The daily journey of a Trump sycophant

It is grotesquely fascinating to see President Trump’s apologists try to explain his most lunatic ideas and claims. It is a bit like watching someone choke down a sheep’s eye on a bet, then declare it fine dining. (Note to animal rights activists: This is a simile, not a recommendation.)

This process has a number of steps — the stages of servility. At first, there is stunned silence. (Did he really propose to buy Greenland?) Then the frantic search for hidden wisdom. (Climate change — which the president sometimes views as fake science — will melt Arctic ice, open sea lanes and turn Greenland into the Panama Canal of the north.) Then the determined Googling of historical precedents. (Harry S. Truman, it turns out, also contemplated a Greenland grab.) Then growing defiance. (Greenland has loads of zinc! Doesn’t America deserve zinc?!)

Trump’s idea of disrupting hurricanes with nuclear weapons — a suggestion he has denied making but almost certainly made — has duplicated some of these stages. According to Axios, one briefer who received Trump’s proposal was “knocked back on his heels.” “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting,” a source recalled. An administration source tried to defuse the matter by pointing to Trump’s good intentions: “His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad. His objective is not bad.” Which would be cold comfort to those with nuclear fallout in their backyard. The “bomb the hurricane” idea, it turns out, was also advocated in the decades after World War II. (During the early to mid-20th century, radioactive material had a somewhat milder reputation, being sometimes added to toothpaste, cosmetics, cigarettes, condoms and suppositories.) 

Are such ideas as the Greenland purchase and nuclear weather control dangerous? Not because they are likely to be implemented. Denmark’s prime minister stands in stout resistance to the first proposal. And between Trump’s suggestion in a briefing and the nuking of a future Hurricane Mindy are numerous steps, including (one would hope) the invocation of the 25th Amendment.

But we should not play down the importance of having a president with harebrained notions. We should not explain away the craziness.

Certainly the president should not be allowed to lie away the craziness. In the face of good reporting on Trump’s nuclear idea, his claim of “FAKE NEWS” is entirely unconvincing. We have reached the point where the president’s denial of a charge actually makes it more credible. Recall his suggestion that the “Access Hollywood” tape isn’t real. And the claimthat he never said Mexico would pay for the wall. And his claim that he never ordered White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. And his claim that he never said Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 election. And his claim that he never paid for the silence of a porn star. Self-serving deception by the president is now a justified expectation.