Trump Presser A Gauzy, Nostalgic Harbinger Of The Next Four Years Of Suck
Meet the new buffoon, same as the old buffoon.
Convicted felon Donald Trump, soon to be known as “convicted felon President Donald Trump,” held one of his classic press conferences on Monday. And we have to tell you, we felt this weird nostalgia bubble up from the fetid depths of our blackened, cynical hearts.
It was so, so very Trumpian, circa 2017. There he was at his dollar store Monticello in Florida, face more orange than an old Denver Broncos jersey, standing in front of two giant American flags one might easily imagine were physically recoiling from fear that he might at any moment grope them. There were the cheesy gold-plated wall sconces and the spooky leftover prop candelabra that looked like something Gary Sinise carried through dark hallway sets in Dracula. There was a wizened foreign CEO — in this case, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son — sucking up to Hairball Hitler by announcing a $100 billion investment in “artificial intelligence and related infrastructure,” whatever the fuck that looks like.
The SoftBank deal will also allegedly create 100,000 jobs in the United States. Sure thing. Anyone know how SoftBank’s $50 billion investment that was supposed to create 50,000 jobs that the same CEO announced after Trump’s victory in 2016 ever did? Oh, they lost $16 billion of it investing in WeWork? Neat.
That was the first five minutes of the press conference, and was followed by a solid hour of Trump taking questions from the press and responding with lie after lie after lie, while the reporters dutifully wrote it all down with little to no pushback. The answers were his characteristic mixture of vague to the point of meaninglessness and flat-out falsehoods on every topic — vaccines, immigration, all the money he thinks Mexico and Canada are stealing.
He accused the Biden administration of covering up the truth behind all the recent drone sightings on the East Coast. He claimed he won the youth vote in this election by 34 points. (In reality, Kamala Harris won the youth vote by 12 points.) He defended secretary of Defense nominee and reported drunk Pete Hegseth, who he claimed was in line to make a ton of money at Fox but gave it all up to work in Trump’s Cabinet. (Why Hegseth can’t go back to Fox and make a pile of money if his nomination gets rejected remained unexplained, of course.)
It was all such a throwback to the first Trump term that CNN even had Daniel Dale on to fact-check him while blinking the words GOD HELP ME in Morse code:
Perhaps most egregiously, considering the assembled crowd, he threatened defamation suits against media outlets that have displeased him. He threatened to sue The Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer for publishing a poll that showed him losing Iowa right before the election, and talked about two other ridiculous lawsuits he’s pursuing, one against “60 Minutes” over what he thinks was a misleading edit in its Kamala Harris interview, and the other against Bob Woodward for releasing tapes of interviews he conducted with Trump.
Oh, and he talked about suing “Pulitzer” for awarding its journalism prizes to The New York Times and The Washington Post over their reporting on Russia instead of to the likes of Sean Hannity and Judge Jeanine, who he said actually got the story right, that it was a giant hoax. (It wasn’t, according to the then-Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Marco Rubio.)
He wrapped up that section of the press conference by saying this:
“We have to straighten out the press. The press is very corrupt. Almost as corrupt as our elections.”
He called them corrupt and threatened to straighten them out to their dang faces, and the reporters immediately fell all over themselves to change the subject.
A few people online have been yelling Thanks a pantsload, ABC, over the network’s grotesque capitulation to Trump’s lawsuit against the network, which is only partially correct. The man sues just to sue, whether he has a case or not, and we strongly, strongly doubt that a protracted fight with ABC, or even an immediate dismissal of the lawsuit, would have discouraged him.
But it is possible that ABC’s ridiculous $15 million settlement will embolden him even further and make him think he’s doing the right thing, and he’ll start going after smaller outlets that don’t have the means to fight. Outlets like The Des Moines Register, to take just one example off the top of our head for no reason.
Which brings us back to our original thought as we watched the media let Trump steamroll over it as he has for a decade. And that is how absurd it is that reporters still, still, after all this time, troop into these rooms with Trump like a bunch of lemmings, knowing they will be lied to, knowing they will be berated and threatened and insulted, and dutifully write it all down without standing up for themselves and their profession.
Trump even at one point commented on Monday that the press conference felt like the old days. But the old days sucked!
We watched four years of such scenes during Trump’s first term, and we find it unreal that we will be watching the same sorts of spectacles for another four. We can’t believe we get another four years of White House reporters scribbling down Trump’s rambling horseshit without noting that Trump has always rambled through every press conference and interview, and that 95 percent of the stuff he promises never happens.
We just found it all very depressing for a minute. Because it is.
The whole sorry spectacle is right here, in case anyone wants to also crack a jar of Hooper’s eggnog at 4:20 in the afternoon.
OPEN THREAD.
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Great photo session with Bear (& Harry) this morning. Such an easy model to work with just requires treats and a few nibbles of bacon to get the good shots. (yes he is a Gummy Bear as he has had all of his teeth removed)
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I have done enough adulting today that I feel like I've earned an entire goddamn jar of olives.