Yesterday afternoon, Sept. 4, the cable news stations broke away from their coverage of the coronation hearings of future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh because, they decided, something more important was occurring out here in America.
The contents of Bob Woodward’s new book about President Donald Trump, “Fear,” had been revealed. And according to the book, this president is unfit for office, that he’s a bully whose closest advisers have referred to him as an “idiot” and a “professional liar” with the insights of a “fifth or sixth-grader,” and that he is tragically ignorant of international politics and military considerations and history and law.
And all of this is considered, somehow … news?
News is something we didn’t already know. And for all the virtues of Bob Woodward – the premier investigative reporter of the past half-century, and one-half of the team that helped save the republic from the dark excesses of Richard Nixon – for all of Woodward’s reportorial virtues, is it really “news” that Donald Trump is everything Woodward ascribes to him, and more?
Had we not already learned all of this over the past two years?
Barely 48 hours before the Washington Post broke the story of Woodward’s book – thus setting loose the cable news stampede, which lasted the rest of the evening – Trump sent out one of his famous tweets.
It was intended to criticize his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Instead, it demonstrated once more what a dunce we have for a president.
Trump criticized Sessions for heading a Justice Department that dared to indict two Republican congressmen who had “safe seats,” which might now be lost to Democrats in November’s mid-term elections – as though politics should have muffled any thoughts of actual justice taking place, as though it’s the Justice Department’s job to help elect the “right” people, as though justice itself should not be impartial.
It’s as though George Orwell’s caustic line from “Animal Farm” had shockingly come to life, that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
This man is not only ignorant but because he’s a prisoner of his impulses, he can’t resist advertising his ignorance in public.
So Woodward’s book isn’t exactly news so much as confirmation of all the impressions we’ve gathered since Trump first waded into his presidential campaign.
What we learned, from those earliest days, is that he’s unprepared for the office, that he’s a bully, that he’s ignorant of the American system of government, that he’s willfully divisive along racial and religious lines – and that none of this matters to his supporters.
And the reason for this is as obvious as those hearings going on in Washington right now, where Brett Kavanaugh’s coronation continues. The Republicans want the Supreme Court.
They want it so badly that they wouldn’t let Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s nominee, even get a hearing. They want it so badly that they’ll apply their congressional majority and confirm Kavanaugh, no matter what kind of protests are launched.
They want it so badly that they’ll put up with the worst kind of behavior Donald Trump crams into our lives, and they’ll keep smiling, and they’ll keep silent about the things they should be screaming about.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.