The President of the United States Has Gone Full I

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The President of the United States Has Gone Full InfoWars

When he's not getting Very Confused about North Korean missile launches on Fox News.




By Jack Holmes
Oct 5, 2018

President Trump Addresses National Electrical Contractors Convention
Getty Images Mark Makela

When the apocalypse comes, the president will learn about it on Fox News. That's one thing you can take from a charming little story about Donald Trump, American president, relayed to the people of this nation by Lindsey Graham.

The South Carolina senator, who once said Trump was a "kook" who was "unfit for office," but now calls himself one of the president's closest allies, told The Washington Post a fabulously reassuring tale as part of a profile published Friday morning:


Shortly after Trump was elected, he invited Graham to the White House for a chat. They ate lunch with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, beside a flat-screen television tuned to Fox News.

Graham said the president had wanted to get his thoughts on national security, the subject that Graham considers his specialty. So, he told the president his two biggest concerns were Iran and North Korea, at which point, the television started showing archived footage of North Korean missile launches. The president, Graham said, worried that this was happening in real time.

“That’s old footage, old footage!” Graham said he told him, laughing now at the memory.

Haha! I think we can all laugh at the idea we elected a Fox News Grandpa as president who is so acquainted with How Things Work he thinks North Korea could launch a couple of ballistic missiles and nobody from, say, his sprawling ranks of military and intelligence officials would give him a head's up before he saw it on The Presidential News Network.

Yes, this was early in his administration, but come on. We've got to have higher standards for, uh, the most powerful human being on the planet.



President Trump Meets GOP Senators In The Roosevelt Room Of The White House
Getty Images Alex Wong

After all, this kind of profound ignorance has consequences, as a Post review of Bob Woodward's book, Fear, makes clear:

At a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19, Trump disregarded the significance of the massive U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, including a special intelligence operation that allows the United States to detect a North Korean missile launch in seven seconds vs. 15 minutes from Alaska, according to Woodward. Trump questioned why the government was spending resources in the region at all.

“We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told him.

After Trump left the meeting, Woodward recounts, “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’ ”

Everything is fine. Anyone can be president! More proof came this morning, when the same guy offered the nation this piece of insight about the protesters who confronted Senator Jeff Flake in a Capitol elevator about his vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh last week:

The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love!

#Troublemakers
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2018
Good Lord. He's gone Full InfoWars. This appears to be the first time the President of the United States has mentioned George Soros in a tweet, Soros being the legendary boogeyman for the right wing who supposedly funds any and every liberal protest, advertisement, campaign, and potluck.

(Just this week, a writer with the National Review—considered a Very Serious right-wing publication—tried to link Kavanaugh accuser Deborah Ramirez to Soros. It turned out he was completely wrong and he had to apologize.)

Soros does have some remarkable reach—he's known for "breaking" the British pound and making $1 billion in a month off the deal—but this is just nonsense.

(Meanwhile, the Twitterati have already pointed out the bone-crushing hypocrisy here: that way back in 2015, Donald Trump's campaign launch event—the one where he announced Mexico was sending criminals and "rapists" to our country, at least a year before most Beltway Pundits acknowledged he was a demagogue running on racial resentment—was full of actors he'd paid to be there. The anatomy of a scam.)

This Is as Obvious a Trump Lie as You'll Get

The president has, like millions of predominantly white Americans around his age, ensconced himself completely in a bubble of information generated by the right-wing media ecosystem. The crown jewel is Fox News, but he's also known to venture off into the darker reaches of Breitbart or InfoWars or The Daily Caller.

In his fascinating dual-track cognitive existence, Trump is constantly fabricating new realities, but he's also delusional enough to get high on his own supply. He generates lies, but he often almost immediately believes it.

After all, Donald Trump said it. He's tumbling through the abyss of misinformation and propaganda and abject ignorance, but he seems to thrive in the chaos. Will the country?

Hashtag troublemakers.

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