Donald Trump, Reality and Cheating
Donald Trump supporters get mad at people like me who point out his flaws, but here’s something to think about:
The very worst things we know about Donald Trump do not come from people like me or liberals or Democrats, the very worst things we know about Donald Trump come from the Republicans who worked for him.
For instance:
According to Bill Stepien (Trump’s former campaign manager) on the night of the election, Trump was getting increasingly unhappy with the way things were going and Jared Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law and amazingly life-like android) tried to steer him away from Rudy Giuliani and his wacky election fraud conspiracy theories because according to several sources, Rudy was shitfaced.
(I’m under the impression Rudy has denied this, but there’s quite a bit of evidence that Rudy Giuliani is also an idiot when he’s sober and I don’t think acting like a lunatic when you haven’t been drinking is anything to brag about.)
Former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue said he had to tell Trump that much of the information about election fraud he was getting was false and former Attorney General William Barr has testified that many of Donald Trump’s theories about the election being stolen were “bogus” and “idiotic” and then added:
“He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.”
OK, so that’s what the people who were actually there on the inside had to say about Donald Trump and his Stolen Election Fairy Tale and you’d think that would be pretty convincing to just about everybody, but if you think that you’re being overly-logical.
And speaking of becoming detached from reality
After all this negative news from Republicans came out, one highly-popular social media post suggested Barr was paid $1.2 million in cash and $1.1 million in stock by Dominion Voting Systems to overlook voter fraud.
But according to the Associated Press, Barr was actually paid by Dominion Energy not Dominion Voting Systems (which raises the inconvenient question of just what Dominion Energy paid Barr for), but the fact that Trump supporters had the wrong Dominion didn’t stop people from continuing to spread the Stolen Election Fairy Tale.
OK, so you don’t trust William Barr because he was paid off by the Dominican Republic (close enough for government work), how about Ivanka Trump?
Ivanka told Congress she didn’t accept her father’s claims, but according to a Q-Anon True Believer, both Bill and Ivanka lied to Congress as part of a brilliant and elaborate scheme to confuse Congress and the American public and I gotta admit this scheme has worked to perfection because major chunks of Congress and the American public are confused as to why Donald Trump supporters keep swallowing his bullshit.
But wait, there’s more.
Apparently some even-more deluded people (and as we’ve already seen, that’s a high bar to clear) have been claiming the January 6th hearings aren’t really real and they’re actually a Hollywood production involving CGI which would mean everybody – Congress, the people testifying, the news organizations and each and every one of their reporters – are part of one of the biggest conspiracies in history and nobody is spilling the beans and to believe all that you’d have to be nuttier than Mr. Peanut.
And now a sidebar on cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological theory about what happens when a person holds two beliefs that contradict one another: they join the Republican Party.
OK, that was a joke (kind of) because what people actually do is try to reduce the dissonance to relieve the discomfort of believing two contradictory things, but I gotta say the MAGA hat wearers don’t seem all that uncomfortable about believing they’re patriots, but supporting a guy who tried to overthrow the government of the country they claim to love.
Although…
Apparently you have to be aware there’s a contradiction to feel discomfort and if you’re dumber than a bag of hammers, you’re not going to have that problem.
(I have told my kids on more than one occasion that if they were a little less intelligent, they’d be much happier people. If you’re really smart you figure out we’re all going to die and what difference does anything make so why try, and if you’re not really smart you’re thrilled it’s Taco Tuesday. I must be somewhere in-between because I know I’m going to die, but wouldn’t mind eating tacos while I wait.)
Anyway…
According to the Medical News Today website, people who suffer cognitive dissonance will (and these might sound familiar):
Rationalize their actions and choices.
Avoid learning new information that goes against existing beliefs.
Ignore research, newspaper articles, or doctor’s advice and devalue conflicting information.
Here’s the article’s money quote:
“One example of this is devaluing particular news sources by describing them as biased or false.”
Right about now I should probably say I’m no Mike Pence fan, but under the heading of “giving credit where credit is due” I drew the above cartoon because Mike refused to go along with the crazy scheme to throw out the election results on a technicality and while some people are critical of Pence for continuing to suck up to Trump supporters and maybe Mike refused to go along because he’s a Political Weasel that didn’t want his fingerprints on overthrowing the government, I still think we owe him a thank you for helping us avoid the National Shit Show Trump was willing to put the country through in order to stay in office and feel good about himself.
Which reminds me:
Google “does Donald Trump cheat at golf” and you’ll be led to a golf.com website article adapted from a Rick Reilly book that says:
Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf. He cheats like a three-card Monte dealer. He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs. At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: “Pele.”
Now here’s a quote you might want to write down or get tattooed on your chest:
“How you do anything is how you do everything.”
As the article’s author points out, guys who are slow on the golf course tend to be slow in meetings, guys who are generous with compliments on the golf course are also generous with compliments at dinner and – no surprise – guys who cheat on the golf course don’t mind cheating on their taxes, in business and in politics.
If you want to understand Donald Trump and why he behaves like he does, you could do a lot worse than reading the golf.com article and just in case you don’t, here are a few highlights:
“I played with him once,” says Bryan Marsal, longtime Winged Foot member and chair of the coming 2020 Men’s U.S. Open. “It was a Saturday morning game. We go to the first tee and he couldn’t have been nicer. But then he said, ‘You see those two guys? They cheat. See me? I cheat. And I expect you to cheat because we’re going to beat those two guys today.’… So, yes, it’s true, he’s going to cheat you. But I think Donald, in his heart of hearts, believes that you’re gonna cheat him, too. So if it’s the same, if everybody’s cheating, he doesn’t see it as really cheating.”
Okay, but …
a) Everybody isn’t. Except for an occasional mulligan on the first tee and accepting a gimme (a short conceded putt) from an opponent, 85 percent of casual golfers play by the rules, according to the National Golf Foundation.
b) To say “Donald Trump cheats” is like saying “Michael Phelps swims.” He cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching, and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf, that’s how he learned it, that’s how he needs it, and whether you’re his pharmacist or Tiger Woods, if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat.
But why? Why does Trump cheat so much when he’s already a decent player? And how can he be so shameless as to cheat right in front of people? They call him on it, but he just shrugs and cheats some more. It’s ruined his reputation in the golf world. Ninety percent of the people I interviewed — on and off the record — say he openly cheats. A lot of them said they stopped playing with him because of it. So why? Why cheat? Why lie? Why exaggerate his handicap, his scores, his club championships.
“Because he has to,” says Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Lance Dodes, co-author of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. “He needs to be the best at everything. He can’t stand not winning, not being the best. It had to have started very early in his development. To him, not being the best is like fingernails on the blackboard to you. He can’t live with it.”
If you want to read more about how Donald Trump cheats at golf (and you should…it’s pretty entertaining) here’s the article:
https://golf.com/lifestyle/celebrities/how-why-president-trump-cheats-golf-playing-tiger-woods/
According to the Associated Press, Jim Marchant – a Republican candidate for Nevada’s secretary of state – insisted there hadn’t been a legitimate election in his state in more than a decade and the people who won were actually installed by a “deep-state cabal” and he believed that with all his heart.
Right up until he won the Republican nomination and then it turned out his win was totally legitimate.
And if you’re thinking: “Man, that guy must be the Biggest Hypocrite in the Continental United States” hold on because he’s got some stiff competition.
Doug Mastriano – Republican nominee for the governor of Pennsylvania – did the same thing and so did Ken Paxton – Republican nominee for Texas Attorney General.
In fact, a lot of Republicans have claimed our election system is flawed and corrupt, but didn’t have jack shit to say after they won an election and then the election system worked just fine and here’s an Associated Press story about that:
(Man…not sure how I pulled it off, but that link looks like it ought to be the formula for rocket fuel.)
Anyway…
Here’s what Democratic National Committee Chair Jamie Harrison had to say about it:
“MAGA Republicans will do anything in their desperate chase for power.
From undermining our democracy by spreading Trump’s Big Lie, to laying the groundwork to try to cancel votes when they don’t agree with the outcome, but falling silent if they win, this is today’s Republican Party.”
So it’s not a few bad apples, it’s the current Republican Party position: reality is what I say it is and if I lose an election I was cheated, but if I win it was totally fair and I just birdied that last hole despite taking seven strokes on a par four.
That’s it for me today and if you’re reading this in Kansas City, try to stay out of the heat and if you’re a Republican who helped plot the attempted overthrow of the government, you might want to stay out of Washington, D.C.
You are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts.” Patrick Moynihan
We lost a lot when we lost agreed upon facts.
As always, quite excellent