Above: I took this yesterday in the rural village of Gaston, Oregon (pop 700) in our lovely farm and vineyard country. I had no idea I’d be using it in a diary today. You can see more photos from this trip on my blog here.
This is something of a followup to my diary from yesterday which featured three photos I took of Porta Potties.
As usual, I have veered from my main point.
We all know about how LBJ was notorious for holding meetings in his bathroom while he was sitting on the toilet and that he had a phone there were he sometimes conducted business and even talked to world leaders. (Reference)
Here’s another tidbit about LBJ from “The Weird, Disgusting Art of the Toilet Power Meeting”:
The man best known for toilet meetings was none other than President Lyndon B. Johnson. Historian Robert Dallek’s biography, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973, describes Johnson’s “abuse of aides, shouting at them in public and calling them into the bathroom” while he sat on the toilet. In a C-SPAN appearance, Doris Kearns Goodwin described the bathroom meetings as “a matter of course, bizarre as it was.” Perhaps the most succinct take on the LBJ’s mixing of pee and politics can be found in a 2015 Gawker headline: “LBJ Was Obsessed With His Dick.”
This isn’t something I don’t want to visualize in my mind but I’d rather have a mental image of LBJ than one of Trump on the toilet which is prompted by the many stories coming out today as excerpts from Maggie Haberman’s not yet published book are revealed.
Excerpt:
While President Trump was in office, staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet — and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper, Maggie Haberman scoops in her forthcoming book, "Confidence Man."
On MSNBC this morning:
I can handle having a picture of LBJ doing his business while doing his business in my mind. Seeing Donald John Trump in the john sitting on what might or might not be a golden toilet is something I’d personally like to flush.
On the other hand, seeing him in my mind looking up from the tank of a Porta Potty is something I can relish.
I first called this Documentgate, but then thought Toiletgate would be more likely to catch on. Update: It already has, see below.
Here’s the unanswered question.
Did Trump go into the bathroom and merely flush the documents down the toilet to dispose of them, or was he reading them while sitting on the toilet and then flush them?
The legal question as to whether or not the DOJ pursues this to see if there is a case for prosecuting Trump may hinge on whether they can prove not that he violated the toothless Congressional Records Act which he certainly did, rather it seems that legal consequences for Trump will depend on whether he destroyed classified documents. Do you think Trump will be charged for this crime? Take the poll and comment.