Welcome to the land of sub-Q. It’s the place where the idiotic conspiracy theory that led a man to come armed to a family pizza place has been supplanted by the even more idiotic inside out world of the Q-conspiracy, only to have even that be surpassed by a new conspiracy—one in which Donald Trump tweets out a claim that Hillary Clinton had Jeffery Epstein murdered in prison. Which is exactly what Trump did on Saturday night.
That’s where we are this late summer week in 2019; in a land where the relationship between what’s being pressed by the White House and the truth isn’t even passing. We’re at a point where Trump’s “lock her up” chants at his rallies are now tied to an unsupported claim of murder.
And Trump is far from alone in this thing. Trump has placed a man in charge of the Justice Department who has repeatedly demonstrated that he’s more than willing to do whatever Trump requests, no matter how far it deviates from traditions and that little thing called “law.” Just this week, William Barr expressed his fondness for the kind of “justice” doled out by fictional killer cop Dirty Harry and in revenge fantasy Death Wish. Trump is still heavily engaged in making the same kind of alterations to national intelligence.
So when Barr expresses outrage over Epstein and declares his intent to keep the case going forward, is there anything there that could still be considered the pursuit of justice? Or is it just Barr letting Trump know that he’s ready to serve. After all, who is left to gainsay Barr if his finger lands on … anyone. Anyone at all.
The tweet that Trump passed along on Saturday evening, one that claimed Epstein was part of the “Clinton body count” showed once again that Trump’s only interest is in causing pain. Creating divisions. Generating discord. Trump did it because it made him happy.
It’s a plot too idiotic for a James Patterson novel. But it doesn’t matter. Because nothing is too idiotic for Trump’s supporters. Nothing is so idiotic that it won’t end up getting people killed. The idea that what he was repeating was a scurrilous lie didn’t enter into Trump’s thinking. The idea that it might—strike that, definitely will —fuel additional violence and feed into conspiracies that are destroying trust and faith in every institution probably did flash through his mind. But if he had that thought, he liked it.
Trump is absolutely determined that there can be no source of truth, no counter to his statements, and no limits on actions. We’re not quite one gun massacre away from Trump declaring that the shooter was a hero, but we’re getting there. We are absolutely at the place where Trump is willing to accuse anyone of the most vile action if he thinks it turns suspicion from his own door. Or even if it doesn’t.
Acid. That’s the only thing that Trump has to provide. Acid that eats deeply into the American soul.
Last week, the shootings in Ohio and Texas were too recent to make the Sunday columns. This week, pundits are catching up.
Joan Walsh on how Beto O’Rourke asked the question everyone should be asking.
Former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke hasn’t been high on my list of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, but he jumped into the top tier on Sunday night, when after a day spent consoling victims of racist violence in his home town of El Paso, O’Rourke, appropriately, snapped.
A reporter asked him whether there was anything Donald Trump could say in his planned speech on Monday that would make things better in the Mexican border city, where on Saturday 21-year-old Patrick Crusius murdered 20 people and wounded 24 in a jihad against what he called an immigrant “invasion.”
‘What do you think? You know the shit he’s been saying. He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. I don’t know, like, members of the press, what the fuck?’” He went on: “It’s these questions that you know the answers to. I mean, connect the dots about what he’s been doing in this country. He’s not tolerating racism, he’s promoting racism. He’s not tolerating violence, he’s inciting racism and violence in this country. So, you know, I just—I don’t know what kind of question that is.”
The only problem with this question is, why wasn’t it asked sooner? Why aren’t more people saying it? Why isn’t it being constantly repeated? When you have reporters on major media who are deliberately trying to frame every issue as a political trap, no matter how much distortion of the facts it takes, every candidate should have the guts to go directly back at them with just how aggressively awful their positions have become.
Honestly, when I saw news outlets covering Trump descending from Marine One Sunday afternoon—after he essentially golfed through two massacres, including one in Dayton, Ohio, where the shooter’s motive still isn’t clear—as though he’d say something meaningful. At the bottom of the stairway from the helicopter, a marine stood at attention, just as he would for any other president, and so did the media, cameras and notebooks ready. Trump shared his trademark mix of lies, evasions, and word salad—he makes Sarah Palin look articulate—and it went out live to television watchers all over the country.
These rituals in which Trump is treated like any other president demean the memories of those who died in El Paso, at the Tree of Life and Poway synagogues, and those who might have died had the bombs that Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc sent to Democrats and the media detonated earlier this year.
Trump does, every single day, at least one thing that would have been an unthinkable thing in any other White House. For example, see the opening of this piece, in which Trump accuses a former president and secretary of state of murder, without bothering to provide a shred of evidence. That single statement would have been enough to hound any other public figure for years. It would have been the center of investigations. There would have been lengthy articles — series of articles — devoted to exploring the idea of how a conspiracy theory came to be pushed by the most powerful man in the country, and how promoting that conspiracy theory helped Trump deflect attention from his own involvement. Instead, it will not appear on outside the week, if in fact it makes a single front page today. But what will appear next week will be some article, from supposedly reputable sources, announcing that Trump supporters still support Trump. And what Democrats should do if they hope to win.
Renée Graham on how to be afraid like an American.
Boston Globe
A booming backfire. The cacophony of a falling sign. A video game mimicking the sound of rapid gunfire.
Once such sounds might, at best, have startled us. Now we’re more likely to respond with a mad dash toward the nearest exit or a solid object to duck behind or under.
After two recent massacres left at least 31 people dead and dozens injured, this nation is rattled down to its marrow. It doesn’t matter that the white supremacist accused of targeting Hispanics in a Walmart in El Paso last Saturday is in custody or that police killed the violence-obsessed man who opened fire in a Dayton, Ohio, neighborhood.
As it happens, I’m in Manhattan this morning, just a block away from Times Square. However, I arrived the day after the backfire-induced panic. Which is good, because with my bum leg, I surely would have been one of the trampled upon.
Other countries don’t harbor these fears.
There was a time when mass shootings seemed rare enough that they became a kind of punchline. After a series of post office shootings in the 1980s and 1990s, someone coined the term “going postal” to describe any disgruntled worker possibly prone to violence.
In a nation with enough firepower to arm every man, woman, and child, no one is laughing anymore. Just since 2014, mass shootings, including in places of worship, schools and universities, outdoor festivals, workplaces, nightclubs and bars, a women’s clinic, a yoga studio, a video game competition, a newspaper office, and a waffle house have claimed hundreds of lives.
To be fair, there are other places where the sound of gunfire is heard this frequently. They are called battlefields.
Michael Tomasky on how Trump don’t give a damn about the body count.
Daily Beast
Well. Okay. First of all, the man looks completely ridiculous when he tries to act like an actual president for 10 minutes. Who does he think he’s fooling? Who does he think takes him seriously? I don’t think anybody does. Those of us who don’t support him sure don’t. And I’d bet even the Trump lovers don’t. They know he has to do this for show once in a great while, be “so presidential that you people will be so bored.” But soon enough, there’ll be another rally, and he’ll be back to calling Hispanic people invaders and rapists. Yee hah!
Secondly. How dare Donald Trump stand up there before us and denounce racism and white supremacism. Seriously? He spends 364 days a year tweeting coarse and demeaning things about every black person he can think of insulting, and then comes before us and wants us to believe that he’s appalled by racism? He’s been championing racism for 45 years, ever since he and Fred made sure that their white tenants wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of living next door to a non-white person. And hatred? All he does as president is rile up his people to hate the rest of us. “Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul,” Trump read. He should know.
Trump couldn’t even get through the weekend without using his bully pulpit to point the rifles at a fresh target. But hey, when someone gets hurt because of his actions this week, he will absolutely stop by the hospital to grin and give a big thumbs up.
Will Bunch on the contrast between Trump’s teleprompter speech, and his own words.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Donald Trump’s teleprompter: Good morning. My fellow Americans, this morning our nation is overcome with shock, horror, and sorrow…We are outraged and sickened by this monstrous evil, the cruelty, the hatred, the malice, the bloodshed, and the terror. (August 5, 2019)
Donald Trump in March 2019: “People hate the word invasion, but that’s what it is.” (In vetoing legislation meant to stop him from re-routing $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for building a border wall, on March 15, 2019. It was one of a number of times he and his allies have called the refugee crisis at the border “an invasion”)
Bunch also has some quotes from the El Paso gunman. You can guess which one of these statements it matches.
And now my apology for keeping it short this morning. I’m still on vacation, typing this in from a darkened hotel room while my wife tries to snooze behind me. But in a couple of hours, I’m getting on the subway, riding down to the Battery, and taking a ferry out to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Hopefully, it will give me a chance to not just step outside, but wash away some of the anger, cynicism, and plain despair of this week. Plus I’m absolutely intending to eat some pizza.
Next week, I promise to catch up with all the folks I’ve missed these last two Sundays.