America This Week, June 7, 2024: “America’s Grand Inquisitor”

Yesterday, I was at the farmer's market down in the Sacagawea Park, named after the native guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition, and there were a couple of nice young park rangers manning a stall among the fruits and vegetables. And on the table were the skulls of four different kinds of bears, so that kids can come and operate the jaws of the bears. The largest was a Kodiak, an Alaskan version of a grizzly bear, then a grizzly. And there were pamphlets about how to survive bear attacks and how to walk together in groups and make noise and things like that.

Americans are a little less versed in bears. But out at this place, my dad, who had retired there and died a few years ago, loved having grizzly bears around. And as he was getting older, one time, a friend of his came to me and said, well, your dad's letting a mountain lion live under the porch of his house and we think it's dangerous. Could you please talk to him? You know, he was in his early eighties.

And I went in and I drove out, it's about 20 miles out of town, I said, dad, apparently there's a mountain lion living under your porch, the neighbors are concerned. They don't think it's, you know, maybe healthy for you to have, you know, a killer of people and dogs living at your house. And he's like, God damn it. Tell them to leave me alone.

So you can see where I got my attitude about a lot of things.

Yeah.

Uh, not at the top of the pyramid, in the middle of it, where I think all people should absolutely see themselves to keep things in context.

Yes. They come down here to, to, on a garbage pickup day, they scrounge and then they go back to where they live. And I've got a pretty good read on where they're heading now. So I'm, I'm thinking about going out and taking a look.

Um, and we, we both picked this wrong. We both called it completely wrong. And I, and in hindsight, I'm, I'm kind of wondering what we were thinking. Uh, I mean, look at the, the New York times headline, um, slightly understated, right?

Uh, but, um, but then everybody just went bananas with the, uh, the kind of ding, ding dong, the, which is dead celebrations. I mean, what did you see first? Uh, what was, what was the first thing, that, uh, item of news that you saw as far as us?

I thought everything has changed. suddenly. I, it really, it really hit me that, uh, we had entered a new era. There was a, it was like there was a game that we've played for a couple hundred years, and now there's a new rule. Like in football, they had field goals and then they had, you know, safe touchbacks or whatever that.

then they had, uh, touchdowns, and now they've got something called, you.

This is kind of a big change. It felt like, uh, and you're right. I don't, it didn't sink in for me that something had changed until he actually lost, and maybe that's part of what their calculation was with all this. Um, but it did feel different. Uh, the reaction was wild.

watching it. It was, it was so like an orgyastic kind of celebration. Um, I thought maybe we could just go through a few, a few of the funnier ones. Uh, late night comedy was particularly interesting after the word got out. Uh, Stephen Colbert, who has essentially become kind of state TV, all the guests, they all have, uh, this is, this was his opening monologue.

Sometimes I don't feel so great. But tonight I feel good.

And in an instant, the smiling stopped. A smattering of gasps could be heard. Then a heavy silence filled the room and.

And because it's Trump, it was silence, but deadly.

We're to assume, we're to assume that everybody spontaneously agreed and had and had similar levels of enthusiasm just from the get go. without you. They would have had it with their eyes closed. They would if they had all been in isolation chambers, they would have felt the same way.

Yeah. So so I? so that was just bizarre as a piece of theater, because I remember there was a PG or the, all, you know, the Rolling Stone columnist back when he had a line about North Korea and he was talking about demonstrations of support for the dear leader of North Korea. And he said that they had perfected something in Korea called spontaneous regimentation.

And this was spontaneous regimentation with a little showbiz flair to it. You know, they all. they were perfectly regimented, but not equal in volume, but they were regimented in terms of sentiment. So that was amazing to see.

convicted of a felony in a case that is rather peculiar. There was no thought that in the future we might not want every four years there to be a judicial element to our presidential election.

We were just rushed past this moment in history as though it was a winning high school football game.

That was freaky, that was odd, because, no matter how, no matter how much you dislike Trump, no matter how much you maybe even agree with the verdict that that the that a former president in the United States currently running in an election, currently leading in the polls, should be, you know, put in.

put in handcuffs, perhaps maybe on his way to prison, right, should be an element of comedy, should be fodder for comedy, and it's I mean, it was a little. I this is going to really get me in trouble, but it was a little like, you know, JFK got shot that day and everybody's like, yeah, but I mean, it's not. it's not that that happened, but for some people it was that way. Yeah, for some people it was, you know, and I imagine there's two or three of them who watched Stephen Colbert.

I guess there would have been a little bit of muted. You know, that's okay. Well, let's take a day to pretend to feel bad about it. But moving on back to normalcy would have, would have probably ensued pretty quickly after that.

And how did they know? What kind of sign do they flash for them?

then came the gloating stage, which was kind of interesting.

This, this I thought, you know, they actually put work into this. This is another, I think, Colbert thing, where basically the the concept is they have to update Disney World now. Welcome to Walt Disney World's newly updated Hall of President.

S. president. I enacted the Emancipation Proclamation. I used my mushroom penis to have underwhelming sex with a porn star and then committed a bunch of fraud to hide it.

I'm not allowed to own a gun or travel to Canada. What the hell is happening? Now, if you'll excuse me, I am late for my community service.

I mean, I guess the idea, actually, let's just step back and evaluate it as comedy, because I think that's always useful. Right. It's not a bad idea. You know, the president, the whole of presidents idea. Right, right, right.

You know, they're front running and doing a lot of wishful thinking there, but, you know, probably end up in a jumpsuit. So they'll get there. You know, they'll get their day.

I don't know that. one positive thing was said about Richard Nixon on Laugh-In that I ever heard. as a kid. It was my belief watching it that no one liked Richard Nixon, you know, except my dad, which I had to deal with. It was.

it was strange to live in our house knowing that all of America was lined against this guy. Except my dad had gotten a letter from him once on form letter and kept it on his desk. I was eight and I thought they were friends, you know. But anyway, you know, I guess it can now be kind of considered a convention of Hollywood entertainment that no one at all likes Donald Trump.

And so why should we have expected anything different? I mean, they've been waiting for so long to have this moment. Probably, unlike you and me, everybody kind of on the inside knew it was a likely outcome. The writers were probably working on that Hall of Presidents sketch long before that afternoon.

So, yeah, they do prepare for this stuff. But this one, yeah. And there was an awful lot, of awful lot of weirdness around this thing. And, you know, I just I just don't know what to make of it. I mean, I guess some of those jokes are funny.

The difference is that Nixon, they were, they were laughing at him. But I think there was some gravity about Watergate and how serious that was.

It was America. America had a counterculture in those days. And Laugh-In was devoted to sort of mainstreaming kooky hippies. You know, Judy Carney, one of the, was one of the comedians. And they had a kind of dance moment in the show where everybody would pretend they were at a crazy psychedelic party.

And there isn't really an anti-Donald Trump culture the way there was an anti-Richard Nixon culture. It has its own music and its own way of dancing and its own way of talking.

He's Hitler or whatever.

Though Nixon was, though Nixon was not for some of the same supposed defects, you know, crude, vulgar, obscene. I don't know. Touchy. Yeah, touchy. There was a war going on.

What's so weird is that everything they were objecting to, you know, the liberals of Hollywood are objecting to in Nixon is stuff they're celebrating today. And by I mean, yeah, yeah, war, you know.

So it's hard to compare the two. Yeah, it's, it's hard to compare the two things, you know, the two moments. In fact, it's bizarre to compare them, because.

Today, what today the mainstream culture wants? the sort of authority of the old counterculture, counterculture, the moral authority, even though it seems to approve of all the power moves that Dick Nixon use in all sorts of ways, you know?

He was part. he was the face of the machine at the time. And I think he was totally. he was fair game in the sense that it was never not punching up with Nixon. Right.

Like you're. and, and because he had, he was particularly touchy about being criticized and all those things. It is in some ways similar to Trump. Trump has it has a problem with this sometimes, but not to the degree that Nixon did. So.

when Hunter Thompson described Nixon saying, you know, the only thing he could he could imagine, Nixon laughing at was a paraplegic who couldn't reach high enough to vote Democratic. It was funny, right? I mean, there was a lot of humor to be had about Nixon and his face, you know, the whole thing. But this is this is establishment celebration that we're seeing. And even though Trump was president, there's no question that this is high society, you know, kind of organized institutional guffawing.

But the funny thing about this anti-Trump stuff is it does feel a little bit at times to me like bullying, even though the butt of it is Donald Trump himself, a bully. But but it feels like cultural bullying, because Trump does not represent the winners necessarily. He's at this point kind of an underdog, you know, populist candidate who, similarly to Nixon, does want to represent a silent majority. But that silent majority is not what it was. It's not warlike.

It's not doing all that well economically.

And so, so there is a different flavor to it. I personally, I personally, I kind of shudder a little bit to see the, you know, the glee with which a real change in our political system is celebrated as the revenge against one individual, you know.

So, whatever this is, it kind of fits. Right. And, you know, which is kind of a, you know, a striking.

But he's committed so many others. Let's, let's let this one stand for those.

Maybe the tax dodging conviction was a little lengthy, but he at least did it. Right. You know, this is the problem I had with this case is like, I get, you don't like the guy, but you can't just give him 34 felonies for for. for this. It's not even a crime.

The other things, at least the other cases at least allege something pretty serious, at least in the J6 case, I would say, certainly alleges something that's pretty serious. The Espionage Act case, I just hate that law in general. I mean, the espionage, for, you know, mishandling materials or talking to a reporter like that's not espionage. They're using just a very draconian law to impose very serious penalties for almost anything they want, usually.

But in this case, we're talking about paying off a porn star, which I'm sure most of the people who are dealing with this had no idea is legal. You're allowed to do that. Even as a political candidate, you are allowed to pay somebody off to not talk. That's your business.

fixing or distorting an election by hiding information that the electorate, I guess, might have used? In other words, is covering up personal.

venality, election interference?

They came perilously close to saying that it was. In other words, you know,

but so if you hid your medical records that showed you have some disability, say, would that be election interference to hide the fact that you're having memory problems, perhaps? Or, you know, would any distortion of the factual record for purposes of getting elected be election interference? Well, that's all electioneering is, is distorting, or, you know, massaging the facts in order to make yourself seem more appealing, desirable, or whatever. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't quite get it. See, this seemed like the worst of both worlds.

We set a terrible precedent, a terrible precedent in which, you know, a sitting.

president can see his opponent.

perhaps jailed, but convicted by means that don't look totally kosher. And we did it for a stupid reason. I mean, right. And third, it's not going to matter.

Because it's already clear. people are going to ignore it. I mean, it was a fundraising coup, for not only was it a fundraising coup from small donors,