Some
caricaturists depict Donald Trump as an over-indulged baby, throwing toys out
of his pram. Others see him as a puppet, manipulated by the Machiavelli of the
alt-right, Steve Bannon.
I’m sure there’s
some truth in both these interpretations.
Hearing Trump
talk today, however, I have a rather different image coming into my head.
The 45th
President was talking at a US airforce base about Islamic terrorism in Europe
and claimed that this was covered up by the mainstream media.
His actual
words were as follows: "All over Europe, it's happening. It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported. In many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that."
This is a truly
madcap conspiracy theory.
On an X-Files
scale, it rates a nine.
It pains me
even to pick it apart, but think about what he’s saying. His accusation is that
mainstream news media with professional journalists have their ‘reasons’ for
covering up terrorist atrocities.
The reasons,
one supposes, are that they are liberals who are dedicated to a vision of
multiculturalism or active supporters of the expansion of Islamic ideology in
Europe. These duplicitous political activists, masquerading as reporters, worry
that if the public were to hear of terrorist attacks, they might rebel against
the current order.
So they cover
them up.
Except the ones
they don’t cover up.
Like Paris and
Nice, which Trump himself mentioned. And Brussels and Berlin and all the other
places.
Boy, did the
liberal media slip up with those ones! They really dropped the ball, didn’t
they, with all their round-the-clock reporting?
Leaving aside the
utterly ridiculous and unsupported nature of Trump’s allegations, there is also
the issue of exactly how the
journalists would succeed in keeping any terrorist activity in Europe under
wraps. Perhaps smartphones, digital cameras and social media haven’t made it
across the Atlantic yet? Maybe we Europeans are ‘sheeple’, who haven’t yet seen
the light?
Except
supposedly we have.
Isn’t part of
the Trumpian world view the idea that Brexit was an awakening? That the anti-globalist populism of Marine Le Pen
and Geert Wilders demonstrates Europeans throwing off the shackles of
liberalism, multiculturalism and political correctness?
My image of
Trump is now of someone who is 25-going-on-15 and still lives at home with his
mother. His days are spent in his room coding, while eating KFC. His nights are
spent alongside his empty bucket meals, trolling people on Twitter.
His reading
consists of conspiracy sites which suggest that vaccinations are poison and
that scientific evidence can’t be trusted. He rails against feminazis,
snowflakes and libtards. Anyone who believes a poll is a fool and anyone who
trusts what they read in the mainstream media needs to WAKE UP and GET SMART!
Of course,
there are a million of these sad little men around and we could argue all day
about the cause of their alienation and anger. But only one in a million gets
to play at being President of the United States of America.
We know that
Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Rex Tillerson and others do not subscribe to Trump’s
ridiculous conspiracy theories. They might have some pretty obnoxious and kooky
views of their own, but they do not
believe that there have been terrorist atrocities in Europe that have gone
unreported.
They need to say so.
These men do not believe that a federal judge
appointed by George W Bush and ratified 99-0 in the Senate is only a ‘so-called’
judge.
They need to say so.
They do not believe that the New York Times and CNN publish fake
news.
They need to say so.
They will be
biding their time and thinking that there will be a later opportunity to remove
Trump.
Now is not the
moment. Keep our powder dry, they will say to themselves. Give him enough rope
and he will hang himself.
No.
History tells
us that if you give people like Trump enough rope, he’ll end up hanging you.
They need to
act soon. For the sake of the Republican Party, the sake of the United States
and the sake of the wider world.
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