Political Messaging

Nobody can tell you if Trump believes his own claims. Somehow that's not the story.

During Sunday’s episode of NBC’s Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker asked Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) about the Department of Justice’s move to dismiss charges against David Hearn, a man who had been arrested in June for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Last week, Trump loyalist and Fox News host-turned-U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro was forced to publicly admit what was obvious to most: the damage to the pool was “the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by [Department of Interior].” Still, President Donald Trump had blasted Pirro’s move, insisting that the man the government just admitted had been wrongly charged with a crime was, in fact, guilty. Welker asked Kennedy what to make of that and whether this undercuts the public’s faith in the Justice Department. Here’s what he said:

“Well, the whole thing is a multiple vehicle pile-up. Let me start with the president. The president says it was caused by vandals. I don’t know whether he really believes that, or it’s part of his political messaging, or he’s just thinking out loud. You and I both know the president well. He exists loudly, and he grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought. I’m not saying he doesn’t really believe it, I just don’t know. Now, the stakes are a lot higher for U.S. Attorney Pirro. You can’t lie to a federal judge. If she can’t prove her case, she was right to pull back. Because if you fool around with a federal judge, you will find out. When I was in private practice, one time I put my briefcase on a brand new conference table bought by a federal judge. And he got so mad, I’ll never forget, I thought I was going to get to spend overnight with Bubba in central lockup. Federal judges will not tolerate. And so I don’t know why she filed the suit without having a — doing a full investigation. She says she relied on the Department of Interior. But she was smart to pull it back.”

Excuse me? He doesn’t know whether Trump actually believes what he’s saying, “or if it’s part of his political messaging”?

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A GOP senator sat on Meet the Press and said he’s just not sure if the president actually believes that Hearn committed a crime despite there being no evidence that anyone vandalized the pool at all (which should worry us about Trump’s connection to reality), or if it’s just part of Trump’s political messaging (which should worry us about the fact that Trump would then knowingly be trying to throw this random guy behind bars for a decade for absolutely no reason). Neither is comforting, and both are pretty gigantic scandals that should be setting off alarms all over the country.

Welker’s only follow-up question was whether Kennedy believes grand jury records in Hearn’s case should be made public. Kennedy said yes.

But is the press really just going to move on from this story? Is there really so much going on in the world that stuff like this happens and we just sort of shrug it off and move on? I know that the reflecting pool saga is probably pretty low on most people’s lists of times Trump has acted like a mad king during his second term in office, but I guess I’m just having a hard time letting go of the fact that Trump is still trying to put Hearn, a man who was part of Team USA at the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Olympics, in prison for a decade despite the fact that even Pirro, a total Trump loyalist, has admitted in court that he didn’t commit any crime. That is completely nuts to me.

You don’t actually have to pick one

Kennedy gives us a few options for what’s going on with Trump, and none of them are good. It doesn’t really matter which one is right, because it’s all the same to Hearn.

If Trump actually believes what he’s saying, then the president of the United States is detached from reality, instructing the Justice Department to pursue charges based on whatever’s going on in his head. If he doesn’t believe it, then he’s spent seven weeks demanding a decade in prison for a man he knows is innocent.