How to Understand Trump: He’s Like a Dog

Trump is like a dog. I know. Your dog is far more intelligent than Trump. And he or she is caring and empathetic — not narcissistic like Trump. Okay. Points taken. But in some other ways, Trump is like a dog — a rather mean tempered and vicious one, a very stupid one — not like your dog, of course. He’s a dog who learned to be a snake oil salesman as his one and only trick — and who is incapable of learning the tricks that other dogs can learn to do easily.

I read a number of tweets recently that said Trump is like one of those dogs that a small town elects as mayor, as a joke. And then a crisis happens. And for some reason, people think the dog is going to solve the problems. In our case, news media insist on asking the dog questions about why he hasn’t handled the crisis competently. Why hasn’t he gotten coronavirus tests and adequate PPE to the hospitals and clinic? He barks furiously in response to all questions.

He doesn’t understand the questions, of course. He’s a dog. But when they ask about his failures as Canine-in-Chief, he can tell they are saying he is a bad boy, and he doesn’t like that. So he tries to bite the reporters’ ankles. And they’re astounded, as if they didn’t expect an angry dog would do that. But the news outlets that employ the reporters still send them to the press conferences. It’s their job. So the reporters keep going, asking questions the dog doesn’t understand but gets mean tempered about.

The citizens come home and turn on their TVs and see reporters asking serious questions to a dog that is trying to bite reporters’ ankles. And the citizens say “WTF? This is news? Find us some experts who can help us in this pandemic and interview them instead.” But news media managers pay no attention. “This works for us” they think. People do watch the TV segments and read the news articles, because they’re cooped up at home during the pandemic and they’re bored silly. And there’s not much real news they could be watching or reading instead.

The only way anyone gets the dog to do anything is when large business owners give him treats and pats on the head and promise to support his re-election campaign. Then he allows his staff to write any laws they want for the benefit of those bearing treats and campaign donations. He allows donors to feed at the public trough through lavish government contracts and big tax breaks, to gouge consumers with high prices for essential goods and services, to pollute the land and to do anything else they want — even if it was illegal before the Canine-in-Chief took office.

Otherwise he just barks. People try to interpret the barks as if they make sense, as if the barks are policies and timelines for dealing with the pandemic. But they’re not. They’re just a mean tempered dog barking.

The reporters ask “What is your plan for helping Americans to get through the pandemic safely?”

“Arf, arf, arf.”

“Why didn’t you prepare for this ahead of time?”

Arf, arf, arf.”

“Shouldn’t you be changing your tone in this serious situation we have?”

Arf, arf, arf.” Then he tries to bite the reporters’ ankles because he knows they must be fake news, because they’re talking about him being a bad boy.

They go home and write articles about how President Pit Bull is adopting a more presidential tone today, or how he is conducting his complicated strategies for his re-election campaign, or how he is mesmerizing his followers through his magical powers as the irresistible Magic Clown dog.

None of it has any relation to reality. But the reporters just can’t deal with a pit bull for president, so they just remember how they reported in the comforting old days when there were human presidents. And they follow those same old reporting habits they used then.

And then they close their eyes and click their heels together three times, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and say “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

When they open their eyes, the president has become a human again, capable of all the presidential skills a fully functioning human would have. Or maybe it only seems so — only to them.

Of course it’s a little more complicated than that because the dog has learned to talk. Not very well, of course. He can only say nonsense and lies. But news media folks insist on broadcasting it — filling up viewers and listeners’ heads with nonsense and lies. One day the dog wondered allowed if people should drink bleach to cure or prevent coronavirus. Some people actually did that. Citizens’ heads are getting so filled up with lies that many of them can’t tell truth from lies any more.

As Eric Boehlert and Oliver Willis have discussed on Twitter, media aired 3% of President Obama’s White House briefings in his last 6 months as president. And what percent is it for President Pit Bull? 96%.

For whatever reasons, news media is displaying a clear bias here, in favor of lies and propaganda and against truth. If this continues, it could be the death knell for democracy in the U.S.

What’s the solution? How can we get it to stop? Turn it off. Then telephone and write media outlet owners and managers and tell them that you’ve stopped watching. Demand that they stop running it because it is a clear danger to democracy. Demand that they interview experts on pandemics, state governors who are doing well handling the pandemic or other people who have actual information to contribute to the public. Tell news media they are destroying democracy through their bias in favor of broadcasting lies rather than truth. Tell them lies aren’t news.

Don’t @ them on social media. That’s too easy to ignore. Call and write.

As we know, the Senate is dominated by the party that got the dog elected by paying for political ads full of lies about how the dog was going to Make America Great Again. The Senate has the same campaign donors the dog does, and represents those donors’ interests.

So the Senate keeps us from getting rid of the dog president. The Senate knows President Pit Bull will allow them all to break every law on the books on behalf of the donors, who will keep rewarding Senators for serving them. So the only way to get the dog out of the White House is to vote him out in November. Let’s do it.