I don’t know about you but the public Cohen hearings were pretty much what I expected. There didn’t seem to be too many things revealed that we didn’t already know, or at least didn’t suspect the leader of the free world capable of doing in his past, marginally legal, exercises of freedom. There was one glaring WTF moment for me though. Who in the hell normally goes about strong-arming the administrators of educational institutions to conceal personal academic records? Who does that?
I have always wondered about Trump’s educational background. He has asserted that he was a brilliant student who was admitted to the most prestigious schools and claims to always “have the best words.” That all seems discordant with mere observation. His political rallies are excruciatingly painful for me to watch, always overflowing with disjointed dialog and blatant fabrication. I can not imagine how anyone would be able to sit through that 2 hour CPAC speech he gave the other day. For me exposure to a Trump speech, particularly an unscripted one, inconveniently reminds me of my childhood trip with my family to the Minneapolis Zoo, where we had the awkward experience of witnessing a large Kodiak bear perform a rather astonishingly acrobatic but nonetheless disturbing act of auto fellatio. Realizing that image might be difficult to explain to his children or possibly traumatize us, my father quickly whisked us away and created distraction with the promise of something much more interesting in the next enclosure. That next enclosure for me nowadays is the next channel I hit with my TV remote whenever I am exposed to a Trump political rally speech.
But now I can’t help but wonder what his past teachers are thinking (although admittedly most are probably contemplating from a world of an unfathomable distance). Do they feel remorse, like they might have had something to do with this mess? Have some felt threatened, now that we know about the extreme measures the president will take to insure his SAT scores and grades are never revealed? How insecure is this guy anyway? When something that small bothers a man with power and money, you have to wonder what he is capable of doing in a true crisis.
From the short news clips of his time-tortured CPAC speech that I saw, it is obvious Trump is anticipating the worst, and is already setting up the next catchword that he will be gas lighting his followers with during future rallies. It is a word he inserted into that contorted speech- “bullshit.” When the unflattering revelations start peeling away from the monumental number of upcoming investigations concerning him, that is the word the president will be expecting his adoring crowd to chant. No doubt his die hard supporters will be more than happy to oblige. Uncannily, for them there is never anything perplexing or embarrassing about a Trump political rally. It is entertainment, a virtual one-man extreme circus, where the trapeze artist deliberately miscalculates, the fire-breather self immolates, a large, omnivorous creature auto-eroticizes, and the ringmaster orchestrates with clownish gestures and fantastical exhibitions of slight of hand.
Trump is probably a little desperate for a catchword, but I am not so sure” bullshit” isn’t a sound bite that won’t come back to bite him. After all, look at what has become of the great dealmaker. Where there was once a 25 billion dollar offer from congress for his border wall, he bewilderingly managed to negotiate the figure downward to somewhere between zero and 5 billion. The U.S. trade gap jumped to a 10 year high and the gap with China just broke the all time record. Kim Jong Un teed up the president’s overture of love and gave it a swift kick in the balls. To the president’s dismay the pipe dream of a Nobel Prize has vaporized. Knowing his SAT score must have been so bad his college admittance likely hinged on a generous parental donation to the university building fund, and now that there is nothing utilitarian about a chant of NO-BEL, NO-BEL, NO-BEL, might I offer this as a suggestion for a Trump catchword: BOO-BY, BOO-BY, BOO-BY.
Perhaps a Prize Like This Might Bolster the President’s Spirits