WHEN THE TRUTH IS FOUND TO BE LIES

Donald Trump began the second week of his presidency by surprising everyone, including his own government officials, with an executive order that effectively banned Muslims (or anyone who looked like they might be Muslim) from entering the United States.  In short order, there were massive nationwide demonstrations, the courts reversed the executive order, the acting Attorney General declined to defend the EO, and Trump fired the acting Attorney General.  He accomplished all that between Friday night and Monday night. 

To divert attention from the immigration fiasco, he moved the announcement of his Supreme Court nominee up from Thursday to Tuesday, and chose Neil Gorsuch, an ultra-right jurist who joked that as a high school student he founded a group called the Fascism Forever Club.  I’m sure Steve Bannon got a kick out of that.

Later in the week, Trump insulted the Australian Prime Minister, threatened to send American troops to Mexico, omitted any reference to Jews in a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and stumbled through a Black History Month speech in which he described the abolitionist Frederick Douglass as "somebody who’s done an amazing job who’s being recognized more and more." 

Then yesterday, Kellyanne Conway returned temporarily to Earth from her Alternate Universe to complain about the lack of press coverage of the “Bowling Green Massacre.”  The fact that no one can find any record of a massacre in Bowling Green only proves Conway’s point.  The press also ignored the amazing job that Frederick Douglass did in his speech at the memorial service. 

A few Republicans noted that they were “concerned” about some aspects of Trump’s behavior, but they demonstrated their “concern” in typical Republican fashion – by supporting every unqualified Trump Cabinet nominee in sight.  Needless to say, Donald Trump has not been chastened by anyone’s “concerns.”

As we await developments in week three of the new regime, it’s good to remember that chaos is a part of the Bannon-Trump strategy.  From their perspective, week two probably went pretty well.  They’re sowing confusion while they’re using executive orders to erase President Obama’s legacy.  The fact that many of those executive orders may be overturned by the courts doesn’t matter much.  The Trump base isn’t interested in such fine distinctions.

As Masha Gessen wrote in The New York Review of Books, comparing the rhetorical strategies of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, “Lying is the message.  It’s not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself.”