Donald Trump can’t even fake it anymore
I don’t recall which grade it was, but at some point in grade school I learned why John Hancock allegedly claimed he affixed the most famous signature in American history to the Declaration of Independence in large, bold script. “So that King George,” the legend has it, “could read it without his spectacles.” From there I understood it was a kind of letter to the king of England telling him we no longer wanted to be his subjects, that we were declaring our independence from Great Britain. And so on.
I wasn’t unusual in this understanding. It was the proverbial thing that “every child in America knows.” Every child but Trump, that is, the so-called “president” of the United States.
When ABC’s Terry Moran asked Trump what the Declaration meant to him, he replied, “It means exactly what it says. It’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect.”
It’s no such thing. It’s actually a declaration of war. A declaration of disunity, a declaration, if you will, of hate. It’s a laundry list of grievances against an unjust oppressor. The best Trump could do to round out his “explanation” was to add a little putrid, star-spangled bullshit: “It means a lot, and it’s something very special to our country.”
It wasn’t exactly like Trump didn’t have a chance to understand what is in the Declaration. The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is hanging in the Oval Office, disgorged from its traditional public space so Trump could greedily have it all to himself. But is anyone surprised he doesn’t know what it says?
When Trump tries to fake interest in anything, as when he famously failed to name a single verse in his “favourite book,” the Bible, he always fails. Because not only is Trump a conman, he’s an inept, stupid, clumsy and unconvincing conman. But then, the people he’s conning are also inept and stupid, so I guess he doesn’t need to be adroit and convincing.
So when Trump was recently asked if it was his job to uphold the Constitution he unsurprisingly replied, “I don’t know.” Any other president would have answered with words to the effect, “Are you kidding me? What a stupid question! It’s the very first thing I promised to do in order to become president in the first place, ‘to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ Duh-uh.”
It’s right there in the Oath of Office. An oath Trump has publicly recited — twice. An oath he obviously forgot about the minute he cynically finished promising to do what it says.
It’s not exactly like he planned to defy the oath. He’s not that sophisticated. He simply didn’t bother to understand it. Because Trump doesn’t give a shit about anything but money, power and his ego. In the words of Gordon Gecko, “everything else is just conversation.”
So, MAGA , let’s cut the crap about Trump being a great patriot who loves America and understands it better than anyone else, okay? He doesn’t give a shit about the Constitution, he doesn’t give a shit about the Declaration of Independence, he doesn’t give a shit about the flag, mom or apple pie, and Trump most certainly doesn’t give a shit about you.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.