It's Quite Simple, Senator--the President is a Dick

     Yesterday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, lied to journalists in a non-televised briefing session.  Earlier, former FBI Director James Comey had testified under oath before Senators that he wrote down detailed accounts of conversations with President Trump after their meetings, doing this because he figured it was likely the president would lie about what they talked about.
     Comey insisted that he had never taken notes to cover himself after meetings with Presidents Bush and Obama.  Trump, though, presented something special: an untrustworthy man with no sense of the separation of powers.  His demand of loyalty from Comey ignored the FBI Director's Constitutional Oath.  To the Senators, Comey referenced the symbolic blindfold covering the eyes of Justice.  As a major official in the Department of Justice, he wasn't supposed to move that blindfold to do the top person in the Executive Branch a favor; i.e. drop whatever FBI investigation there might be into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's undisclosed ties to Russia and to other countries like Turkey.
     Trump, according to Comey, said, "I hope you'll drop the Michael Flynn investigation."  Right-wingers, Trump apologists, Trump himself, Republican politicians on the committee questioning Comey, pundits, have seized on this word, "hope," saying it doesn't represent an order given by the president to Comey to do anything about the Flynn investigation.  Comey has been chastised even by Democratic Senators, like Dianne Feinstein, for not standing up to Trump and giving the head of the Executive Branch a lecture about separation of powers and how it would've been unethical to drop the Flynn probe.  Apparently, Feinstein and other critics using this line against Comey, have never met Donald Trump or seen him on television during the last three or four decades.  Apparently, they're unaware of what an overbearing and godawful human being he is; how he's convinced of his own rightness at all times, how he falls into the category of Type A personalities that one tends to act agreeable around because he's such a horrible person that disagreeing with him makes for some very difficult minutes.  Comey knew from Trump's use of the words "I hope that," that the leader of the free world was passing on his personal wish that the head of the investigations of federal crimes in the United States look away in regard to Flynn.
     There's a thing built in to some people.  It's called a bullshit detector.  Comey used his bullshit detector whenever he met with Trump.  He wasn't about to act like he was the president's personal servant, following orders as someone "loyal" would do.  Comey told Trump he could be "honestly loyal."  In other words, if Comey were to feel it was coming from honesty, he'd be loyal--anything else would mean a dishonest relationship with the president, something Trump is no doubt used to in his own personal and professional lives.
     Sarah Huckabee Sanders (daughter of professional presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) told her lie in defense of Donald Trump; thus, she's out to prove her loyalty, not to the Constitution, but to an individual.  She told her lie in a press conference setting unusual in that there were no TV cameras present.  The setting itself, something we Americans can't see as with the typical press conference, betrays how much the architects of the Trump administration know they and their leader are full of shit.  Why not let the press have their regular televised press conferences?  Because the administration seeks to hide its activities, its unprofessionalism, its ship-of-state-with-perforated-hull nature.  They must think they're succeeding, to some degree, even though the administration is damaged, and a majority of Americans can see the damage.
     Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "I can definitively say the president is not a liar.  It's frankly insulting that the question would be asked."
     The adverb, "definitively," is the weird part of the sentence.  It implies a conclusion reached "decisively and with authority," according to the dictionary.  On the one hand, if we imagine a meeting held yesterday after Comey's testimony during which Trump's people concluded that it would be good to say that their boss isn't a liar, her statement is not a lie.  On the other hand, declaring that Trump isn't a liar is a provable lie.  He is so obviously a liar that the examples have occurred on a daily basis over the last several years.  Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.  Trump lied about this repeatedly; what's more, his mendacity was vicious, because he did it to undermine someone's credibility, putting their citizenship at question for political gain.
     Trump lied about the size of the crowds in Washington during his inaugural ceremony, comparing them (my cock is bigger than yours) to Obama's crowd in 2009.  Photos of the two events show markedly different crowd sizes, with Obama's noticeably larger.  One should logically say, "Who gives a shit about such a ridiculous thing?" but Trump actually does care about this kind of bullshit.  He even lies about the size of his hands, which, for a man of his overall girth and height, are smaller than you would expect.
     Comey, it should be emphasized, appeared before the Senators and told his tale under oath.  When Trump talks his shit he is never under oath.  We have two people to consider: one of them, Comey, a government servant for many years whose emphasis in career has been law enforcement--someone not demonstrating in the past any tendency to lie for a living.  The other is Donald Trump, a stinkier lying sack of shit it would be hard to imagine.  That politicians and pundits of the right are even clinging to the absurd idea that Donald Trump is a paragon of truth-telling, shows the degree to which they've skated on easy ice in the past, convincing many Americans to fall for some of the greatest lies, like WMD in Iraq, the 2000 election, and the "greatness" of Ronald Reagan.  Paul Ryan even said that Trump, being new to government, doesn't necessarily understand all the nuances.  You mean, Ryan, that he doesn't get the idea that you don't demand loyalty from the FBI Director, that that's the kind of thing a third world dictator does?
     Poor Donald, he just doesn't get it, goes the argument.  He's learning.  His cavalier attitude towards Comey's job in the Justice Department means only that he didn't understand the separation of powers.  Why the hell didn't Comey point this out to him?  Trump, innocent Donald Trump, just doesn't get all these government complications.  He's like an ordinary man, the kind that didn't learn anything in 9th grade American history class.  That ignorance is to be celebrated, not judged.
     When Trump found out that he could, technically, fire James Comey, he did so in the form of a letter written by the Deputy Attorney General, who's the acting Attorney General since the actual Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has had to recuse himself from the Flynn probe, since Sessions himself has Russia ties, and has so far proven to be another albatross around Trump's wrinkled neck.
     Trump didn't know that Comey had taken notes of their nine meetings.  The President tweeted about "tapes" that may or may not exist, hoping to scare Comey, but Comey in his testimony said that he hopes there are "tapes."  He has the air of a man who isn't bullshitting.  "Tapes" would prove his point.  Trump, if he has them, would never voluntarily release them because he knows, just as anyone with a bullshit detector knows, that Comey's words about their encounters ring true.
     Trump can still be a liar even if it's been decided by hidden committee that he "definitively" is not.  It looks more and more like the Trump administration, led by its truth-telling saint of a president, is really just a teetering business run by an incompetent businessman whose main talent is convincing vulnerable people to believe in him--before he fucks them, hard.

                                                                               Vic Neptune
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