unleash gunfire on Minneapolis protesters.
Given all of that, why does the press continue to shy away from covering Trump's mental health as an ongoing, legitimate news story? Why aren't mental health experts regularly quoted in an effort to inform Americans about the president's likely deteriorating condition and psychological impairments, highlighted by his non-stop lying, wanton cruelty, embrace of conspiracies? This is the commander-in-chief who recently spent a paranoid rage spree tweeting or re-tweeting 200 messages in a single day. Why has Trump's emotional instability become the third rail of American journalism, a topic so dangerous that it cannot be touched as a news story. (It does get discussed by opinion writers.)
Today, there appear to be two simple truths in play: Trump fits the textbook definition of a psychopath, and newsrooms are too afraid to touch that story. ...
Look at the erratic and incoherent way he dealt with an historic pandemic. As a USA Today editorial noted, Trump refused all common sense advice and wasted weeks, "undermining his administration's scientists, heralding a risky antimalarial drug as a potential coronavirus game changer, ruminating about injecting patients with disinfectants, promoting magical thinking about the virus disappearing, and refusing to lead by example by wearing a mask in public."
The president "is incapable of protecting lives but is making a global pandemic worse — not just through incompetence and ignorance, but through a dangerous detachment from reality," the World Mental Health Coalition recently noted in a petition. The group added that if Trump "were president of any major institutions, it is likely the Board of Directors would have required him to undergo a comprehensive mental health assessment."
Mainstream Trump news coverage today constantly details his bizarre, troubling and erratic behavior. But it always stops short and refuses to take the next logical step and ask, Why? ...
Take a look at how the [New York] Times reported Trump's descent into madness when he recently accused MSNBC's Joe Scarborough of murder:
President Trump smeared a prominent television host on Tuesday from the lectern in the Rose Garden with an unfounded allegation of murder, taking the politics of rage and conspiracy theory to a new level even as much of the political world barely took notice.The newspaper stressed it was an attack "that once would have been unthinkable for a sitting president," So Trump had done something "unthinkable" as president, and breached behavior that sank to "a new level." Of course, Trump does something "unthinkable" nearly everyday he's been in office. Shouldn't the obvious next question for the Times, and the needed area of news coverage, address why Trump acts the way he does?
Aren't journalists curious? Don't they want to understand if there's something mentally or emotionally wrong with the President of the United States, and delve into what that means for the country? Instead, the Beltway press has accepted the idea for three-plus years that Trump acts this way because he's slightly eccentric. Ignoring the hard truth allows the press to express astonishment ('Can you believe he did that?'), instead of addressing the more uncomfortable truths.
Worse, the press holds out hope that Trump will soon behave like a normal adult. Hours before he tweeted his demented claim about the hospitalized, senior citizen protester in Buffalo, CNN published a piece about how Trump might soon "tone down" his rhetoric.
The lack of necessary truth-telling today comes from the same place that drives large news organization to refuse to call Trump a liar, even though he's on pace to tell nearly 20,000 lies while in office. Calling him a "liar" means having to fend off conservative critics. The same is true with regard to Trump's unstable behavior — it's the fear of "liberal media bias" claims from the GOP. It's also likely the press doesn't want to open the Pandora's box by suggesting the President of the United States is unstable, because that would require the media to aggressively cover that story everyday for the rest of the Trump presidency — it would be one of the most important political stories of the last half-century.
There's no question that it's easier to look away than it is to address possible personalty disorders of a sitting president. But it's the defining issue of the Trump era and it ought to covered as a huge news story.
"Things Were So Bad That The Secret Service Recommended The President Go Down To The Bunker," Barr Tells Fox News
Igor Derysh, Salon, June 9, 2020
Attorney General William Barr undercut President Donald Trump's dubious claim that his trip to the White House bunker amid protests was just an "inspection" as he sought to spin his own order to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park to pave the way for his boss' photo-op in front of a fire-damaged church.
The New York Times and other outlets reported that Trump, first lady Melania Trump and their son Barron were taken to the underground bunker by Secret Service for about an hour as protesters clashed with authorities May 29 outside of the White House. Trump later claimed that he was only there for a daytime "inspection" even though the Secret Service raised the alarm after protesters breached a barricade, which The Washington Post confirmed with arrest records and official sources.
Barr directly undercut Trump's falsehood in a Monday interview with Fox News as he attempted to claim that the protesters he ordered to be cleared were not peaceful despite ample evidence that they were.
"We were reacting to three days of extremely violent demonstrations right across from the White House. A lot of injuries to police officers, arson," Barr said. "Things were so bad that the Secret Service recommended the president go down to the bunker. We can't have that in our country."
The comments came after Trump told "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade that it was just a routine "inspection."Baier: If you had to do Monday over again, would you do something different?— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) June 8, 2020
Barr: Based on what I know now, no... Things were so bad, the secret service recommended the President go down to the bunker. We can’t have that in our country. pic.twitter.com/2p64yP9G0s
"I went down during the day, and I was there for a tiny little short period of time, and it was much more for an inspection. There was no problem during the day," he said last week. "They said it would be a good time to go down and take a look, because maybe sometime you're going to need it. I looked at it. It was during the day. It was not a problem . . . There was never a problem." ...
[T]here is no evidence suggesting any violence at the protests before federal forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the area for Trump's photo-op in advance of the city's 7 p.m. curfew. ...
The spin around the episode has been relentless. For example, the administration has argued that it was not "tear gas" but rather a tear-inducing chemical irritant. Barr has also claimed that pepper spray is not a "chemical irritant," even though PepperBall, the company which makes pepper spray, markets it as an effective "chemical irritant."
Barr has also attempted to counter reports that he ordered the protesters to be cleared, even though White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed to reporters that he gave the order. Barr argued that he had simply urged authorities to do it, though did not actually say [the literal words] "go do it." ..."Pepper spray is not a chemical irritant. It's not chemical" -- AG Barr uses painstaking distinctions to defend the use of force against protesters near the White House last Monday pic.twitter.com/CQbtqLwfIk— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 7, 2020
The news coverage of his trip to the bunker angered Trump, and first daughter Ivanka Trump urged him to stage the photo-op in front of St. John's Church, according to The Times. The stunt turned out disastrous, drawing public rebukes from evangelical leaders, Republicans and even former Defense Secretary James Mattis. ...
Barr on Monday defended Trump's visit to the church but would not say whether he thought it was a good idea to take a photo with a Bible which Ivanka Trump carried in her $1,540 MaxMara bag surrounded by all-white officials in the middle of a protest against police racism.
No comments:
Post a Comment