The Facebook Question

“What’s on your mind, Hal?” That’s the question Facebook asks me each morning.  You are asked the same question.  So, what’s on your mind?  What are you thinking about? 

I’m still thinking about Mr. Trump’s denigrating comments to our national intelligence agency leaders, who, a few days ago contradicted some of his notions before the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Yesterday Mr. Trump said they were mis-quoted.  How can that be?  Their comments were live—spoken in a Senate Hearing—much of it aired publicly on TV.  He met with the Intel team in the Oval Office later and they “told him that what they said on Tuesday was mischaracterized by the media”—and that he and the team are in sync.  Mr. Trump insisted that the Intel Team “applied the ‘fake news’ label to media reports that they had contradicted key presidential warnings about global threats.” So Mr. Trump says.  I haven’t heard a word yet from the Intel Chiefs.

Do you remember Mr. Trump saying:  “Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening…Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.”  George Orwell’s book “1984” said about the same thing:  “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.  It was their final, most essential command.”  Now just think about that!

Mr. Trump wants you and me to depend wholly on his interpretation of things. Don’t believe what you are seeing.  What you are seeing is not what is happening.  I will tell you what is happening.  I will tell you what is real.  Don’t believe what you are reading.  It isn’t true.  Don’t believe what you heard in that Senate Intel Hearing.  It’s not real, it’s not true.  It is ‘fake news.’  The only truth, Mr. Trump says, is my truth, what I see, what I hear, and what I say.

So he thinks there is a “national security emergency”  on the southern border. So he thinks the Iran nuclear deal was a “horrible one-sided deal.”  So he thinks his inaugural crowd was the largest ever.  So he thinks he won the presidency by a landslide.  So he thinks he knows more than the generals.  So he thinks he has accomplished more than any president in history in the last two years.  AND what Mr. Trump thinks is what we are supposed to think too.  I didn’t say that—Mr. Trump said it:  “Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening…don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.”