January 4-5, 2019: The Trump Stupidity Index

 

“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” 

Mark Twain

1/4-5/19: Our topic for the weekend is “The Trump Stupidity Index” which seems to reach new lows daily.

 

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“They all know it. Some of them told me.” 

President Trump

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I am striving to keep posts shorter this year, but when it comes to presidential stupidity there is always much to discuss. Stupidity spills from Trump’s lips like pig manure from a North Carolina industrial farm inundated by hurricane flood waters. 

(Yeah, that happened for real.)

 

Probably Trump’s stupidest comment this week came during a contentious meeting with Democratic leaders, regarding funding for the Great Wall of Trump. When Dems made it clear they weren’t interested in spending $5 billion plus on the president’s pet project, Trump said he was willing to keep the government shutdown going “a very long period – months, or even years.” 

You wondered why he didn’t say “eons.”

 

This epic burst of stupidity followed hard on the heels of other impressively stupid comments, as in, Trump saying he would be “proud” to own the shutdown. Then you had Trump tweeting, “The Democrats now own the shutdown.” Then Trump changing his mind like a four-year-old deciding what socks he wants to wear. The president finally kicked the Stupidity Index up a notch, telling reporters he didn’t care what they called the shutdown, Trump Shutdown, the Tooth Fairy Shutdown, he could care less. “It’s just words,” he grumbled. 

He went on to defend his decision to shut down the government by claiming that everyone except drug dealers, gang members and human traffickers wanted him to build the Great Wall of Trump. He told reporters this “should’ve been done by all of the presidents that preceded me.” 

“They all know it,” Trump insisted, “some of them told me.”  

Since “some” is plural and the only living former presidents are Obama, Bush 43, Clinton and Carter, everyone listening to the president figured – with mathematical certainty – that he was lying again. 

(As a former American history teacher, I started wondering if James K. Polk had visited Mr. Trump in a dream.)

 

The Stupidity Index went up several more notches when a CNN reporter asked the president if he still believed Mexico was going to pay for the wall. Trump said Mexico was already paying, because of the great trade deals he has worked out. (Well, then, let’s just open the government back up, if Mexico is paying, and call it a Trump win.) The CNN reporter wondered if he hadn’t failed on the promise to build a “concrete wall.” First, Trump said he never said he was going to build a “concrete wall.” (He did.) Then he rambled on for a full minute about how a wall made of steel slats would be more “beautiful” and, “frankly, stronger.” 

Did you know you can’t see through a “12-inch” thick concrete wall, he asked? (One suspects the reporter did.) 

Another pesky media type asked Mr. Trump if he was at all concerned about the 800,000 federal workers going without pay. What about their financial safety net? Trump claimed that most furloughed workers loved the concept of the Great Wall of Trump. If it was made of concrete (not that it would be) tens of thousands of them would probably visit the border, stick a hand or foot in the wet concrete and use a stick to write their names, or maybe, “Trump is the Best!” 

“The safety net,” for furloughed federal workers, he continued, “is going to be having a strong border because we’re going to be safe.” 

Friday, hundreds of Transportation Safety Administration employees were so happy to hear about this new safety net, and so thrilled to be working without pay, they decided to call in sick. 

 

“We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement.” 

The Stupidity Index shot up again when Trump told reporters watching, and a stunned cabinet, that Russia was right to invade Afghanistan in 1979. “The reason Russia was in Afghanistan,” he explained, “was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there,” he said. 

This was news, for sure, to U.S. military leaders, NATO allies, random Afghans, and even the Russians. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal roasted the president. His remarks, the Journal said, were “absurd” and “reprehensible.” 

“Right to be there?” the editors fumed. “We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with three divisions in December 1979 to prop up a fellow communist government.” Both the Carter and Reagan administrations began supplying weapons to the Afghans in a fight to drive the invaders out. 

Trump’s additional statements, mocking the contribution of NATO allies to our fight after 9/11, proved not only incredibly stupid but grotesque. “They tell me a hundred times, ‘Oh, we sent you soldiers. We sent you soldiers,’” Trump whined. He insisted NATO allies had to kick in more dough.

 

Let’s be blunt. Trump was epically stupid when it came to the history of the Russian invasion. 

He was mathematically stupid when he ignored the contribution of NATO partners (130,000 troops sent to Afghanistan since the 9/11 attacks). 

He was morally stupid, when it came to current affairs, ignoring the over-arching fact that 16,000 NATO troops were putting their lives on the line, beside our own forces, in Afghanistan, now. 

He was grotesquely stupid when he discounted the sacrifices of NATO troops. Thousands have been wounded or maimed in Afghanistan and 1,141 have lost their lives there since a day, seventeen years ago, when the United States was attacked, and our allies rallied to our defense.

 

In a rambling 95-minute cabinet meeting, the president went on to explain why he no longer needed advice from all the great generals he originally hired, “his generals,” as he once called them. That was before they were convicted of felonies (Flynn), fired (H.R. McMaster), pushed out (Kelly), or resigned in disgust (Mattis). Trump insisted he knew more about the military than anyone else. 

“I think I would have been a good general, but who knows,” he said. 

This is reminiscent of the time the president claimed he’d have been a hero if he had been present when a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School, killing or wounding 34. “I really believe I’d run in there,” he told an audience, “even if I didn’t have a weapon.” 

(Do we need to point out the fallacy of that comment, considering that both careers – general and hero – would have been halted before they began by Mr. Trump’s crippling bone spurs?)