Your bag is empty.
At the end of former Ukrainian ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony last Friday, those in attendance at the House Judiciary Committee meeting greeted her with a standing ovation. Less than 24 hours later, attending doctors at NIH’s Walter Reed Hospital greeted President Donald Trump with a stethoscope.
With all due respect to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, in this case the sense of causation is hard to ignore.
Yovanovitch at least caused some indigestion among the Trump faithful when she said, “Ukrainians who prefer to play by the old corrupt rules sought to remove me. What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them and, working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. Ambassador.”
Her testimony gave credence to what many feared: President Trump played a dirty game in Ukraine for the better part of a year. Her testimony lays the groundwork for a July 25 telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which, as others have testified, Trump tried to extort Zelensky, pushing him to announce an investigation into domestic political rival Joe Biden. Investigators say this fact is verified by Trump’s own publicly released memo, which provided selective quotes from the conversation in question.
But to be accurate, no one can say Yovanovitch’s testimony caused Trump’s weekend excursion to the hospital. We also can’t say Roger Stone’s convictions on seven counts of lying to Congress, or the loss of the governorship in Louisiana, or Russia taking over a former American airbase in Syria, or Trump shooting himself in the foot by denigrating Yovanovitch via tweet, or the exposing of several interesting racist emails by Stephen Miller had anything to do with his hospital visit.
It may not be accurate to merely call him a misogynist, as that condition is a symptom of a greater Trump problem.
Trump claimed he was just getting a head start on his annual physical and, folks, that may be just what he was doing. Or he could be preparing a medical excuse for resigning. Or he could have had a panic attack, coughs and colds due to a fever, bloating from gas or something else. Maybe he just needed a few hours outside of his bunker.
Speculation was rife in the press. More than one reporter heard about an “episode” over the weekend—which means absolutely nothing since that single word, in the context of Trump, covers everything from yelling at Mick Mulvaney as he adjusts the thermostat in the Oval Office to firing James Comey or William Sessions or someone else via tweet. It could be anything. But what do I know?
Perhaps a week spent blowing smoke precipitated Trump’s hospital visit. On November 13, the first day of public testimony in the impeachment inquiry, he hosted a press conference with embattled President Erdogan of Turkey. Apparently he hoped to take some attention away from the hearings. It didn’t work.
More smoke came Friday when Trump tried to pre-empt Yovanovitch. He released a memo of an earlier congratulatory conversation with Ukraine president Zelensky after Zelensky won the election in Ukraine. Nobody really cared. Yovanovitch was far more compelling.
After pre-empting failed, Trump tweeted about the former ambassador even as she testified. “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Trump sneered. “She started off in Somalia, how did that go?”
That tweet unraveled a GOP strategy of “quiet respect” of a senior Foreign Services career diplomat who has served her country with honor for nearly four decades. Moreover, Trump’s tweet served to again show Trump as a misogynist intent on harassing witnesses who got to him. It was pointed out he hadn’t bothered to tweet out against the two men who previously testified against him on the first day of public hearings. It may not be accurate, though, to merely call Trump a misogynist, as that condition is a symptom of a greater Trump problem: misanthropy. He doesn’t just hate women; he dislikes just about everyone and has openly said so. He has no problem being a colossal boor before men or women. He doesn’t like dogs either.
The truth is we cannot turn away, even if half the nation is suffering from PTSD and the other half is suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome.
Little surprise then he ended up in the hospital. Trump’s problem isn’t just that he tried to extort Ukrainian president Zelensky. The problem is also how pitifully inept and stupid he was in doing it and the lengths to which GOP politicians have gone to defend a move they know to be dumb, committed by a man most of them cannot personally stomach.
Friday acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney dodged questions when I saw him in the upper press office, and Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley avoided saying much more than naming his favorite muscle milk. I wanted to ask him about the previous day’s encounter: On Thursday reporters stood in the cold air of the South Lawn waiting for Trump to make one of his semi-regular “Chopper Talk” appearances. We waited for an hour approximately 100 feet from the Oval Office and watched through that famous set of windows as Trump met with Attorney General William Barr and a host of other advisers in what some reporters said was an “animated exchange.” It looked like Trump being Trump, but what do I know?
On Friday I asked Gidley what the whole thing was about.
“I don’t know what it was about,” he told me. So I asked if he’d go ask the president and the A.G. “I’m not walking into that buzz saw,” Gidley said.
During the weekend the public got more information on Trump’s impeachment inquiry: Career foreign service officer and Pence staffer Jennifer Williams testified she had firsthand knowledge of the July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and said the conversation was “unusual and inappropriate.”
Calling Williams a “Never Trumper,” Trump again sought to dismiss the growing mountain of evidence against him. His faithful followers still love this behavior, and I think Trump at this point should admit he hasn’t taken his movement seriously enough. He should lay down some guidelines for his devout:
- Trump is the Lord thy false God.
- Thou shalt have no other false Gods before him.
- Thou shalt make graven images of Trump as long as you pay Trump Hotels for the privilege.
- Thou shalt not take the name of Trump in vain, but shall name all property you own after him and give him a sizeable portion of the licensing fee.
- Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy by playing Golf at a Trump resort.
- Thou shalt not murder—but throwing people under the bus is okay. Wood chippers are also suitable.
- Thou shalt commit adultery—especially if you grab them by the pussy.
- Thou shalt steal as often as possible, and if caught then refer to the sixth commandment.
- Thou shalt covet the neighbor’s wife, especially if she’s a hottie.
- Thou shalt covet everything thy neighbor has and take it for your own.
Zealotry is, of course, big among some Trump supporters. On Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as a Christian reporter stood just outside the West Wing portico, occasionally spouting hateful rhetoric about the LBGTQ community. I heard him ask for Roger Stone to be granted immunity and bathed in the blood of Christ. Then he picked up a ram’s horn and blew on it. He’s done this several times before when he’s visited the White House.
I’m amused, but many voters are beyond fatigued. They are disinterested. Is there a Deep State? Is Trump really Satan? Who knows? We no longer want to tune in to find out, even if we’re paid to do so.
The truth is we cannot turn away, even if half the nation is suffering from PTSD and half from Stockholm Syndrome. The results of this administration are easy to see outside of the United States. Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel from NBC recently tweeted, “The more I talk to sources, the more I’m hearing America’s betrayal of the Kurds, and the humiliation, ‘misogynistic’ ‘squashing’ of US ambassador in Ukraine for political motivations makes people think, we, Americans, have become the ‘bad guys.’ Hearing it was a gut punch.”
Here’s another gut punch: In a country that ignores the growing number of mass shootings as easily as it does fatal traffic accidents, it’s our fault. We shun facts and unpleasant realities and thus create a political environment conducive to deception. What can a politician promise and deliver? Certainly we cannot expect delivery of what we are ourselves are unwilling to give.
We want simple problems and simple solutions. We elect those who reflect our own values—people with whom we can relate—and that includes both those who represent the best we hope to achieve and the worst that we are ourselves. We all have told a lie; we accept it from politicians. In fact, those who lie the best are often rewarded the most. Donald Trump is merely an unparalleled artist in weaving a web of lies.
But what do I know?
I still don’t know why we waited an hour on the South Lawn, and I question whether or not Trump told us the truth as to why he went to the hospital.