Donald Trump is apparently testing yet another piece of political conventional wisdom. Having already conquered such long standings assumptions as “A Presidential candidate shouldn’t talk and act like a sixth grader” and “A candidate shouldn’t embarrass his party every time he opens his mouth,” Trump is now setting his sights on the classic, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up,” but with an impressive extra challenge.
He is now trying to cover up the fact that he grotesquely mocked the disability of a New York Times reporter in a public appearance that was videotaped.
Trump actually is denying that he did what he was obviously doing. Very bold, very intrepid. It will be fascinating to see if he can pull it off.
Here’s Trump, after the Times excoriated him for ridiculing reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a malady that limits flexibility in his arms:
“Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago – if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did. He should stop using his disability to grandstand and get back to reporting for a paper that is rapidly going down the tubes.”
Odd that Trump didn’t remember him, since before doing his “man with weird arm movements” bit he said quite clearly, “Now, the poor guy — you’ve got to see this guy…” One doesn’t normally call a reporter “a poor guy” for no reason, nor does one say, “You’ve got to see this guy” if you aren’t going to show the crowd what it is they have to see.”
Never mind, Trump is going for it: the full “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”, or as Jimmy Durante put it, in the show that gave the Ethics Alarms category it’s name, “Elephant? What elephant?”
This kind of lie, the worst and most insulting of them all, does undermine Trump’s claim of candor and honesty, however. His surrogates are taking a different, if brazenly unethical tack. I just watched a Trump mouthpiece argue that the Times was using a double standard, since it didn’t criticize Obama’s 2008 campaign for mocking the fact that John McCain didn’t use a computer, which was because of his disability.
Weak. Weaker than weak. Pathetic, really:
- This is Rationalization #2. The “They’re Just as Bad” Excuse, in its most obvious form.
- But Obama wasn’t “just as bad,” unless I forgot the famous video of Obama doing his John McCain imitation, which I am fairly certain that, if it happened, the Times would have condemned like everyone else except the NAACP.
- So Trump’s personal Lanny Davis was left arguing a bad analogy and claiming that the issue is media double standards, when the only issue is whether someone who acts like a cruel, boorish, mean spirited buffoon on video and then has the gall to claim it never happened has disqualified himself as a serious candidate even for the real mouth-breathers among his fans who haven’t already come to that obvious assessment.
We can only hope.
Ethics Alarms 
Trump has a history of this though… The Megyn Kelly menstrual thing… “Blood coming out of her… whatever” People to this day swear they thought he meant eyes, and believe him when he says that. I’m just amazed he had the faculty to realize that making a rag joke wouldn’t be a wise decision.
Television news, with its bites and banners, has taught us that information is passed in waves, one on the crest of the next, sometimes overlapping video/caption. For mental safety, one pays attention to the latest scrolling text or ticker or “breaking” story, overriding the earlier one, if indeed that one had been clearly remembered. That’s how jumbos are shrunk to mice: whatever went before is gone with the windbag.
Aren’t his 15 minutes of fame over yet? Did he buy more minutes? Maybe they’re like carbon credits. He buys them from people who will never use them. Can I be the one who brokers that?
“Do de do, we’re sorry, your campaign is out of minutes, please press 1 to enter credit card information to purchase more minutes. This is a recording. Thank you. Do de do.”
I don’t think Trump is trying to cover anything. He just doesn’t give a damn, and he, at the moment, doesn’t have to give a damn.
He is the equivalent of the big popular quarterback from a wealthy family who all the girls tried to catch the eye of and all the teachers and administrators deferred to because he was leading the team to success and his family was financing the new library wing. It’s his privilege to bully whoever his disfavor lands on, and it’s likely to land on the scrawny, the weak, the geeky, or the ugly disabled (a wheelchair bound person or blind person has a higher sympathy factor than a person whose physical disability makes him move like a gawky scarecrow or whose mental handicap leaves him always two swivels behind everyone else ). They can’t really fight back effectively and as far as a lot of folks are concerned, he counts, the victims don’t, so any objections will be met with a brush-off or an exhortation to just deal with it.
After seven years of Obama’s willful wimpiness to the world and disdain for any disagreement at home, it should come as no surprise that the voters want a strong alpha male who is even a little bit of a bully in charge. Hence this bullying behavior being ignored.
There’s a sucker born every minute seems to be the foundation for Trump’s ethics and he’s definitely not as funny as W. C. Fields.
https://scontent.fbne1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/12274438_10206453401467266_7932665845303420165_n.jpg?oh=f8772a34a2bb424104bfb3dbcce21f80&oe=56E4FFAA
Inserting feline amongst avians…
In the past four months, anti-abortion extremists have allegedly set four Planned Parenthood locations on fire.
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/abortion-clinics-are-burning-but-no-one-seems-to-care
None of those responsible were Syrian refugees.
As a safety-critical engineer, I have to make choices and do risk analysis. I can make nothing completely safe – an asteroid strike for example would take out a nuclear power plant, no matter how well designed. Even damage mitigation isn’t really a factor if the thing is big enough to make a crater the size of the gulf of mexico, and sterilising the top 5km of the biosphere.
What I have to do is perform an analysis of risk, and within the resources available, minimise expected casualties. Sometimes that means killing a project where the benefits are outweighed by the costs. It always means looking at facts though, numbers. Ignoring Trumped-up scare campaigns.
The numbers say that the danger from the loony right is far greater than from Daesh. Though still less than the increase in road deaths this year in the state of Ohio (we’re looking into why that is). Obviously if you change the parameters, current risk won’t be a reliable guide to future risk, but it does show where minor tweaks can give major improvements without disturbing other areas too much.
This rationality is the exact antithesis of US politics today, as Trump has realised..
The simple flaw in that analysis is that the risks posed by citizens are unavoidable, and constitutionally protected in many ways. The risks posed by non-citizens who have not entered the country yet are manageable and within our control. Whether the risk of a non-citizen group is greater or lesser than a native subculture is completely irrelevant. The home-grown wackos don’t set any kind of acceptable limit to risk.
And when they’re neither? When they’re both avoidable, and lack constitutional protection, as is the case at least some of the time, is it not?
As far as I know, burning down buildings is not considered “freedom of speech”, nor is it “freedom of religion”. While no amount of constitutionally permitted law enforcement will completely prevent arson and murder, a bit more – or even a bit, since there’s apparently no interest at the political level in enforcing such laws when Planned Parenthood facilities (or Black Churches) are involved, – could well thin it down so it’s no worse than for orphanages or White Churches.
Such an improvement is orders of magnitude more than the credible threat from the 2000 Syrian refugees so far admitted over the past 10 years. It’s more than the threat from 10,000, or even 100,000.
1) Do you have to copy my typos? I fix everyone else’s comment typos…
2) The point is that the presence of citizens and their opportunity to burn buildings are guaranteed—we don’t have pre-crime laws, nor can we.
3) We can, however,legally, ethically and Constitutionally decide that we don’t choose to take in high-risk migrant groups.
Frankly, I think people are having fun watching Trump be absolutely everything a serious candidate should not be; for speaking harshly, nastily, and calling out people by name; for having outrageous “policy” plans; etc. I really do think he’s up in the polls because people are enjoying the fact that he doesn’t dance around any issue, regardless out how outrageous his comments are. At the same time, I do not think the vast majority of the people being polled would actually vote for him. I just don’t. We’re mostly morons, but we I do think we have some national pride: Put that face, that attitude, that hideous creature in as the chief executive of (what used to be, anyway), the most powerful democracy on earth? Not gonna happen.
It’s put the Republican party in an uproar, but let’s see how the primaries shake out. And though I would vote for a lawn chair (as I think Jack put it once) over Hillary, I would have to vote for Hillary over Trump. But I am absolutely certain that we won’t get to that point.
There is something else about Trump that should be considered a bigger scandal .
Trump supports taking away the rights of suspected terrorists without even the pretense of hauling them before a kangaroo court. Every newspaper editorial, every columnist, should be decrying this proposal as anathema to our American values.
Maybe you should write a post about the this proposal to ban gun sales to people on the terrorist watch list. This could be an ethics train wreck.