Trump didn’t launch any nukes on his first day as president. Hooray.
Only 1,459 more days to go to dodge the atomic bullet (that’s when the 2021 inauguration happens and Trump will hopefully not be part of it, except as an onlooker–unless he is still missing after having been kidnapped by Bigfoot, of course).
On the second day of his presidency, we witnessed the first press conference of the new administration. The press secretary lied about something easily disproven–the size of the crowd at the inauguration–and took no questions. A press conference without questions. At least CNN didn’t feel more left out than any other media outlet (Trump declared them “fake news” in his last press conference before the inauguration and refused to take questions from their reporter).
Roughly twice as many turned up today for the Women’s March in Washington D.C. as did for Trump’s inauguration, with estimates of around 500,000 participants. Hundreds of thousands of others joined in around the world.
The Associated Press:
Trump said throngs “went all the way back to the Washington monument,” despite photos and live video showing the crowd stopping well short of the landmark.
The liar who became president continues to lie. His press secretary lies. This is not normal and should not be tolerated.
CNN: White House attacks media for accurately reporting inauguration crowds
The nice part is CNN has nothing to lose by going full attack mode on Trump now since he’s already cut them off. They have every incentive to dig for as much dirt as they can find. And they will find dirt.
There’s a good chance Trump won’t finish his term, though it is difficult to imagine a Republican-controlled Congress impeaching him and even more improbable to imagine him resigning. I suspect his usual technique–to simply ignore reality and lie about everything–is ultimately not going to see him through. The ignorant fools who helped elect him will lap up everything he says, of course, and there’s a lot of people out there who seem curiously proud of their stupidity, their unwillingness to think critically or to engage in anything that smacks of rational or logical thought in preference to leading with their emotions or their “gut,” whatever that means. But I don’t think there are enough of these people to protect him when the tide turns.
And it will turn.
Hopefully before the nukes.
The New York Times: With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media on Turnout and Intelligence Rift
Quotes (emphasis mine):
WASHINGTON — President Trump used his first full day in office on Saturday to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media, falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his inauguration crowd.
***
He also called journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth,” and he said that up to 1.5 million people had attended his inauguration, a claim that photographs disproved.
***
Later, at the White House, he dispatched Sean Spicer, the press secretary, to the briefing room in the West Wing, where Mr. Spicer scolded reporters and made a series of false statements.
Trump tries to forge a reality that simply doesn’t exist, and he may expect to get away with it by assuming no one will fact check or if they fact check, no one will care. On the small stuff, a lot of people (see the aforementioned ignorant fools) won’t care. But Trump won’t stop with constant, small fabrications. He’ll lie about important matters, too. And it will be his undoing.
The alternative is to watch the United States devolve from a democracy into something else (something worse and terrifying) and I can’t really entertain that notion right now.
On the other hand “President Trump” seemed ridiculous, too.
And again, this is only Day 2.
