Trump should be ashamed of his lies
My wife and I recently saw the (somewhat) acclaimed movie “Arrival.”
In it, we witnessed 12 giant cucumber-shaped pods hovering above the earth with their shadowy inhabitants making efforts to communicate with we curious earthlings.
I bought the premise. My wife, though, didn’t.
The difference. I’m a sucker for sci-fi. My wife is more rational when it comes to space dramas.
I’ve always found it easy to suspend my disbelief, when space aliens, or super-humans, appear on screen.
It all started with my unabashed enthusiasm for TV’s Superman in the 1950s.
I know The Man of Steel would frequently stand with his arms at his sides, as bad guys emptied their guns aimed at him from close range.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I questioned why, if he could bounce bullets off of his chest, why, then, did he duck when the bad guys threw their empty guns at him.
That’s how the suspension of disbelief works.
You know what the actors, directors and writers are telling you is preposterous, but you’re willing to overlook it, for the purposes of just being entertained.
For millions of Americans (the ones who voted for Donald Trump) there’s a heck-of-a-lot of that suspension of disbelief going on.
Trump’s ability to blissfully bend facts, like Superman bent railroad ties, is troubling. But only because so many otherwise rational people believe every word he says.
Trump is merrily gallivanting around the country on his “Thank-you” (read, Victory) tour.
He likes to remind his adoring voters (read fans) that he’s won the presidential election by a “landslide.”
He hasn’t.
Yet, his supporters shriek their approval at the mere mention that he clobbered Hillary Clinton.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Trump bolstered his phony claim by saying, “We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.”
True, Trump’s 306 electoral votes is more than Clinton’s 232.
But Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon had much, much bigger Electoral College victories.
In fact, there have been 18 presidential elections since the end of WWII. Trump’s electoral college win was only bigger than five of them.
When there’s a chance that the veil could be pulled away from one of Trump’s gargantuan fibs, there’s always his hired presidential apologists who’ll come forward to bolster the lie.
Kellyanne Conway, presidential apologist-elite, claimed cryptically that, “306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic.”
Even Trump’s White House Chief of staff, Reince Priebus got into the act, calling Trump’s victory “an electoral landslide.”
To be clear, Mr. Trump wears no cape. He can’t leap tall buildings with a single bound. He, like all presidents-elect, should be held a standard of proof, instead of a massive suspension of disbelief.
The United States of America isn’t some movie screen, where, despite common sense, people willingly believe the unbelievable.
Trump stubbornly questions the serious claims by the U.S. intelligence community that Russians have hacked into the email systems of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta.
But not only that. Amidst the ever-growing reports of Russia, and even Russian president Vladimir Putin have a hand in the election, Trump makes even stronger denials.
“I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s just another excuse,” he’s asserted.
The “excuse” he mentioned implies that Democrats are merely making up the reports about the hacking, even though there’s far too much proof to the contrary.
In fact, several of Trump’s fellow Republicans (and not to mention many, many Democrats) realize that he’s doing all he can to prevent facts from becoming his, well, Kryptonite.
“The facts are stubborn things. They did hack into this campaign,” says Sen. John McCain.
None of this, though, seems to be deterring Trump’s rabid followers from suspending their disbelief. As long as it doesn’t, Trump just might continue to skillfully find ways to stop just short of telling the truth – and possibly about more important things.
To many, he’s able to do, or tweet anything without having to pay any price for it.
Sad!
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net