I could never imagine the day I would be writing to you from my antipodean neck of the woods as D-day draws inexorably closer for you. Day after day, you loom ever larger in my living room on CNN, Fox News, BBC and every imaginable TV station. I must confess that I just cannot get enough of you! As the hours tick down to Nov 3, I must commend you on your verbal verve and semantic shenanigans that have got you out of the stickiest situation time and again. More laudable, you bend science, scourges, semantics, and statistics to do your bidding.
When you admitted to Bob Woodward for his book Rage that you knew all along that COVID-19 was “deadly stuff”, yet did precious little to save American lives, that would have sunk any mere mortal’s chances of being re-elected. But not for you. As Americans recoiled in disbelief and horror, you maintained your cool honed to a T in those reality TV show days. With panache, you sent the ball back into your critics’ court a la Serena Williams, rationalising: “I’m a cheerleader for this country. I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic.” And so ghoulish statistics are consigned to a footnote even when US coronavirus-related death toll is verging on 200,000 and more than 6.6 million Americans have been infected – and still counting. But nothing beats your sheeting it home to the Chinese as a diversionary tactic. Each time you rail against the “Wuhan virus”, the “Chinese flu”, or “kung-flu”, your fellow Americans look across the East China Sea and momentarily forget that you sat on your hands while the pandemic cuts a swathe through your country.
So far, every attempt to unmask you as a phoney has been disappointing. In fact, your critics should have realised that you don’t even wear one. Every flaming arrow launched by your detractors – whether by long-time lawyer and personal fixer Michael Cohen or erstwhile National Security Adviser John Bolton or your niece Mary Trump or former (Republican) Secretary of State Colin Powell – has glanced off your burnished armour. That Cohen! He has the cheek to call you “a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.” That is VERY hard for you to live down. But double down you did in magnificent Trumpian style. Houdini could not have done better in getting out of such tight spots. So even when The Atlantic headlined that you belittled US soldiers who died at war as “suckers” and “losers” – whoa! – your popularity did not suffer one jot. Or when you raised in all seriousness the possibility of injecting Covid-19 patients with disinfectant to howls of protest from industry and medical experts. No matter. You turned the tables on them: “I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen.” See, who has the last laugh? End of matter. Even when it was a clear case of in flagrante delicto, you sure knew how to make them look silly. Amazing!
Your shtick in taking your critics down a peg or two is masterful: call them names, traduce their reputation, out-talk them. Biden ahead in the polls? If calling him “Sleepy Joe” or proclaiming that he is “unfit” for President fails to make a dent, well, there is always something more incendiary: “Biden’s a member of the radical left.” That should scare the living daylights out of Americans. And if Biden is still surging in the popularity stakes, you drop your voice to a conspiratorial tone, claiming that Biden “possibly” uses enhancement drugs to help him get through debates and that you “hear” that he may have used them to improve his performance during the Democratic primaries.
Win or lose on Nov 3, your linguistic legerdemain assures you of an enduring legacy in the annals of US politics. The seismic shift that you have triggered in the semantic landscape has blurred the distinction between truth and falsehood. Better still, a lie could masquerade as a truth or vice versa. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, you promised to drain the swamps of Washington once you got there. But you went one better. Once you had worked out the lie of the land, the swamps gave way to a misinformation morass that has your detractors hopelessly mired in Trumpian word games. And so The Washington Post has faithfully recorded the more than 20,000 false or misleading claims you’ve made to date. But that’s entirely a matter of opinion. Calling something “fake” or “fake news” is your prerogative as you did with Woodward’s book which meticulously recorded your views in 18 interviews: “The Bob Woodward book will be a fake, as always, just as many of the others have been.”
In the new landscape you’ve forged, it’s no longer easy to differentiate fact from fiction. Reality from fantasy. If misinformation does not work, there’s always your reductive logic to confuse them. Even hard-nosed scientists and medical specialists are discombobulated. When the latter contradicted you on the likely availability of Covid-19 vaccine before Nov 3, you told them that they are “confused” and have “misunderstood” you. When science points to climate change as the cause of the terrible fires in California, your rejoinder: “I don’t think science knows actually.” Pure Trumpian dismissiveness.
Enough said for now about your winning ways with words. Win or lose on Nov 3, I dare say you will still have the last word.
Best wishes and God bless the United States of America!
Your Antipodean Admirer
Kim Tye