The Week in Washington: “So Many Lies—From White Lies to Whoppers”
“I never called the strike against Iran ‘back,’ as people are incorrectly reporting, I just stopped it from going forward at this time!” President Trump tweeted yesterday. Well okay, yeah, sure, Donald, whatever you say. On Friday morning he explained that the U.S. had been “cocked and loaded” to retaliate against Iran for downing a U.S. drone Thursday, but after learning 150 people might die as a result, he decided at the last minute that a military escalation would have been “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.” There were plenty of theories meant to explain what was behind this switcheroo—that the president never really intended to retaliate militarily in the first place and had stage-managed the whole thing as just another episode in the TV show that is the Trump administration; that he was resisting his hawkish advisers and listening instead to Fox anchor Tucker Carlson, who reportedly informed him that if the U.S. got into an armed conflict with Iran, Trump could kiss his chances of reelection goodbye.
On Tuesday the president kicked off that reelection campaign at a rally in Orlando, Florida, though in truth since Day One in the White House he has never stopped running for office. The Orlando Sentinel greeted his arrival in their city with an editorial stating it would not be endorsing him in 2020: “After 2½ years we’ve seen enough. Enough of the chaos, the division, the schoolyard insults, the self-aggrandizement, the corruption, and especially the lies. So many lies — from white lies to whoppers — told out of ignorance, laziness, recklessness, expediency or opportunity.” Outside the venue in Orlando, the White Power group The Proud Boys was massing, attempting to get as close as they could to the event. Inside, the audience was treated to a greatest hits album of the president's grievances and triumphs, including a bizarre and sustained attack on Hillary Clinton, who--news-flash--is not among the 20 Democratic hopefuls debating each other later this week.
In other news, last Sunday Trump decided to shoot the messenger, firing members of his polling staff after they told him that if the election were held tomorrow, he would fare dismally against a whole bunch of Democrats—not just Biden, but Sanders, Warren, and even Buttigieg. On Tuesday, Patrick Shanahan, the acting Defense Secretary, said he would resign amid gruesome allegations of domestic violence in his family history that had surfaced. On Wednesday, former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks testified before the House Judiciary Committee behind closed doors—well, if you can even call it testifying, since she refused to answer 155 questions, invoking a brand new and highly-iffy doctrine her lawyers called “absolute immunity.” On Friday, the well-known columnist E. Jean Carroll alleged that back in the mid-1990s, the president had raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman.
Lastly, after threatening all week that ICE raids would begin today, banging on doors and arresting families in 10 cities, the president abruptly put this monstrous plan on hold, tweeting yesterday, “At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!” But Trump need not worry that people will think he is becoming soft on migrants. On Friday, the New York Times reported on conditions at a facility holding children in Clint, Texas: “A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an overcrowded border station … where hundreds of young people who have recently crossed the border are being held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this week. Some of the children have been there for nearly a month. Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk. Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said. They have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap. ‘There is a stench,’ said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, one of the lawyers who visited the facility. ‘The overwhelming majority of children have not bathed since they crossed the border.’’’
Originally Appeared on Vogue
