When all else fails- call it fake-news

"Trump fatigue has set in, and set in hard."- Graydon Carter

Donald Trump has one talent we simply can't overcome with criticism, regardless of how much pressure is put to bear on this particular character flaw. In other words, he has the ability to hypnotize cult followers into believing him, even when he knowingly makes up stuff. Nevertheless, in the world where information travels faster than the speed of sound, many of Trump's lies are being usurped before he has a chance to put them on Twitter. So, how does the dog whistler respond to this lightening fast debunking? Indeed, he labels everything "fake-news" even before he says whatever it is he makes up. But, it's not going to work for much longer.  Even cult followers will demand accountability.

Although Donald Trump is fooling some of the people "some of the time" with this informational shell game antic, it's becoming too cliche. Even his inner gaggle of Warlocks are having a tough time keeping this ritual going.

In Vanity Fair-
TRUMP’S WHITE HOUSE: THE GANG THAT COULDN’T SHOOT STRAIGHT-BY GRAYDON CARTER
The Constitution-straining conflicts surrounding the president, his top aides, some of his children, and his licensing-and-development business are a problem with no end in sight.
We aren’t even a third of the way through the administration’s 100-day honeymoon period and let’s face it: we’re plumb exhausted. We’re exhausted from the flurry of rash executive orders. Exhausted from the human carnage in the wake of the president’s ban on travelers from majority-Muslim countries. Exhausted from the battles with neighbors, allies, and strategic adversaries on the world stage. Exhausted from the lies, the alternative facts, the boasts, the conflicts, and the scandals from this “fine-tuned machine.” Exhausted from our president’s cavalier habit of belittling our judiciary and intelligence services. Exhausted from having craven boneheads chosen to lead departments governing the environment, the Treasury, education, and the interior. Exhausted from an administration that turns a blind eye to Russian intrusions into Crimea, our election, and the imminent elections in Europe. Exhausted from the West Wing circus of misfits, clowns, and ghouls—politics’ answer to the Kardashians. Exhausted from the preening arrogance of the members of the First Family. Exhausted from waking up and not knowing what fresh hell this new president and his birdcage of a mind have cooked up overnight.

Trump fatigue has set in, and set in hard. Even the Republicans, who have ridden this stalking horse into office, holding their noses in the hope that they can manipulate him into furthering their agenda, are now mulling their options. Perhaps we’re all wrong, though. Perhaps the president is playing a game of chess and the rest of us are simply moving checker pieces around. Perhaps he intended his Muslim ban to create such havoc and misfortune that we would be looking the other way as he went about the business of dismantling the assets of proper governance. Perhaps he has just taken the crazy-driver approach to new extremes: when there is an erratic, swerving driver up ahead on the highway, you tend to pull back and give him the road. At a certain point, though, you wait for your moment and pass him, relaxing only when you can see him in your rearview mirror. Or perhaps he’s just trying to figure out which chess piece is which, and he really is a crazy driver.

If there was a tell in what the new inhabitants of the White House are up to, it was the $150 million lawsuit by the new First Lady against Mail Media Inc., the corporation which publishes the widely read Web site Mail Online. Back in August, the publisher had run a story claiming that, in a previous incarnation, Melania Trump had worked as a paid escort. Mail Online quickly retracted the story. But the soon-to-be First Lady pressed on. In her suit, she claims that she “had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person … to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.” Her lawyer, Charles Harder—the same fellow who successfully represented Hulk Hogan in his suit against Gawker—has taken an unconventional tack in her defense, saying, “The First Lady has no intention of using her position for profit and will not do so. It is not a possibility. Any statements to the contrary are being misinterpreted.” Not sure how that gibes with her claims of lost income as First Lady, but then, I’m not a lawyer. Or a Trump.

As it stands, the president’s wife is not turning out to be the paparazzi bait one would have expected. Aside from her strained appearances on Inauguration Day, walking politely behind her husband or working up a forced smile when he looked in her direction, she has been as quiet as he has been loud. She gamely showed up for the post-inauguration balls—which on television looked about as festive as a Walmart on a Sunday morning. And as for the First Couple on the dance floor, I’ve seen cozier body language in a hostage situation. 

(MaineWriter observation- Melania's inaugural gown looked
prêt à porter for bed, like it was an evening "nightgown", IMO)

Presidential style has historically filtered down to the middle masses. John F. Kennedy’s preference for going hatless has been blamed for single-handedly killing the men’s hat industry.

One can only hope that the style of the current inhabitant of the White House doesn’t filter in any direction. It starts with a button. There is a reflex among men when a woman or even another man enters a room: they get to their feet, and if they are wearing a suit or a blazer, they instinctively button it up. This custom has apparently been lost on our new leader. With all the grace of a Mob boss, he charged out of his motorcade car ahead of his wife when meeting the Obamas and later swaggered through the Capitol on the way to his swearing-in. It’s rare when you see a man with both his jacket and his overcoat unbuttoned. When you couple that with the enormous length of a clearly overcompensatory red tie—the stubby end underneath held in place with cellophane tape—well, it was a spectacle that only Tony Soprano would have appreciated.

The Constitution-straining conflicts surrounding the president, some of his children, and his licensing-and-development business are a problem with no end in sight. Make no bones about it. The First Family are interested in one thing: furthering themselves and the so-called Trump brand. The Office of Government Ethics—the agency that criticized White House adviser Kellyanne Conway for her public endorsement (“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff”) of the First Daughter’s clothing and accessories line, which had been dropped by Nordstrom—is going to have its hands full. And arcane strictures like the Logan Act and the Emoluments Clause are now familiar to people who are not constitutional scholars.

In mid-February, on a weekend when the North Koreans appeared to have successfully launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile, the commander in chief of our armed forces was uncharacteristically reasoned in his response. The president discussed the launch while dining with the Japanese prime minister and his wife and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft on the terrace of his baroque Palm Beach club. His consultation with White House aides was conducted in full view of other diners. When photos and video of a meeting between the president and his closest aides start appearing on social media—along with a photo on Facebook of a club member posing with the military aide who carries the nuclear codes—you begin to realize just how uncharted the waters around us are. The president’s muted response to the North Korean launch could have something to do with the fact that he may understand that he has more in common with his counterpart in that country than he would care to admit. Goofy haircut? Check. Boxy frame and ill-fitting suits? Check. Erratic and unstable personality? Check. Simplistic way of looking at the world? Check. Primitive vocabulary? Check. Hates the country to the south? Check. Brooks no opposition from underlings? Check. Thin skin and a tendency to disproportionately lash out at critics? Check. Father gave him his career? Check.

The West Wing is already a groaning, leaking sieve as competing factions battle for TV face time, the boss’s limited attention, or their own ends. The leakfest is a boon to journalists covering this administration, but calamitous incompetence is something of an impediment to running the most powerful nation on earth. The description in The New York Times of a staff unable to figure out how to turn on the lights in the Cabinet Room of the White House was image enough. The paper also reported that Trump stalks the halls of the private quarters at all hours of the night in his bathrobe, firing off Twitter missives. I don’t know how that bathrobe description plants itself in your mind, but I think less Noël Coward silk and tassels and more leisure fabric with food stains, a high hemline, and karate sleeves. Those nocturnal tweets reflect a scattershot mind and a temperament ill-suited to the job at hand. When he is not tweeting lunatic complaints about the nation’s security services, or CNN, or the Times, he’s slamming Nordstrom for dropping Ivanka, or a fellow reality-TV personality for not being “smart enough” to challenge him in 2020, or Joe Scarborough’s shoe size. Actually, I made that last one up.

If you’ve ever worked with or for a narcissist with a loose grasp of the truth and a bottomless desire for approval, you will know how easy it is to manipulate them. You flatter. You listen intently to stories of victory you’ve heard many times before. You flatter again. You agree about perceived slights. You flatter a bit more. And then you push your case and walk away with what you came for. On her birthday recently, Kellyanne Conway tweeted that the “best gift” was having Donald Trump as president. That’s how you keep your standing in this White House. The Oval Office’s Resolute desk, favored by presidents from Kennedy to Reagan to Obama, is a ceremonial artifact, used largely as a staging platform for official visits and photo ops. Trump has loaded it up with a messy collection of folders—a quaint attempt to show that he is working hard and that he reads things longer than 140 characters.

Under the direction of the man who is really running the country, Trump Whisperer Steve Bannon, the West Wing is a murky brew of talky misfits. Not since the Nixon era have so many members of an administration been so well known to the public so quickly. And everybody seems to have his or her favorite West Wing oddity. Fans of The Walking Dead and American Horror Story no doubt have photos of Bannon on their refrigerators. Cruella de Vil buffs likely go for Kellyanne Conway. Ira Levin aficionados probably favor Stephen Miller. My personal favorite is Melissa McC … er, Sean Spicer, who is everyone’s favorite White House chew toy. Like his boss, he is now a global joke, a laughingstock. Melissa McCarthy’s astounding first impersonation of him on Saturday Night Live hit such a level of magnificence that it became a moment in time. Like the moon landing. The thing is, it was so much more layered and nuanced than it even needed to be. It may be one of the finest comedy bits of all time—up there in the pantheon alongside Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on first?” Close on McCarthy’s heels are Alec Baldwin’s Trump and Kate McKinnon’s everybody else. This bumbling administration has been such a boon to Seth Meyers, Bill Maher, and John Oliver that they should be sending the White House flowers every week.

Republicans, who should know better, have flocked to this man for reasons of self-advancement or outright venality. 

My guess is that many of them will live to regret their attachment to him. A few years ago, I had dinner with Morley Safer in Paris. The Iraq war was at that point an evident fiasco, and he lamented all the missed opportunities by those in the House and Senate who failed to stand against it. Their acquiescence has haunted their careers ever since. If the half-dozen or so Republican senators who are not walking lockstep with the administration can corral another half-dozen of their colleagues to join them, there is still a chance for the rest of us and the world. And they will be heralded as heroes. Until then, as his first chaotic, incoherent, episodic hundred days unspools—“malevolence tempered by incompetence,” in the words of the Brookings Institution’s Benjamin Wittes—we will all be praying that the current president gives his peculiar brand of showmanship a rest and settles in to actually crafting rational policy and patching up some of the global alliances he has discarded with such blithe abandon.

The America I see is not the grim dystopia that our new president described during his campaign and in his inaugural speech. It’s not perfect. Democracies seldom are. But with this man’s agenda now under way, it may well become the barren plain he has imagined. Since the inauguration, it seems that the world has suddenly become a room filled with gas. And in our leader we have an ignorant strongman about to light a $20 cigar with a match.

(Maine Writer observes Steve Bannon is ready with the flint).