DONALD TRUMP: WILL HE BECOME THE MOST DANGEROUS AMERICAN PRESIDENT…..EVER?

…Trump with raging surrogate, Scottie Nell Hughes

 

Major markets will dive or rise, based on a statement from the leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

 

You may think that based on following the Trump campaign, you think you are now prepared for a “post-truth world” in which untruthful and emotional political appeals count more than statements of real facts.

 

But before you go there, I am going to ask you to revisit your old copy of George Orwell’s “1984” novel to remind you how the “truth” was defined within the different “Ministry’s” from Orwell’s imagination.  It is amazing that the truth as demonstrated by the Trump campaign falls directly in how the truth was defined in the “1984” novel. 

 

If you will recall, “The Ministry of Peace” concerned itself with war,  “The Ministry of Truth” dealt with corporate lies.  “The Ministry of Love” was about torture, and of course “The Ministry of Plenty” only dealt with national starvation.

 

As with Trump, Orwell made it clear that these contradictions were not accidental, nor did they result from ordinary hypocrisy like Trump’s: they are deliberate exercises in what the book referred to as “doublethink”.

 

As a perfect example, recently on a live radio show, the Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes made it all very clear on “The Diane Rehm Show” when she said “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, as facts."

 

Hughes, who was a frequent surrogate for the President-elect Trump, appearing on CNN during the campaign, she kept on defending that assertion.  Rehm had pressed her about Trump’s evidence-free statement on Twitter that he would have “won the popular vote if millions of immigrants had not voted illegally”.

Hughes continued to argued that it is not a question whether his claim is true. What matters is who believes what he says.  Huh?

 

“Mr. Trump’s tweet, amongst a certain crowd, which is a large part of the American population, believe it’s the truth. When he says that millions of people voted illegally, his supporters believe he has facts to back that up.  But those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that his statements are all lies, and that there are no facts to back it up.”

 

Now the real basis of this Trump version of the truth was from Infowars.com, which he apparently follows like he does Breitbart News.  This is a site that focuses on conspiracy theories and is run by a Mr. Alex Jones.  Mr. Jones also says the 2012 massacre of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., was all a US government-sponsored hoax.

 

To fully understand this concept, you must first listen to another Trump surrogate that echoed this sentiment.  The former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, speaking during an election post-mortem at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, blamed all journalists for believing what his candidate had said.

 

“You guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally,” said Lewandowski. “The American people didn’t. They understood it. They understood that sometimes — when you have a conversation with people, whether it’s around the dinner table or at a bar — you’re going to say things, and sometimes you don’t have all the facts to back it up.”

 

Unfortunately, Trump is not just normal a guy sitting at a dinner table or at a bar; he is the Republican President-elect of the United States and will pretty soon be the leader of the free world.

 

Apparently, based on Lewandowski’s thinking, reporters should have added something like this in every Trump news story: “Trump probably didn’t mean that he would appoint a special prosecutor/build a wall/deport millions of immigrants. His statements are not meant to be taken literally but rather as broad suggestions of a feeling he was experiencing on that particular day.”

 

When CNN’s Jake Tapper questioned Trump’s senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway, she was asked about this same election-fraud statement, and whether the Trump statement with this misinformation was being “presidential”, here is what she said:  “He’s the president-elect, so that’s presidential behavior,” Conway said. 

 

Now this is an example of using some serious mind-bending logic, which is reminiscent of what former President Richard Nixon had famously said: “When the president does it, that means that it’s not illegal,” and we all know where that comment went.

 

These surrogates’ “lack of support for the facts” should not be surprising, given Trump’s historical relationship with the "truth".

 

But I am concerned that our new president might say some things that other world leaders won’t know that they aren’t supposed to take everything that Trump says “literally”.  Wars have been started over mis-statements between world leaders.  We already know how the markets can dive or rise, based only on a statement from the leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

 

I have always said that Donald Trump could become the most dangerous US president …..ever.  I’m sticking with that possibility.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016