Judgment, So-called: Chris Cillizza
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Joshua Gottlieb-Miller, poet, writer, and so-called judge, lays down the law on political acts of (criminal) cravenness, hypocrisy, ineptitude, and general stupidity.
Fill in the blank: the intersection of nihilism and incompetence that characterizes Trump’s Republican Party is embodied by ___________.
It’s a fun game, right? At least a little? Sure! It’s hilarious when you watch Jim Sensenbrenner, an actual Wisconsin Congressman who’s paid money to have an opinion on things like what should be a law and how normal Americans are affected by this, say, “Nobody’s got to use the Internet.”
Or maybe you’re tickled as Ann Coulter and much of the alt-right lament Trump’s hard-on for bombing Syria with this amazing Easter egg future historians will cherish: “Those who wanted us meddling in the Middle East voted for other candidates.”
Because the type of Islamophobic and racist alt-right rhetoric spewed by people like Ann Coulter that shapes right-wing foreign policy in the Middle East in 2017 has nothing at all to do with Trump bombing mosques . . .
Or maybe you read how Alex Jones, one of the President’s most trusted news sources, admits that he’s a fraud: “performance artist” is how he puts it, which makes me feel worse for every performance artist I’ve known than anything they’ve ever done to themselves.
Eventually you just get tired of the abyss laughing back.
Fortunately for us, there’s a magical creature politicians hunt for sport in our nation’s most expensive swamp, a type of person who pisses folks off on the left and right: The Washington Columnist. And — thanks Trump! — when every press conference includes a lineup of Breitbart wannabes, The Washington Columnists hold their noses highest in the air. You might even begin to feel affection for them bravely doing their jobs. This is good. Hold on to those positive emotions. Until some disgruntled dominatrix reveals how Bannon’s fantasies begin with the press corps locked up (and end with the Jews locked up), we might as well salute our real, honest-to-God journalists while they’re still here.
But good lord, The Washington Columnist can be a special kind of crazy: they think they’re sane.
Chris Cillizza is not a bad journalist. He’s fine. He uses facts. He has sources that are real people somewhere, probably. His job is reporting politics qua The Game, because, you know, politics is a game and we’re definitely not going to war in every country missing Trump hotels (unless they get creative).
People have called out Chris “The Fix” Cillizza before, mostly for normalizing Trump (scroll down Leslie Savan’s great example at The Nation to see just how long Cillizza’s been obsessed with “Presidential” Trump). More recently: “[Trump’s] honoring of the widow of the Navy SEAL killed in the recent Yemen raid was [a] remarkably powerful moment” and “he can be, dare I say it, presidential when the moment demands it.”
Many reminded Cillizza that praising Trump, a man who just repeats whatever gets his half-literate enthusiasts to applaud, for honoring the widow of a Navy SEAL is like telling a three-year-old boy he did a great job smashing that cake into his mouth. Don’t be surprised when the kid’s got a fist full of cake he’s trying to shove into a stuffed mouth, and somehow he’s still smiling at you. Granted, in this case, it’s a cake that kills people, and it’s apparently delicious.
And Donald Trump has Ivanka Trump, the great, teeth-brightening hope of The Washington Columnist. She seems so nice! She probably doesn’t want to jail her friends who went to journalism school! Maybe she’ll be a good influence on her dad, especially now she’s positioned in the White House to best profit off . . . I mean, advise . . . his administration. Which makes sense: World War III is really bad for fashion sales.
But don’t let me convince you. Here’s Cillizza at his most court-intrigue-hushed whisper: “Enter Eric Trump. The second youngest of the male Trump offspring, Eric gave an interview to The Telegraph newspaper in which he offers a telling glimpse into the role his sister, Ivanka, plays vis-a-vis the other advisers in his father’s orbit.” Suspense! “Ivanka, presumably, is someone who Trump actually listens to.”
The overall piece is about why Trump’s daughter isn’t Steve Bannon, so Trump should keep nodding his head when she talks and stop imagining how great it’d be not to be her father. It’s also based on an article about how Ivanka encouraged Trump to drop bombs in Syria. A soothing influence, indeed.
This is The Washington Columnist in a nutshell, charmingly hopeful the aristocrats are paying attention to the important stuff: wars, discrimination that’s only “kind of” based on religion, important little details: “…it’s worth watching over these next few weeks to see if the president displays any more discipline or a willingness to compromise or move to the political middle. If he does, it’s the Ivanka influence.”
Yes, “move to the political middle.” Moderation is definitely Trump’s favorite activity; it’s his new murder cake. Here’s his latest moves to the middle on health care, and immigration — because nothing screams careful centrism like “deportation machine.” (I know, I know, “deportation force” is much more centrist.) My personal favorite example of Ivanka’s influence was when she saved the libraries.
Cillizza saw an article about Trump dropping bombs because Ivanka was heartbroken and he thought, What a dad!
The so-called verdict:
Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
(EDIT: This judgment has not been edited to include the total defunding of the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues because it is impossible to keep up with this bullshit.) Fuck.
Back to some light reading about Alex Jones’s divorce proceedings.
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller is based in Houston.
