Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day Lie Crumbles: Will The Rest Follow?
by Tamara Livesay, for WARD Report on Facebook
Today The Guardian broke the news that they had received proof that the 2016 Inauguration Day photos of were altered to make Donald Trump’s crowd sizes seem larger at his request (link to The Guardian story, below).
When Sean Spicer (whose real persona has been co-opted forever by Melissa McCarthy’s SNL portrayal) aggressively channeled Trump’s chosen impression of his inauguration crowd size in the first White House press conference, it was shocking and even laughable. It was also the first indication that a man used to being a petty dictator would go on the way he began: by seeing reality as a mutable, malleable thing, something a man like Trump should never see as an impediment to the narrative he prefers.
At the time, the word “lie” was not used to refer to a president’s dance around the facts. In fact, since that press conference, the media and the public have had to reflect on the euphemisms used for political double-speak, since Trump’s whoppers make no pretense to be artful dodges.
Today, America is different.
At inauguration time, the majority of voting Americans were struggling to reconcile themselves to the fact of a Trump presidency after being cold-cocked by a result unwelcome to most, and unexpected to all. Since then, resisters have become both hardened and motivated, perhaps finally having replaced the fantasy of an election reset with an enthusiasm for taking their grievances to the polls for more than presidential contests.
Now the Resistance that was born in a moment of collective disbelief, sorrow, and anger is receiving a turbo boost from daily revelations that affirm every suspicion and negative appraisal of Donald Trump’s fitness for office was justified.
The latest one-two punch of Bob Woodward’s book “Fear” and an anonymous op-ed from a self-proclaimed resister within Trump’s administration have exposed what was clear from the moment Sean Spicer delivered that hastily constructed lie about Trump’s inauguration crowd: thanks to a protective cadre of staffers Trump is allowed to ignore reality or inconvenient facts, and America is prevented from knowing the extraordinary measures taken to contain his chaos.
Compared to these head-spinning revelations, proof that Trump requested the photographs of his inauguration crowd be altered to suit his narrative of massive popularity, which were then used as “proof” that the media was out to get him by circulating “lies,” may seem like small potatoes. It was a Ground Zero lie, the first of many. It was not only his first blatant rebuff of the truth as president, it was also the first audition for his staffers in their role as enablers to a supreme leader.
Now it appears this edifice of enablement is developing fissures, and may even crumble. Which means Donald Trump may be forced to encounter the stark, cold reality of consequences for his actions for the very first time. Most of America took a gut check on Inauguration Day in 2016, and their instincts were 100 percent correct.
