After Nancy Pelosi ripped up disgraced human Donald Trump’s lie-filled State of the Union address in February 2020, Republicans acted like she’d rolled up an original copy of the Constitution and used it to snort black tar heroin off Lenin’s boobs in Red Square.
But Pelosi was just destroying a copy of a crappy speech. It was nothing nothing compared to Donald Trump’s—illegal, mind you—habit of repeatedly tearing official records to shreds, as recounted in a mind-blowing new report.
Although glimpses of Trump’s penchant for ripping were reported earlier in his presidency — by Politico in 2018 — the House select committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection has shined a new spotlight on the practice. The Washington Post reported that some of the White House records the National Archives and Records Administration turned over to the committee appeared to have been torn apart and then taped back together.
Interviews with 11 former Trump staffers, associates and others familiar with the habit reveal that Trump’s shredding of paper was far more widespread and indiscriminate than previously known and — despite multiple admonishments — extended throughout his presidency, resulting in special practices to deal with the torn fragments. Most of these people spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details of a problematic practice.
If that shocks you, you haven’t paid close enough attention to Trump’s utter disregard for norms, laws, common decency, human dignity, personal hygiene, separation of powers, the U.S. recommended daily allowance of maple-brûléed beef tallow, democracy, and—did I already say common decency? Because he really ignored that one.
But today we’re talking about Trump’s failure to follow a law that’s literally easier to abide by than stopping at stoplights. In short, the law says, “Don’t destroy these important historical documents, even if you are just a glorified, overgrown child with an established and repeatedly demonstrated inability to work and play well with others.”
The ripping was so relentless that Trump’s team implemented protocols to try to ensure that he was abiding by the Presidential Records Act. Typically, aides from either the Office of the Staff Secretary or the Oval Office Operations team would come in behind Trump to retrieve the piles of torn paper he left in his wake, according to one person familiar with the routine. Then, staffers from the White House Office of Records Management were generally responsible for jigsawing the documents back together, using clear tape.
Exactly how many babysitters did Donald Trump have during his four-year reign of whatever that was? And how many babysitters were watching the babysitters? And why did none of this “oversight” seem to matter a whit?
Of course, all this rending and tearing quite obviously violated the Presidential Records Act—which requires administrations to preserve any written communications associated with a president’s official duties—but it still went on for years.
“It is absolutely a violation of the act,” Courtney Chartier, president of the Society of American Archivists, told The Post. “There is no ignorance of these laws. There are White House manuals about the maintenance of these records.”
Ah, but these kinds of laws were written with the assumption that our presidents would have normal human emotions like shame and guilt, as well as a rudimentary respect for the rule of law. But Trump just bulldozes his way over all of that—as if our laws are just old ladies’ homes standing in the way of a new limousine parking lot.
“It is against the law, but the problem is that the Presidential Records Act, as written, does not have any real enforcement mechanism,” noted James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association. “It’s that sort of thing where there’s a law, but who has the authority to enforce the law, and the existing law is toothless.”
“He didn’t want a record of anything,” added a former senior Trump official. “He never stopped ripping things up. Do you really think Trump is going to care about the records act? Come on.”
Of course, this is coming to light now because some of the White House records handed over to the House Jan. 6 committee had been a part of Trump’s antisocial art project.
In a statement, the Archives said: “Some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former president Trump.
“These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House. The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by presidents be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations.”
The Archives did not say how it knew Trump had torn the records but his habit of tearing up documents has been widely reported.
Fucking weirdo.
Of course, this violation of our nation’s and government’s norms pales in comparison to some of the other depredations the ocher arschloch visited upon our republic, but it does offer a glimpse into the inner workings of his mind—and I apologize profusely for that. I should given you a chance to put on a lead apron before we got anywhere near his mind.
“We don’t know how much of it was or was not successfully taped back together,” said Grossman. “Also, how much did the taxpayers pay to have a bunch of highly qualified archivists sit at a desk and tape things back together?”
Well, it’s gotta be less than we paid for his golf outings, but yeah. So much for fiscal responsibility, huh?
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