Trump’s superpower is no longer working

Fifty-six years ago this week, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed and walked on the moon.

Today, millions believe that trip never happened. Instead, they are content in the belief that it was all created on a Hollywood soundstage. “Our science wasn’t advanced enough to go to the moon,” is one conspiratorial argument. Many of those same people think our science is currently advanced enough to create vaccines to cause diseases, pollute the skies with chemtrails and seed clouds to cause life-ending flash floods — even though climate change can’t possibly be caused by humans, because we’re not advanced enough to influence the weather.

Some of the leaders of this militantly ignorant cadre of dysfunctional dimwits are members of Congress. And those congressional Republicans only want you to go to college if you can personally afford it while they all worship Donald Trump as a personal emissary of Jesus — whom they also worship, but not at the expense of getting rid of concentration camps in the Everglades that hold immigrants, children and the occasional citizen in the name of justice without due process.

They’re also the cowards who adjourned the House of Representatives early so they could avoid having to take action on the growing Jeffrey Epstein scandal, which is now threatening to swallow Trump whole.

If you distill all of this mean-spirited ignorance into an office, you would have the president’s press office, which is led by a self-proclaimed Christian who is thankful daily that Trump is refusing to treat his neighbor as he treats himself.

Years ago, when I first walked into the White House during the Ronald Reagan era, I remember one day becoming very frustrated with the lack of information coming out of Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes’ office. I was so angry with one of his underlings that I came close to losing my temper. An older reporter took me aside and said, “Every reporter capable of independent thought has fantasized about grabbing a president’s press secretary, shaking them vigorously and screaming, ‘Just do your damn job and give me the information!’ But we don’t do it.”

I looked around. “Okay,” was all I could say. My success at following the reporter’s advice is certainly up for interpretation. I have reached that point with the press office of every president since Reagan — no exceptions. Some drove me to it earlier than others. Trump would probably take perverse pride in knowing that many of us consider his administration to be among the very best — at driving us there the quickest.

Trump leads this plunge into the dark abyss with the fury of Blackbeard. All that’s missing is  the hat and beard. Like Blackbeard, Trump does carry lit fuses with him, and he loves to try to intimidate people by waving them profusely about, much like a drunk trying to do jumping jacks. 

This works well enough to intimidate or impress a sizable chunk of the electorate, and it’s been exceptionally effective in causing the Republicans in Congress to cave to his every whim — even if they know it will cause them immense pain to do so.

The Trump train of trashy turmoil is so large on the cultural landscape in no small part because of the seriousness of our violent malaise. Remember when mass shootings, violent murders and war dominated our headlines? Not anymore. The potential genocide of the Palestinians barely gets a notice; equally deadly wars in Africa never get mentioned. 

On Wednesday, the admitted killer of four Idaho college students was sentenced to life in prison. Bryan Kohberger’s motives for the murders are still unknown. The judge ruled in accordance with Kohberger’s plea deal. After he declined a chance to explain his motives, family and friends of the four victims screamed with “agony and fury” at the killer, with one of them shouting “Go to hell.”

Prior to Trump, that story could have led a national newscast. Today it might make the second segment. 

Just ahead of that story, before the first commercial break, would be a report about the Pentagon’s independent watchdog, which apparently received evidence that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal account message previewing a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen included classified information from an email labeled “SECRET/NOFORN.” The Trump administration has repeatedly said that no classified information was divulged in unclassified group chats.

The third story in the first block would be Trump’s royal screwing of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration. According to published reports, Florida has already signed contracts to pay at least $245 million to construct  and run a new immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” The amount — to be fronted by Florida taxpayers — goes a long way to paying the $450 million a year officials have estimated the facility will cost. 

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State officials say some of the cost will be covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But in court documents, attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security said the federal government hasn’t and apparently won’t reimburse Florida. The department said that “Florida is constructing and operating the facility using state funds on state lands under state emergency authority.”

Amazing. Trump’s policies are damaging his base, and it’s a giant slap in the face to DeSantis. Trump probably is having a private laugh at the governor’s expense. He’s not exactly a fan of DeSantis when push comes to shove.

The Justice Department’s request to release the Epstein transcripts being denied by a Florida judge wouldn’t lead the newscast either. But it would be the story just after the lead. 

Leading the news would be a quote from Trump, probably about the revelation that he’s allegedly mentioned multiple times in the Epstein files. He’ll deny it of course. He’ll blame Obama or Biden, bread mold or perhaps a rancid hamberder.  He’ll talk about it whether he’s walking to an event or to the toilet — as long as it’s done quickly and with little preparation before a hand-picked crowd of reporters that doesn’t include the wire services or the Wall Street Journal. 

“Good name but it’s a terrible paper,” Trump said of the Journal before a small gathering of privileged reporters on Tuesday. He also called it “corrupt,” and then claimed, “We caught Hillary Clinton, we caught Barack Hussein Obama…it’s all there.” And while he went after his old nemeses with gusto, he saved some vitriol for his more recent foe Joe Biden by saying again that the 2020 election was rigged: “I did win that election.” 

Trump is apparently racing toward dementia at breakneck speed. He’s Jesus’ best friend. He’s admired as a genius. He’s derided as a charlatan. He’s lied about bone spurs, where Obama was born, his university and his charities. He’s lied about clearing rubble at Ground Zero, lied to his wives, lied about the perfect phone call, inauguration crowds, classified documents, the insurrection and losing an election. 

Yet many still believe the president. Imagine, then, what it must be like to deal with his administration as a reporter, and to hear him and his staff repeat easily discoverable and previously documented lies with impunity every day. The words “communists,” “socialists,” “evil Democrats,” “witch hunt” and “fake news” spew forth, not only with vigor, but as if nothing more needs to be said about any subject other than a catchy headline. On Tuesday, Trump even got it down to a simple sentence: “It’s time to go after people.” 

What people? Why? Evidence? It does not matter. Donald Trump could walk out into the press room and shout, “Turn the TV down, the toilet’s overflowing,” and his press staff would back him up and produce statistics to prove Trump’s true genius.  

But getting anything else out of this administration is impossible. They claim Trump has a right to private conversations, even about public laws. If you say the public has a right to know something, Trump’s people will disagree and refuse to answer questions — branding you a traitor to the cause in the process — when all the reporter wants is public information.

“What would we tell you that for?” the Trump staffer says.

That’s when you hope you’ve learned your lesson from that wise reporter many years ago.

I don’t care about cane sugar in Coca-Cola. I don’t want to argue about the name of Washington D.C.’s football franchise. I don’t want to indulge you in any of your deflections. I just want my questions answered.

But the president does not like questions, and he really doesn’t want to give answers. And asking no questions and getting no answers is the best way you can survive as a Republican in Congress. As Trump said Tuesday afternoon, “I particularly like the ones I didn’t have to speak to at all” to get their vote. This line received huge applause. 

That last statement says it all. Trump wants to expend no energy and get his way. He wants fascism without a fight. He wants his way with minimal action. Even as a fascist, he’s a failure. And according to the Wall Street Journal and other news organizations, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump this past spring that he’s mentioned in the Epstein Files — though under what context is up for debate.

Never mind. That explains Donald Trump’s continued, recent presence in the hot, glaring light of public attention. He has already tried to deflect this by going after Obama, accusing him of treason. But Trump’s distractions aren’t working this time.

For the first time, maybe, in his life, Trump can’t convince his crowd that man didn’t land on the moon.

Facts are usually avoided when fiction gives us solace in our mediocrity, or when it gives us camouflage to hoodwink others. 

Trump tells lies for both reasons. 

Man did land on the moon. The Holocaust was real. Chem trails are baloney, and Donald Trump is a failed fascist.