The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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What I loved the most about the Trump years, aside from the bullying, dog whistling, money grubbing personality, was the propensity to lie. Fake news, everything was fake news. Catch him red handed, he’d attack the accuser in the most blatant, shameless way. Roy Cohn taught him well.

So now, what we have is an attentive world that, when confronted with, oh, say, an invasion of another country, its Fearless Leader, with a straight face, can claim it was merely self-defense. Or a faked bombing of a hospital, wasn’t them, it was a ruse to cast blame on them. What we’ve exported, this Shining City on the Hill of a country, isn’t democracy, it’s the lesson that prevarication works. Deny deny deny and maybe the true believers will believe that too. And if they don’t, deny more vociferously.

Keep saying the election was stolen, keep calling the war in Ukraine an incursion, stifle the press, ratchet up social media, muddy the water, bloody a nose … it’s a brave new world, pal, and if you don’t like it, well, next regime change maybe you’ll like a prison cell better, get your mind straight, get your facts bent around the right lie. Turkey, Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, they must all love the Trump Doctrine: Lie through your teeth. Shut down the internet. Jail the dissenters, the disseminators of fake news! White is black, two plus two is who the hell knows.

Course Trump didn’t actually invent these notions, he just made them acceptable. To dictators, to strongmen, to a goodly portion of the Republican Party. Thanks a lot, Donald, for making us a role model.

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Paul Ryan, head apologist for the President, told reporters that he thought Trump should be given a pass for what appears to be obstruction of justice in the Comey firing. I always thought ignorance of the law was given pretty short shrift in a court of law, but apparently in the GOP Congress, it has legs. Trump, the neophyte Commander-in-Chief who relies on no one’s advice in these matters, pulled Comey aside, asked the others in the room to leave, then told him he hoped he’d drop this Flynn/Russia investigation. When he didn’t, Trump did what he does best, he fired him then demeaned him in the press. Now he’s calling Comey a liar.

Of course we expect new Presidents to GPS their way around D.C. in the rough beginning, learn the ropes, figure out how the swamp is laid out. Maybe in Trump’s case, a couple of years, two terms even. The poor guy. And believe me, he’s not. High crimes and misdemeanors don’t count in Ryan’s rule book. They tried attacking the messenger, Comey, but geez, the guy comes across as pretty high minded and when he says he knew exactly what the President meant when he said he hoped that investigation would end pronto, you can bet one of those boyz has cornered the market on Integrity and the other, well, one is a liar. Not a dissembler, not an exaggerator, not someone who’s still learning the difference (it’s so hard!), but a Liar, capital L.

The hammer is going to come down on this sad affair in American History and there will be those who stood up with courage and those who saw their hopes for political agendas slowly going up in smoke and did nothing to keep the fire from spreading. It’s sad, Very Sad! believe me, to watch this pathetic reality TV show play out day after day. There won’t be winners at the end of the series, but trust me, there will be plenty of losers. And not just the jokers who couldn’t figure out the rules of the game….

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