The repugnant, hateful liar in the White House

When things get rough for Donald Trump in Washington — as it does frequently — he rustles up his mindless faithful for a rally somewhere out of town and exclaims how “great” he is.

“You ever notice they always call the other side ‘the elite’?” Trump asked Wednesday at such a rally in Duluth, Minn. “The elite! Why are they elite? I have a much better apartment than they do. I’m smarter than they are. I’m richer than they are. I became president and they didn’t.”

Trump turned into his often employed caricature of himself.  He shouted “going home to his mom” when a young protestor was led out  of the hall.  Another one ejected had long hair and Trump got giddy: “Is that a man or a woman? I couldn’t tell. Needs a haircut.”

A typical night on stage for the former reality-show host turned presidential wannabe who things he should be dictator of America.

Back in Washington, the truth tells a more definitive story about the illusion named Trump.

As The Washington Post noted about the dumb decision that tore children away from their parents at our borders:

First it was a deterrent. Then it wasn’t.

It was a new Justice Department policy. Then it wasn’t.

The Trump administration was simply following the law. Then it said separations weren’t required by law.

It could not be reversed by executive order. Then it was.

Trump and his minions changed their stories about the issue at least 14 times before he gave in and signed an executive order halting the onerous practice of separating children from their parents at our borders.

These are normal practices for the political circus that defines Trump’s lame presidency.  He lies so much that fact checking services work overtime to find the truth.

He follows the propaganda rules of another tyrant — Adolph Hitler — who learned early on that repeating lies over and over gave the faithful an illusion that his falsehoods were true.

Last Friday, as stories circulated about crying children being pulled out of the arms of their mothers at the border, reporters asked Trump whey he did not just reverse his two-month old executive order that created the policy.

“You can’t do that through an executive order,” he claimed.

He lied.

On Wednesday — five days after the lie — he contradicted himself once again and signed the new executive order overturning the previous one.

In an editorial headlined “Repugnant,” the Post said:

But all the damage can’t be undone, and certainly all the lessons shouldn’t be unlearned. The zero-tolerance policy was implemented so chaotically, with so little forethought — with about as much care as you would expend on infesting animals — that one former U.S. immigration chief warned that some parents may never find their children again. Even for those who are reunited — and children were being torn away at a rate of some 400 per week — the trauma will cause lasting harm to some. Nor will the injury to America’s reputation abroad be easily repaired.

As to lessons, if this episode of barbarism really is coming to an end, we should take heart that the American people rallied to the side of civilization, and that they could still make their voice heard through Congress. Reporters did the job they are meant to do, dispatching stories in audio, video, photo and written form, and Americans understood that — whatever the complexities of immigration law and immigration reform — this was wrong. Some officials and politicians understood that, too, and some did not. It will be important to remember which was which.

Another repugnant act by a repugnant man who, day by day, works to destroy what once was a great nation called America.