Trump and truth

I am the way and the truth and the life
     -- John 14:6

Man tends by nature toward the truth. He is obliged to honor and bear witness to it: "It is in accordance with their dignity that all men, because they are persons . . . are both impelled by their nature and bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth ... They are also bound to adhere to the truth once they come to know it and direct their whole lives in accordance with the demands of truth."     -- Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 2467; the portion within quotation marks is from Dignitatis Humanae, the 2nd Vatican Council's decree on religious freedom, no. 2 

In the comments section of Peggy's post below about Donald Trump and our erstwhile NATO allies, Katherine referred us to an Ezra Klein article at Vox.  That piece is headlined, "Why is Trump undermining NATO and the EU?  He just told us".  Klein goes on to present some quotes from Trump's press conference in the UK in which Trump articulates his frustrations with our European allies and trading partners.  Klein's thesis is that, at least in this instance, we can take Donald Trump at his word.

Pursuant to the headline of Peggy's post, "So much news.  So little time.": this past Friday, Robert Mueller's special counsel team indicted 12 Russian nationals for hacking a variety of Democratic Party-aligned servers during the 2016 election.  That announcement, major news in its own right, also ratcheted up the already-tense anticipation for today's summit in Helsinki between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.  How strong and direct would Trump be to Putin about Russian meddling in our elections?

We now know the answer is, Not very:

"I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think that we've all been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago, a long time, frankly, before I got to office," Mr. Trump said during a joint press conference with Putin. 

Offered multiple chances to denounce Russia's actions, Mr. Trump instead placed blame on the FBI and said that he had "confidence" in both parties -- the intelligence community and Russia.

Prominent figures from both parties have now deplored the president's attempt at drawing moral equivalency.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, writing for National Review, rated Trump's press conference performance disgraceful.   He notes the likelihood that the president's own administration will simply ignore their chief in their dealings with Russia.  And he offers some thoughts of his own on Trump's fraught relationship with truth-telling: in this instance, we can probably pursue national policy as though he never said the indefensible things he said today:

The rest of the world has already dismissed Trump’s verbiage on various occasions. Last week, for example, he tore into NATO; according to the Wall Street Journal, he even told NATO members that he would “do my own thing” if members didn’t increase their military spending. What was the upshot? Nothing. Leaders at NATO quickly closed ranks and stated that NATO was as strong as ever, ignoring Trump’s pyrotechnics. They figured, correctly, that Trump’s national-security establishment isn’t going to facilitate a pullout from NATO and that if they gave him some sort of rhetorical victory, he’d go back to watching Shark Week.

But, Shapiro notes, one can't always adopt the rule of thumb "Ignore what the president says", because on other occasions he says what he means:

When it comes to trade, however, Trump’s words matter — because they’re backed by policy. Trump’s tantrum at the G-7 had real ramifications for American policy because he immediately used his executive power to launch tariffs at a bevy of American allies.

So ... how does one know when his words matter and when they don't?  It helps to understand what makes Trump tick, a field of study which, until 2016, was of little or no interest to most of the country and the world, but one in which we've all been taking crash courses lately.  And so here is Shapiro's insight into this particular episode:

[Trump's claiming that he puts as much faith in Putin as his own intelligence professionals] doesn’t mean, as Democrats have suggested, that Trump is in bed with the Russians. Far more likely, it means that Trump’s ego is one giant gaping wound, constantly draining rage over the suggestion that his 2016 election victory was somehow ill-won. To the refusal of former FBI director James Comey to publicly clear him in the collusion investigation, Trump responded by firing Comey; now he’s responded to the Mueller investigation’s indictment of twelve Russian government hackers by proclaiming that Putin might be innocent after all. This isn’t about some nefarious plot. It’s about Trump’s ridiculous ego problem.

FWIW, I think that sounds likely enough.  What we witnessed today is another Trump "episode" triggered, not by the summit with Putin, but rather by Friday's revelations from Mueller's investigation.  Anything that comes from Mueller, if it casts even a hint of a shadow on the legitimacy of his election, is to be denied, even in the face of plain, hard facts.

Shapiro's analysis may be sound, but it's not very comforting.  The world feels like it's at the end of its tether right now with this unpredictable, capricious and deeply flawed man at the helm of the most important nation on earth.  I stand in solidarity with the leaders of virtually every country, except apparently Russia, in marking off the calendar days until the end of his term in office.