in a powerful column in today’s Washington Post titled Of course Trump called Comey a liar: That’s always been his strategy. Consider how he begins:
So Donald Trump is calling James Comey a liar.
This puts the fired FBI director in some impressive company. Among those Trump has accused of lying, via pronouncements, tweets and retweets:
Then comes a list of more than forty entries, of names and of categories, each on a single line, with space in between lines, beginning with Ted Cruz and several others of his primary opponents and concluding as follows:
Women who accused him of sexual misconduct
China
Doctors
Baseball’s Alex Rodriguez
Star Jones
An Ebola patient
Edward Snowden
Did I say concluding? Sorry. There is one more entry in that list:
Anyone who didn’t tune in to GOP debates to watch Trump
The list alone should serve as a reminder to all those who refuse to apply the terms liar and lying to Trump of their failure to properly describe Trump.
Then Milbank writes the following:
Accusing others of lying is a bit rich coming from the man who has done more than any other to turn public discourse into a parallel universe of alternative facts. If we were psychoanalyzing Trump, we might say he is projecting. Of course, if we were psychoanalyzing Trump, we might throw the entire DSM at him, starting with antisocial personality disorder and working our way through narcissistic personality disorder and then paranoid personality disorder.
“a parallel universe of alternative facts” — except in the only universe we know there is no such thing. Trump’s statements are untrue, and it does not matter whether or not when he utters them he believes them or not. All that matters is that by the utterance he changes or if it you will poisons the political discourse in a way that undercuts our liberal democracy and provides him with excuse not to deal with reality.
In the very next paragraph Milbank writes
But Trump’s tendency to accuse others of the flaws he possesses seems to be more than a reflex. It appears to be a strategy — a verbal jujitsu in which he uses his opponents’ strengths against them.
He then provide an extensive if not exhaustive list of illustrations. I did say the column was powerful — the original list of people Trump has called liars was one example. The list of illustrations on this point is another.
Milbank had, before providing that list, properly framed it as the juvenile behavior as it is:
Trump did not invent this strategy. I first encountered it on the playground of the Old Mill Road elementary school on Long Island in the 1970s: “I’m rubber, you’re glue — whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” Other kids used an endlessly entertaining variant: “I know you are but what am I?”
While framing this in terms of the campaign, as expected, it goes beyond that to the Presidential term that began on January 20. On a key current issue, Milbank notes,
His routine response, even now, to inquiries into his and his aides’ ties to Russia: They should investigate the Clintons’ Russia ties.
Milbank follows that with his this paragraph:
We’ve seen this pattern in the early months of the presidency as well — accusing the Democrats of seeking a government shutdown when it was his own late demands that threatened to upend a bipartisan spending bill, and now, when accused of lying by the former FBI director, calling that man a liar.
What makes this column powerful, imho, is the caution that is contained in Milbank’s penultimate paragraph:
There’s no doubt Trump’s rubber-and-glue strategy has worked. He is, after all, the president, and Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco and Low-Energy Jeb are not. But can the man who has established himself as one of history’s most prodigious prevaricators convince the country that the former FBI director, celebrated for his integrity, is just another lying liar? Polls before and after Comey’s testimony suggest Trump is losing that contest.
The strategy has worked. The question is whether or not it will continue. Pools do suggest that SO FAR Trump is losing his attempt to label Comey a liar. But that is SO FAR. After all, despite all he did during the campaign Trump won the electoral college.
We can hope those polls indicate a pattern that will not change.
Milbank has become an increasingly insightful commentator. He has grown well beyond his earlier reputation of being primarily a master of snark.
And yet, he has not lost his skill at snark.
And thus his final, brief, paragraph:
After all, who are you going to believe? Trump? Or everybody else?
Contained within that snarky statement is the very real question — will enough people in fact believe Trump rather than everyone else? Have we really fallen that far as a society?
I guess we all need to stay tuned.
It will help if more people are willing to properly apply the labels liar and lying to Trump and his statements.
But that could be insufficient.
Especially if people become inured to that.
Or, as is the increasingly the case, a sufficient number chose to ignore the voices that offer that labeling in favor of voices that tell them what they want to hear.
Or, as has been increasingly the case, Republicans on the Hill choose to ignore all of this in favor of ramming through an agenda that most Americans reject because they have however briefly sufficient control to do so.
Stay tuned.