In the wake of the release of the Robert Mueller Report, New York Times "conservative" columnist David Brooks seems to have done some soul-searching and has concluded that President Donald Trump is owed an apology. Of course, among those who owe such an apology to Trump is Brooks himself as we shall see in his Tuesday column, "We’ve All Just Made Fools of Ourselves — Again."
Um, who is this "We," kemo sabe? Actually what Brooks really means are the Democrats and liberals and Never Trumpers who have been constantly slamming Trump since the 2016 election and even before. Of course, Brooks couldn't write his column without taking the obligatory slam against Republicans and conservatives but are the ones who have stood by Trump throughout all the attacks upon him really among those who need to apologize?
Maybe it’s time to declare a national sabbath. Maybe it’s time to step back from the scandalmongering and assess who we are right now.
Democrats might approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest self-examination. It’s clear that many Democrats made grievous accusations against the president that are not supported by the evidence. It’s clear that people like Beto O’Rourke and John Brennan owe Donald Trump a public apology. If you call someone a traitor and it turns out you lacked the evidence for that charge, then the only decent thing to do is apologize.
Among those who need to make such a public apology to Trump is the one who wrote this right after his election on November 11, 2016:
Trump’s bigotry, dishonesty and promise-breaking will have to be denounced. We can’t go morally numb. But he needs to be replaced with a program that addresses the problems that fueled his ascent.
After all, the guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year. The future is closer than you think.
So who wrote that Trump removal fantasy? Why, it was that columnist known as David Brooks.
Brooks also wrote this on Tuesday:
And what about the rest of us? What about all the hours we spent speculating about the Mueller report, fantasizing about the Trump ruin or watching and reading speculation about these things? What about the superstructure of scandal politics we have built and live in today?
Um, speaking about fantasizing about the Trump ruin; do you happen to have a mirror available, David?
The political media, especially on TV, now has a template it can apply whenever a scandal looms into view, to hook viewers into the speculative story line. According to the Tyndall Report, the three main broadcast networks made the Russia collusion investigation the second-most-covered news event of 2018, trailing only the Kavanaugh hearings, another scandal.
And what about the hundreds of Michael Avenatti appearances last year on CNN and MSNBC? Would that have been the at least the third most covered event of 2018? Oddly enough, Avenatti has recently become a non-person on those networks. Does anybody know what's up with that creepy porn lawyer lately?
The accused’s political opponents assume maximum guilt. Imaginative pundits take a few dots of information and connect them to vast if speculative constellations of guilt. “I hear the indictments are coming down next week,” they whisper to one another.
Sayeth the man who hyped anti-Trump resistance networks. So is his apology in the mail or will it be personal?
