I live with one of my adult sons and though he is in his early 20s, he’s never gotten past that adolescent stage in which a child’s sole purpose in life is to irritate his parent.
In my case, he calls me all the things he knows that I hate. For example, he calls me Pig, though I am neurotically tidy. He calls me Racist, which I am not. Worst of all, he calls me a Trump Voter.
I would rather vote for my cat’s litter box than vote for Donald Trump, but my offspring nonetheless rags me. (Too bad Carlos’s kitty toilet was not on the 2024 ballot; it has more intelligent contents than Trump’s so-called brain.)
My son accuses me of being fascinated with the former and current president. Horrified is probably more like it, I tell him.
“Then why do you watch the news all the time?” he asks. “Why do you read so many books about this guy you profess to loathe?”
He calls it Trump Porn.
He is right about my reading habits. I’ve read a lot about Trump in the past decade, for the same reason that — despite our better judgment — we might occasionally sneak a peek at “Naked and Afraid” or “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” We have to remind ourselves that such wretched things are possible.
I liked Bob Woodward’s three Trump books, particularly Peril, which he wrote with Robert Costa. I loved reading stories of how poorly Trump handled defeat.
Let’s not forget Cassidy Hutchinson’s vivid description of the Trump-thrown hamburger and the ketchup dripping down a White House wall. (From her book Enough.)
Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man was an excellent book that showed that Trump was born a liar and a cheat and has watered and manured those traits steadily throughout his life.
I liked Jonathan Karl’s Betrayal, which told the story of what we thought was the end of Trump’s political career.
The fact that he is president again makes further reading of Trump Porn depressing on an epic scale.
But that doesn’t mean we can easily turn away from this kind of porn addiction.
Consider Injustice, the new book by Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, both Pulitzer winners, both formerly of the Washington Post. This is a detailed account of the Department of Justice investigation into Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection and in his mishandling-of-documents case.
You’ve got to admit: it’s amazing how that dark day in our history — January 6, 2021 — has been recast by Trump and some of his Republican pals in Congress. Despite the fact that police were assaulted, it’s been painted as a rosy day in the park.
Injustice makes me proud of the lawyers whose hard work built a brick-wall case against Trump — a case that will never be presented.
It’s as if the Department of Justice is no more, having been largely dismantled and staffed with mouth-breathing Trump sycophants. He renamed the Department of Defense. Maybe he’ll rename Justice the Department That Lets Me Do Illegal Stuff.
This guy isn’t really president. He’s the extortionist-in-chief.
The subtitle of Injustice tells it all: “How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department.”
Special prosecutor Jack Smith is a central character in the book. At the moment, I can’t remember what Trump calls him. He probably uses his fall-back “radical left lunatic,” or calls him deranged. Instead, we see here a dogged and dedicated public servant, on the trail of the truth.
He worked methodically and fairly to build a case.
There’s such a thing as too methodical, though, and a running theme of Injustice is that attorney general Merrick Garland’s tentative nature contributed to killing the case.
But like Smith, Garland wanted to do what was right — hard to do in a society where what is right doesn’t matter anymore.
What an old-fashioned concept — caring about truth and what’s right in the world.
Lord, I hope I live long enough to see this end.
For now, read this book and become enraged. Let’s all get angry and work to bring back those values of truth, integrity and honor.