Kudos to the reporter at yesterday’s chopper interview who, after the mobster in the White House decried his former fixer Michael Cohen as a “weak person” and said he lied to get a reduced sentence, asked said mobster a blunt question: “If Cohen is such a bum, why did you hire him, have him on your payroll for twelve years, and have him do so much of your dirty work?”
At this point, Trump cut in and said: “Dirty work! There was no dirty work! You’re fake news!”—well, no, actually, he didn’t. That’s what you’d expect him, or any crook with a mentality approaching normal, to say.
Instead, he just treated it as the truth it is, made no attempt to deny it, didn’t snap back at the guy, and answered the question in a decidedly mob kind of way, “Because a long time ago he did me a favour,” twice.
“Dirty work” was cool.
The HillVerified account @thehill
Questioner: "If Cohen is such a bum, why did you hire him, have him on your payroll for 12 years, and have him do so much of your dirty work?"President Trump: "Because a long time ago he did me a favor." http://hill.cm/aBuX4TG
Video is here at The Hill if you can’t play it above. Jump to 0:18.
Seth AbramsonVerified account @SethAbramson 11h11 hours ago
We're watching the sad, gradual collapse of an entire human male in real time.
Ehh, not so sad. He’s had it coming for a long time.
As he disintegrates, he loses the ability to maintain the normalcy mask, which he never wore very well anyway, and shows us more of his true self: a person who thinks there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having had so much dirty work done for him, because it’s him, after all. Everything, no matter how dirty—tearing toddlers from their mothers, tear-gassing babies, torturing and killing journalists, smearing adversaries, spreading hate, stealing elections, selling out his nation to dictators running hostile foreign nations, lying every time his lips or thumbs move—is okay as long as it’s for him.
This most miserable of all excuses for an entire human male genuinely believes he has done nothing wrong, because he can do no wrong. Narcissists are so convinced of their entitlement that, as a 2014 study showed, they’ll say right out that they’re narcissists if asked, not worrying that it looks bad. Because when you’re perfect, how can you help but know it?
In fact, you can sense the anger in the repeated answer, the genuine belief that he’s the victim and Cohen is the perpetrator. “I rewarded him for his favour by allowing him the honour of doing my dirty work, and now this is how he repays me!” This is the only issue here, for the narc-in-chief. Loyalty on Planet Trump all goes one way, always, and it’s supposed to last forever, and petty details like the law of the land and the rights of others don’t matter at all and so aren’t even on his radar.
As Mueller closes in and the dotard falls apart, blowing off his handlers and tanking his approval rating, look for more surprising flashes of frankness from him. People are like teabags: what’s really in them comes out when they’re in hot water.
As it progresses, look for the GOP to increasingly claim they don’t own it, making all kinds of excuses. Narcissistic tactics now characterize the party (and in fact did prior to this “presidency”), e.g.: accept no personal responsibility but blame everyone else, scapegoat someone who’s not white, male and Christian, create an edifice of lies to hide your true purpose, hold white male Republicans Christians as above reproach and entitled to whatever they want, etc. The corporate media will fall for this, of course. We must speak up loudly to point out the truth at every opportunity.
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