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We're in the midst of a brand-new breaking scandal -- one that's so new it hasn't even been assigned a "-gate" label yet. Ukraine-gate? Kiev-gate? MassiveTrumpCollusion-gate? As was entirely appropriate, Hillary Clinton had the pithiest tweet of the week: "The president asked a foreign power to help him win an election. Again."
We have to begin today with an apology. Five years ago, without knowing any better, we erroneously reported in this space that there would not be another Friday the 13th which coincided with a full moon until 2049. So it was much to our surprise that we heard that this week we all were going to see another one, only five short years after we feverishly coined the word "selenofriggatriskaidekaphobia" to describe those with the very specific neurotic fear (-phobia) of both full moons (seleno-) and Fridays (-frigga-) the 13th (-triskaideka-).
Finally, everyone on one stage! That was my reaction before the third 2020 Democratic presidential debate even began, because for the first time it's a one-night affair. Unfortunately, at least 11 candidates have already qualified for the next debate, with a few other candidates hovering on the brink of qualification, so it's looking like we're going to have to wait for the fifth debate to see all the frontrunners on the same stage together again.
I'm going to begin today's column with an extremely dated pop culture reference, just to warn everyone. The show Happy Days was historic for many reasons, but the only one anyone really remembers today is the contribution of a metaphor for "going on longer than it really should have." When faced with something that fits this description (a television show, a politician, just about any fad, etc.), the go-to phrase has now become "it has jumped the shark." I have no idea how many people who use this phrase saw the original Happy Days episode where Fonzie did actually jump over a shark on water skis, but the phrase now lives independently of its television origin in American idiom. But there's one other Happy Days theme that should worry us all, because the two politicians leading the race for president both seem to be afflicted by it. I speak of the inability of the Fonz to ever use the word "wrong" when applied to himself. He just couldn't say "I was wrong," no matter how hard he tried. This was played as a comedy bit, but while it was funny on television it's not such a laughing matter in the real world of politics.
You know things are getting bad in Trumpland when Our Dear Leader is openly attacking Fox News for not being servile enough.
In a series of angry tweets, Trump this week called Fox News "HOPELESS & CLUELESS" and ended his rant with:
It should be taken as a given that the current president of the United States is crazy as a loon. I mean, it's pretty obvious for those who have eyes to see. In the past few days, he boasted of two phone calls from the Chinese to resume trade negotiations. It turns out, though, that these phone calls did not actually happen. The stock market didn't seem to care, and reacted the way Trump wanted, so nobody's making that big a deal of the fact that Trump just made up some (as he would call it) self-serving "fake news." Trump also lied repeatedly about what was talked about during the G-7 meetings, saying that all the other leaders agreed with him on various things like readmitting Russia to the group, the meanness of the American media towards Trump, Trump's stance on Iran, and anything else he dreamed up that he thought he could get away with bragging about. Of course, none of the other world leaders agreed with him on any of it, and a few actually dared to say so. Trump barely even noticed, because he obviously lives in his own personal fantasyland where contradictions and criticisms magically turn into laudatory personal praise. But while all of that is run-of-the-mill craziness for Trump, the wilder story that broke was that Trump has repeatedly suggested that the way American can avoid massive hurricane damage is to just drop nuclear weapons right in the middle of them before they get to our shores.
The great fear of those who did not support Donald Trump's election in 2016 was that if America hit a crisis point -- a virtual certainty, over a span of four years -- Trump would prove to be dangerously unstable and not know how to deal with it. The consequences could be alarming, as Ted Cruz joked about on the campaign trail at the time:
This week, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Donald Trump, for some strange reason, now wants to try to buy Greenland again. The Washington Post later followed up on the story:
Will anything actually change this time around? Will these mass shootings finally spur the politicians to act, when all the others didn't? While it's easy to be pessimistic, since it is rare indeed that anything happens after such tragedies, perhaps this time is different. We couldn't say why this time seems to have had more of an impact than the other 250 times it has happened this year, but so far it has. Perhaps it was the fact that there were multiple mass shootings in a single day or perhaps it was the high body count or perhaps it was the El Paso gunman's obvious racist motivation, but for whatever reason this time could be different.
Well, the second round of the Democratic debates is over, which means we are now smack in the middle of the debate about the debates. This is a window where we don't yet have an accurate picture of whether this week's debates will change anything in the polling (likely outcome: not very much), so instead of hard data all we have to argue about is sheer speculation and opinion. And, from what's being said, some are wringing their hands with worry.