TIME – Page 3 – * Failed Pols

When a reporter followed up with Donald Trump about his reason for not wearing a face mask during his visit to a Phoenix, Arizona, facility that is producing face masks, Trump said this in response:

“I can’t help it if you didn’t see me.”

Though it was a response to the reporter’s observation that at no time did anyone see Trump wearing a face mask at Honeywell, the Arizona plant, “I can’t help it if you didn’t see me,” sums up so much about Donald Trump’s sleight-of-hand mode of operation.

“I can’t help it if you didn’t see me” is a petulant adolescent’s response. It’s an easy cover for a lie that implies that the failure in the situation is the other person’s for not seeing him do what he was supposed to do (but almost certainly didn’t).

Regarding the face mask observation, Trump claimed that while visiting the plant, he “had a mask on for a period of time.” He also said (despite signage that said, “Please wear your mask at all times,” and “Face mask required in this area”) that facility leaders told him he wasn’t required to wear a mask.

“I had it on backstage,” he said. “I can’t help it if you didn’t see me.”

That response demonstrates how easy it is for Donald Trump to tell any lie, stretch any fact, deny any allegation, and then discredit those who challenge him. It adeptly characterizes the gaslighting that has been the hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency, nay, Donald Trump’s entire career:

“(My inaugural crowd) looked like a million-and-a-half people” and “went all the way back to the Washington Monument.” (I can’t help it if you didn’t see that.)

There was nothing wrong with that call to the Ukraine. “It was a perfect call.” I had a perfect call with President Zelenskiy. (I can’t help it if you didn’t see me.)

“The (COVID-19) tests are perfect!” “There are plenty of ventilators.” (I can’t help it if you don’t see any.)

“I always knew the coronavirus would be a pandemic.” (I can’t help it if you didn’t hear me say that.)

“But Your Highness, you have no clothes!” (I can’t help it if you don’t see them.)

In July of 2018, Trump told supporters at a convention in Missouri, “Just remember—what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.”

Some found this declaration to be frighteningly similar to a line from George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Our president’s adolescent gaslighting tactics are obvious and unsophisticated to most of those outside his base. To the members of his base, however, they are somehow nothing more than reassurances that their leader is the only one they can trust.

People who can be so easily and readily manipulated with adolescent tactics will have no defense against more sophisticated Orwellian tactics. In the novel, 1984, “Big Brother” kept an eye on citizens’ every move, banning individuality, personal freedoms, and independent thought. Trump’s base purports to hold all of those ideals as sacred. They are the ones who cry, “my liberty!” and “stop the tyranny!” perhaps the loudest.

Ironically, as they willingly overlook Donald Trump’s gaslighting and continue to look to him as their source of truth, they are the ones who are empowering the would-be authoritarian who wants to squelch their free and open society.

If one day, Trump’s base were to discover the depth to which they have been duped while being stripped by this administration of important freedoms and protections, they will have to accept Trump’s defense: “I can’t help it if you didn’t see me.”

President Trump claims he wore mask at Arizona factory, as he backtracks on coronavirus task force | The Telegraph {2020-05-07]

Rep. Says Trump Is Gaslighting The Nation Over Coronavirus | NowThis
[2020-04-21]

What does the exercise of one’s second amendment rights have in common with outrage at a stay-at-home order during a pandemic? At first thought, we might say, “absolutely nothing.” To a Trump supporter, however, demonstrating the right to bear arms (big, heavy, semiautomatic combat arms—lots of them) logically goes hand-in-hand with demanding the right to take to the streets unprotected while a highly contagious virus is about because “we just want to go back to work, be able to shop again, go to the hair salon again.”

That these protesters took the opportunity to bring out their collections of assault weapons can be explained by the fact that there is evidence that the protests were organized by several right-wing gun rights organizations. Again, the rest of us are still trying to figure out why they made the connection between governors’ public health-motivated stay-at-home orders and the perception that the governors were trampling on their gun rights.

We can’t completely fault Trump’s base for this logic leap, however. It is, after all, modeled after the type of logic Donald Trump himself gets away with when making or justifying a move.

In the past week, protesters, many of whom arrived at statehouses in Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia, and Michigan decked out for combat and wielding signs (some of them anti-semitic, but that’s an ugly logic leap too complex for this piece), mobilized against the social distancing orders put in place by the governors of those states to try to slow the spread of the potentially deadly coronavirus. The governors were heeding the guidelines laid out by Trump’s own White House Coronavirus Task Force. The guidelines were, in fact, titled “The President’s Coronavirus Guidelines For America.”

Donald Trump himself had urged Americans to follow those guidelines for the sake of the country.

“Our future is in our own hands, and the choices and sacrifices we make will determine the fate of this virus and, really, the fate of our victory. We will have a great victory. We have no other choice,” Trump said on March 30. “Every one of us has a role to play in winning this war. Every citizen, family, and business can make the difference in stopping the virus. This is our shared patriotic duty.”

Yet over the past week, as protesters organized to protest the measures (blaming them on the governors, not Trump), Trump followed up by encouraging them to defy the social distancing measures. Yes, the ones his own administration had put into place.“LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” Trump tweeted, followed by “LIBERATE MICHIGAN.” (“Liberate,” we must assume, refers to liberating his base from their imaginary incarceration as prisoners of some sort of imaginary war.)

Trump’s base was already conflating the governors’ efforts to protect them from contracting or spreading a potentially deadly disease with “tyranny.” And who could blame them, really? Trump supporters are a little touchy about the encroachment of government, except when it serves them.

Trump, eager to get the economy going again, while not wanting to take responsibility for the many deaths that would surely result from opening the country up prematurely, saw the perfect opportunity: Blame it on the people. Encourage them to protest the lockdowns, then step in and grant their wishes to open up the country. Despite any ensuing public health disasters, the base would be happy that Trump was looking out for them and got them back to work the stores, and the salons, and Trump could say that despite the fact that he had seen disaster coming, he had done what “the people” wanted.

“LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” Trump tweeted later.

Not only should the Trump base defy their tyrannical governors, encouraged Trump, they should exercise their second-amendment rights—a mating call for Trump supporters if ever there was one.

Was it concerning to anyone on the right that President Trump’s promotion of armed “liberation” of states by invoking protestors’ Second Amendment ”rights” could be seen as a coded call for armed insurrection?

Probably not, since the Second Amendment, as they interpret it, appears to be the most important part of the Constitution to many who live in Trumpworld. And since “my personal freedom, no matter what” appears to be their interpretation of the rest of the Constitution, perhaps the logical leap for them is that any perceived violation of personal freedom also means “they want to take away our guns.”

Donald Trump backs COVID-19 lockdown protesters after calling for states to be liberated | The Sun [2020-04-17]

Armed protesters demand an end to Michigan’s coronavirus lockdown orders [2020-04-16]

Category: TIME

Editorial: Trump’s M.O.: “I Can’t Help It If You Didn’t See Me”

Editorial: To Some, “Stay Home” Means “They Want to Take Away Our Guns”