Donald Trump, Getting Away With Murder
In one of the most legendary moments of political theater in our nation’s history, Army lawyer Joseph Welch famously answered Joseph McCarthy’s accusation that one of his colleagues was Communist affiliated with words that became instantly iconic, indignantly asking, "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
Welch’s words, and the passion and righteous outrage with which they were expressed, more or less ended McCarthy’s career. He’d die mere years later, disgraced and abandoned, although his most ferocious protege, Roy Cohn, continued to be a malevolent presence in American life and American politics for decades to come.
The notorious red-baiter died of AIDS in 1986 but not before teaching everything he knew about treachery, malice and evil to his most successful protege, a brash New York real estate mogul named Donald Trump.
J’Accuse of L’Ow Ratings!
So it is perhaps fitting that the press, and myself, have spent the last four years attempting to gauge the bottomless depths of Trump’s cruelty and recklessness and unsuccessfully channeling Welch by inquiring, in a million blog posts and op-eds and angry social media posts, “Have you no sense of decency?”
Our efforts have been in vain because it is screamingly apparent that Trump has no sense of decency. He has no shame. He has no compassion. There is a black void where his soul should be.
Literally every day Trump says or does or, more often, tweets something that makes me want to indignantly inquire, “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
Today, for example, Trump continued to trumpet the long-debunked conspiracy theory that friend turned enemy Joe Scarborough murdered Lori Klausutis, a former assistant he was supposedly having an extramarital affair with, tweeting, "The opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough was not a Donald Trump original thought, this has been going on for years, long before I joined the chorus. In 2016 when Joe & his wacky future ex-wife, Mika, would endlessly interview me, I would always be thinking about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing? Maybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?”
Is Trump the literal anti-Christ? Some people think so.
The tweets are follow-ups to previous charmers like, “When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!”
Trump also of course throws in lots of gratuitous cracks at Scarborough’s supposedly faltering and pathetic ratings. It is amazing to me that nobody seems to think it’s strange or deeply repellent that Trump continually and explicitly connects falling basic cable news television viewership with moral rot and evil, that he seems to think that Scarborough no longer pulling in respectable numbers among young men in the 18 to 34 demographic is as much of a crime as the murder he probably did because, hey, why not? For Trump, words don’t have consequences. Nor do actions. Seemingly nothing does. So why not constantly throw gasoline on the fire, choose the more racist option, hate if it is even at least a little bit possible to hate?
Trump seems to think that one of the primary duties of a world leader is to let the people know EXACTLY what’s happening in cable news ratings, to provide us with constant updates on which foes are doing bad and failing and which allies are WINNING. No other president suffers from this peculiar and unfortunate sickness. Lincoln didn’t grumpily go over live theater grosses with the crowd, taking special glee in the low box-office for a production starring John Wilkes Booth for a half hour before delivering the Gettysburg Address. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not use the fireside chats to argue that Garbo wasn’t worth what she was getting paid, and Capra was an overpaid hack, and Burgess Meredith should be getting all the good leading man roles because they played poker sometimes.
I can only imagine how agonizing it must be for Klausutis’ widower and her mother and father to have to read tweets from the president of the United States carelessly resurrecting the most agonizing and painful moment of their lives as a sordid, salacious scandal for the sake of scoring cheap points off a vocal critic of his administration.
Timothy Klausutis, the poor woman’s widower, sent a heartwrenching letter to Twitter asking them to delete the odious, vicious and clearly false tweets accusing Scarborough of murder but the cowardly social media company refused.
It’s easy to see why Trump is getting away with accusing enemies of committing unspeakable crimes with little to nothing in the way of evidence, behind his usual “Some people think” disclaimer. He’s been getting away with this shit forever. He got away with calling for the deaths of the Central Park 5 even after they were exonerated in everyone’s eyes but his own. He got away with pushing Birtherism for eight years, then insisting that, actually, it was Hillary Clinton’s idea all along.
He got away with threatening to imprison Hillary Clinton for various crimes if elected; without Trump “Lock her up” would never become a ubiquitous chant because no other president feels as strongly as Trump does that his enemies should all be thrown in jail or killed.
As a thought experiment, let’s assume that Trump’s motivations are pure, that it’s just a coincidence that the person he’s accusing of murder with no evidence is a former friend he has spent years railing against in the ugliest, most personal manner imaginable, including constant attacks on Scarborough’s wife and sanity.
Even the most generous interpretation of Trump’s words and actions—that he only cares about uncovering the truth about Klausutis due to a strong sense of right and wrong and obsession with justice—then he’s still communicating those concerns in a manner so crude and childish—throwing around phrases like “total nut job” and “psycho” to discredit Scarborough—that it’s impossible to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Despite what the most powerful man in the world has been suggesting on social media, Joe Scarborough almost assuredly did not get away with murder. But Trump gets away with murder every goddamn day, metaphorically speaking, and will seemingly continue to until the day he dies, if not longer.
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