‘I can be the most presidential person ever,” Donald Trump assured all Americans several days after assuming office.
Fast forward four months or so to last week, when Trump was the featured speaker at the Coast Guard Academy graduation, normally a time of joy celebrating the accomplishments of young men and women embarking on careers in service to their country. So Trump, after briefly lauding the fresh grads, couldn’t resist talking about – what else? – himself.
“Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media. No politician in history – and I say this with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly,” he proclaimed.
And then he proceeded to roll out for the young ensigns a glowing account of the great elective and legislative victories he had enjoyed, something he does with numbing regularity.
Just the next day, after digesting the news that a special counsel had been appointed to oversee the investigation of Russian interference in the presidential election and the possible involvement of Trump campaign members, he took to Twitter.
This is, said Trump, “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history,” showing, as he so often does, a stunning unfamiliarity with American history as well as real witch hunts.
“The most presidential person ever,” indeed.
Trump doesn’t sound “presidential” but rather Costanza-ish, as in Frank Costanza, George Costanza’s father on Seinfeld and the self-proclaimed inventor of Festivus, an alternative December holiday for all the people who don’t celebrate other December holidays.
And the centerpiece of the Festivus dinner is the Airing of Grievances, a ritual at which – firmly gripping an aluminum pole – each guest lists all of the ways in which other people at the table had wronged him (or her; Festivus is an equal opportunity ritual) over the past year.
It looks as if every day is Festivus to our president, whose list of grievances is apparently endless, from the media’s (and reality’s) failure to validate the unprecedented size of the crowd at his inauguration (the biggest, the best!) to the refusal of facts (hard things, facts) to confirm that he accomplished more in the first 90 days of his administration than any other president.
And – of course! – people stubbornly refuse to admit that he certainly won the popular vote. At least if you don’t count the 3 million or so illegal voters (including many thousands here in New Hampshire) who cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. Who, by the way, should have been inflicted with her very own special counsel.
Have I mentioned his extreme irritation that the political world refuses to acknowledge that he won by one of the biggest electoral college margins in history? At least by his count. By statistical count, he was 46 from the top. But why nitpick?
A lot of this stuff – as well as other pronouncements by Trump and those who speak for him, such as the hapless Sean Spicer – were cheerfully explained by Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway a month or two ago as “alternative facts.”
Surely you remember “alternative facts” from grammar school? I think the concept is regularly covered in the fifth grade.
It is astounding and not a little scary that a man of extraordinary wealth and rare privilege should rise – quite unexpectedly – to become the president of the United States, arguably the most powerful and respected person in the world (at least until last Jan. 20), yet should be so chillingly unsure of himself that only “alternative facts” can cloak his massive insecurities.
Anyway, the alternative facts machine and other Trumpian mechanisms have been much in evidence in the past week or two.
It started with the abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was caught so unawares that he had to learn he’d been canned from a TV news bulletin while he was addressing bureau personnel in Los Angeles.
At first Trump’s many minions pinned the blame on a letter from the assistant attorney general arguing that Comey had mishandled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email arrangement. Then, after his underlings had glibly (and, it turns out, falsely) alibied him, Trump had an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt in which he corrected the record.
The Clinton matter had nothing to do with it, he said. He’d made up his mind to fire Comey even before he was given that letter. It was, he told Holt “this Russian thing” – Comey’s FBI investigation into whether any Trump staffers had undisclosed communications with Russians who were busy trying to sabotage the American presidential election.
Then came Trump’s private Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador to the United States. Private, that is, as far as the American press was concerned, whereas a reporter/photographer from Tass, the Russian news agency, waltzed right through the door. Oops!
Then the president, gloating that “I get the best intel!” – sort of like “I get the biggest plane!” or “I get two scoops of ice cream!” – blabbed some of that “intel” to the Russians. Top secret intel, as it happens. From Israel and only for our consumption. Bigger oops!
Finally, at week’s end, came the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to look into “this Russian thing,” followed by Trump’s primal wail of self-pity.
It’s in this aggrieved state that Trump is off on his first official trip to foreign capitals, where I suspect leaders are waiting with bated (and nervous) breath – all, no doubt, determined not to share too many secrets with the loose-lipped American leader.
In unrelated news this week, we learned that King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands has for decades quietly worked part time as a co-pilot for KLM, the official Dutch airline. It’s very relaxing, he said.
“You have an aircraft, passenger, crew. You have responsibility for them. . . . You can’t take your problems . . . into the skies. You can completely disengage and concentrate on something else,” he told interviewer Susan Hogan of the Washington Post.
He makes pilot announcements to passengers anonymously, he added. “I don’t have to say my own name. But most of the people don’t listen anyway.”
Boy, about now that sounds like the kind of national leader a whole lot of us could get behind. Downright presidential in his modesty.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)