The President Who Cried Wolf

Oh no! That sounds BAD! What will we ever do about this very real crisis?

This morning Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world and a gentleman we as a country, in our wisdom, decided should have access to our nuclear codes rage tweeted “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!”

Two hours later Trump returned to the topic of mail-in ballots to warn, “Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history - unless this stupidity is ended. We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!”

If any president other than Trump were to very aggressively and very publicly assert that something was destined to go down as scandal of our times, or rather THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!, people would pay attention. It would be news. It would make headlines. 

Of course is it. And that crime would be…

Then again it’s impossible to imagine any recent president decrying something in such wildly sensationalist terms because even George W. Bush tried to communicate with the American people like a grown-up with responsibilities, dignity and self-respect and not like a carnival barker with a sideline writing screaming 1920s tabloid headlines.

THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES! In Trump’s mind, simply calling a vague non-issue like mail-in ballots the scandal of our times was not sufficient to convey just HOW serious and of course VERY REAL this huge SCANDAL obviously is. Trump had to punctuate his ALL CAPS assertion that his smooth path to landslide re-election is being threatened by cheating on the part of those nefarious Democrats with an exclamation point to indicate that he REALLY means business. 

But that was not enough for Trump this morning. He then went to cyber-scream into the void that “Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history.” 

The crooked Democrats aren’t just planning to rig the election: 2020 will be the most RIGGED election EVER unless their sinister plans are thwarted. 

Donald Trump is more than a little like Little Edie of Grey Gardens: a sad drama queen living in a fantasy world for whom every misfortune is literally, “the worst thing that ever happened to anybody in America!”

The former Celebrity Apprentice host is the President that Cried Wolf. He’s screamed at the top of his lungs through social media that whatever the Democrats or the press are up to is the greatest crime and scandal in American history so often and with so little cause that we’ve collectively learned to write off these “warnings” as the hysterical ravings of a delusional madman hopelessly out of touch with reality. 

When Trump deemed what is nebulously known as Obamagate “The biggest political crime in American history, by far!” on Twitter, a reporter asked Trump to explain what crime Obama committed. Trump fumblingly responded, “What is the crime? You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. It’s been going on for a long time. If you look at what’s gone on and you look at now, all this information that’s being released, and from what I understand that’s only the beginning.”

If you’re going to accuse a beloved figure of committing the “biggest political crime in American history” by a large margin, a crime that, in fact ”makes Watergate look small time!” you should probably be able to tell people what that crime is but Trump could only assert that it was a crime, and everyone knows about it, and it’s real bad and that it’s only getting worse. 

I doubt anyone was surprised that Trump was not able to cleanly and lucidly articulate the nature of Obama’s crimes, or describe them at all, really. As the saying goes, Republicans have learned to take Trump seriously but not literally, which is to say that they can safely write off most of his paranoid Twitter ranting as gaudy political theater and not concrete convictions he’s prepared to act upon. 

If Trump wants to say something is bad, he says it’s the worst crime or scandal in American history. He tosses around superlatives so gratuitously and indiscriminately that they’ve lost all meaning. 

This is true of positives as well as negatives. Just as his opponents are always involved in the worst, biggest scandal ever, Trump is always winning on a similarly historic basis. He’s built a business unlike any other! He’s the greatest president for African-Americans ever, even better than Lincoln! He’s accomplished more in the course of a single term than any president in history, despite being sabotaged continually by back-stabbing liars and sociopaths in his cabinet who he knew were terrible, and inept, and dishonest when he hired them for the most important jobs in the world, but whom he nevertheless appointed because of his big heart and belief in second chances!

Donald Trump’s reflexive use of hyperbole is the greatest crime and scandal in the history of American politics. Well, maybe it’s not that bad but it does make it pretty much impossible to believe him. 

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