Welcome Back, Trump Derangement Syndrome: I Missed You

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By Eric Butterfield

 

August 12, 2022

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The temperature of political news had almost simmered down to pragmatic discussions about inflation and the practicalities of government aid to the semiconductor industry. The sitting president—rather than the former one—was the focus. Without the Jan. 6 committee hearings on TV, the news cycle was welcomingly ho-hum. Then, in barged the FBI.

 

With the FBI search of Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, I got ready for the usual accusations of abuse of power lacking self-reflection, and the return of endless allegations of "Trump derangement syndrome". My first delectable morsel came from the Wall Street Journal on August 10, with the hyperventilating headline, "Mar-a-Lago Search Shows the Swamp's Trump Obsession". Ah, yes, obsessed indeed.

 

The swamp. You have to capitalize it now in "conservative" media, because they've made it a formal proper noun. Not that there's anything remotely conservative about defending Donald Trump or much he stands for, much less the GOP dumpster fire he's left behind. You know the rationale: It wasn't the swamp when Trump was trying to drain it by pouring sewage into it, but the moment he leaves, it's all toxic again.

 

For all its reality-bending ability, the term "Trump derangement syndrome" is neither derangement nor a syndrome. It is a completely made-up ailment invented by political operatives playing doctor—just as referring to our Capitol and our government as a swamp is a simple-minded slander.

 

Claiming your political opponents suffer from an imaginary disease is just about the stupidest bunch of poppycock that Republicans have invented since they pulled "alternative facts" out of their collective backside. The smear is strategically designed to end a real conversation, because these days, a real, adult conversation is just too painful.

 

Also in the WSJ, on August 11, Kimberley A. Strassel actually started her op-ed with a blithe bit of magical psychology: "Trump derangement syndrome has a curious way of scrambling coherent thought." You see, the blind media don't recognize that the Justice Department's move was bad for the Democratic party and the nation. She prophesied the likely tit-for-tat between the two squabbling political parties in her headline: "The response for Mar-a-Lago will be brutal." Sadly, there's likely a lot of truth to that statement.

 

Daniel Henninger took a slightly different tack in his "Swamp" op-ed, luring the reader into his line of thinking with some select, indisputable facts.

 

"You can hate Donald Trump until your eyes pop out, but let us be clear: He was elected the 45th president of the U.S.," Henninger wrote. "No former president who was disliked by many—not Clinton, Reagan nor FDR—had his home invaded by a squad of FBI agents. This should never happen in the U.S. End of discussion."

 

No, that's not the end of the discussion—it's just the beginning. Whether I personally harbor hatred for a former president is immaterial to an FBI investigation. What classified information is in those boxes? Why did Trump abscond to Mar-a-Lago with them? Could the Department of Justice (DOJ) get those answers without a search, or would Trump have flushed the documents down the toilet? Why are Secret Services text messages missing from January 6, 2021? All such questions about the investigation at large are "beside the point," according to Henninger. So, what is the point, exactly? The Washington Post reports that Trump may have taken classified documents about nuclear weapons to Mar-a-Lago. Isn't that something worth having the FBI looking for?

 

Apparently, the grand consideration in the Mar-a-Lago search—conducted after a subpoena was granted by a judge, by the way—is that it's an unwelcome "spectacle" for foreign adversaries, who are witnessing a "wall-to-wall political disaster for the United States" that's internally divisive and creates "external risks". This same accusation could easily be leveled at any number of televised political and public events, from the depositions of then-President Bill Clinton over extra-marital sex, to Black Lives Matter protests that got violent—not to mention a treasure trove of maniacal, bumbling public performances by the MAGA king himself.

 

In short, it reads like a classic Trumpian GOP deflection from blame. Next, Henninger leads up to this strange consideration: "Imagine what we would think of the stability of China or Russia if events like this were happening to Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin."

 

How about asking instead what we'd think if Xi Jinping lied to his followers for six months about election fraud and then they stormed National People's Congress? What if Putin waived a bible at protesters and asked if his military could shoot anti-war demonstrators with rubber bullets?

 

Does everything now boil down to how tough we look to the world's worst autocracies? Yes, we have to project strength abroad. But, clearly, the weaknesses we've revealed have a lot more to do with gullible and violent followers of our former president's lies than the investigation into Trump's culpability. Holding Trump accountable projects strength in the rule of law. Letting him off the hook, low energy.

 

Remember when supporting Trump meant you supported law and order? But then Trump's lies inspired people to violently attack Capitol police officers, so now we must protect Trump, lest the Communists think we are weak. Isn't it a bit too late for that?

 

The GOP loves deriding "progressive" Democrats who look the other way at left-wing political violence—but Trump's sycophants have done a bang-up job of zipping their lips about the former president's goons, who acted on Trump's big lie and carried out an unprecedented act of political violence. That's the real tipping point here, not an FBI search looking for classified documents—or something else that implicates criminal conduct on that ugly day. What's in the subpoena?

 

If the judicial branch in a Communist country or dictatorship (particularly one that's ruthlessly invading its neighbor) did the same thing as the FBI, I'd think—finally, at last—democracy and the rule of law might have a hope of success. Or, of course, I might think a coup was underway. January 6 certainly looked like an insurrection or an attempted coup, but Trump's apologists want to hear none of it. They want it all to go away. What "rule of law" do Republicans believe in anymore, anyway?

 

Henninger's concern that the FBI search makes the United States look bad is horribly misplaced. The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on our Capitol looked a hell of a lot worse. If anything, holding Trump accountable looks good—it proves that no one, including a former president, is above the law in a strong democracy.

 

Trump started sowing the seeds of election paranoia as early as June of 2020, saying the "election will be the most RIGGED Election of our lifetime" in a Make America Great Again! campaign email. He never stopped encouraging distrust and whipping up paranoia for a full half year leading up to the election—and refused to concede defeat. Aren't these destructive and un-presidential behaviors (yes, of an elected official), including 60-plus frivolous lawsuits, far more problematic to our country's institutions? The GOP seeks to sweep all that insanity under the rug, and now we should be panicked about the image sent by video of FBI agents searching Mar-a-Lago? Don't worry, you're in the no-spin zone.

 

TV footage of Trump's delusional followers violently attacking our Capitol—that's what ruined our standing overseas. No FBI search could accomplish what Trump did leading up to that awful day. Confiscating a handful of boxes of documents has nothing on Trump supporters violently attacking police officers, outfitted in miliary-style gear, chanting "Hang Mike Pence!", and turning our Capitol into a crime scene. Our elected representatives ran for their lives. They deserve justice. They deserved better defense. They deserved Donald Trump picking up the phone and calling off the attack. But he didn't.

 

Henninger, of course, never mentions the insurrection nor Trump's baseless election lies when complaining about the FBI. Nope. No chance its target is a former president who deserved what he got. No chance the DOJ didn't know full well the unprecedented nature of the search in political history. You don't think Merrick Garland didn't think twice, maybe three times, about authorizing the search? How could he? He's suffering from Trump derangement syndrome—it clouds coherent thought, don't you know.

 

Didn't the GOP love the investigation into Hillary Clinton storing government emails on a private server? Didn't they love the long slog of the Behghazi hearings? But, oh no, not the FBI at Mar-a-Lago. Trump likes to point out that Hillary Clinton wasn't prosecuted. Now, it is up to DOJ to prove its actions are even-handed, and build a case that transcends suspected political party bias.

 

Many on the left have taken distasteful glee in Donald Trump's failures and shortcomings. But slapping a made-up syndrome on the behavior is so silly it's not even insulting. It's just a head-nodder epithet for the in-crowd. In politics, if the mouthpiece for one party is a farcical fool who tweets like fourth-grader, who's not going to join the food fight with a relish for revenge? Expecting anything less is to disregard human nature and the messiness of democracy and free speech.

 

Too many opinion writers don't even try to be even-handed about our politicians' irresponsible and malicious doings. Deflections and double standards are everywhere—and, of course, the dog whistles. Henninger uses the term "the Swamp" five times in his editorial. Of course, he also throws in Sean Hannity's favorite Fox News fear: "the Deep State". These newly coined terms get proper noun capitalization—as if they are real and definable. It reminds me of Trump's interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News in August 2020, when he warned of planes loaded with "thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear". Nothing came to pass, of course. It was all another Trump delusion to fan the flames of Republican fever dreams and fear of Antifa. Or, maybe he saw the future, and they were all FBI.

 

Henninger makes a good point about our malfunctioning government and the long shot of us ever returning to normalcy. But there's no discussion of blame for Trump's divisive rhetoric and pathological lying (you'd almost think he's a ventriloquist and got all that crap to come out of someone else's mouth).

 

The search of Mar-a-Lago was not a tipping point—it was a result. Pinning all the blame on the FBI is just more simple-minded fodder for Trump's gullible followers, who still can't separate reality from Trump's lies, and still send money to the multi-millionaire reality TV star-turned-populist politician.

 

You wouldn't even know such a cognitive vacuum even exists, in reading The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. They called the FBI's action a "dangerous search," and entirely blamed the Justice Department for "unleashing political furies it can't control". Their concern is about the potential blowback—but how has a potentially furious response ever been the primary concern of an investigation? That's putting the cart before the horse, with no acknowledgement of the potentially criminal behavior that would be buried by that set of bad priorities. At least the Editorial Board lower-cased "deep state" and put it in quotes. I guess that's something.

 

Still, the WSJ argues that any indictment of Trump over the Jan. 6 attack is a legal stretch. And now—even worse—the FBI has set a precedent that will cause payback and make Trump a martyr.

 

Maybe. But, roll back the timeline and look at the whole picture. The real precedent at work here was a president lying about election fraud for half a year. The real precedent is sixty-plus bone-headed lawsuits thrown out of court. Who cares about "deep state" fantasies when we all watched our president cynically manipulate gullible followers into violently attacking our Capitol in a last-ditch effort to overturn a democratically held election?

 

Here's another historic precedent—then-President Trump, watching it all on TV, doing nothing to stop the violence that could have killed our vice president and members of Congress. Maybe it's Trump who needs to worry about payback, not the FBI.

 

The people who would make Trump a martyr are the same imbeciles who believe his lies and resort to political violence. They wouldn't understand dereliction of duty and facing its consequences if it bit them on the "whatever".

 

For Trump to face no consequences would be the worst outcome for our country. That would set a real, ugly precedent for future would-be populists of a similarly anti-democratic stripe. Better that they leave their political aspirations at home, where they belong.

 

If the DOJ is truly seeking justice, it can't worry about the political backlash from the gullible, the paranoid, and easily mislead. Caving in to fears of their overreaction isn't the high road—it's the weak-kneed response of a government that won't fight corruption. How would that look to China and Russia?

 

Sadly, the people who would make a martyr of Donald Trump won't disappear magically like the coronavirus. If they plan to fight like hell for a crook, I'd rather fight like hell for what's right than give up, lay down, and let my country spiral into banana republic.

 

Republicans used be the "law and order" party, without conditions, without caveats, without deflections. Now, they gin up a bunch of bogus concerns: What will the Communists think? Does Russia still think we're tough? What if Trump's mob of gullible imbeciles overreacts? Conclusion—the enforcers of the law are the problem!

 

Faced with Trump, the GOP has so completely become what it despises about spineless Democrats, it can't even see the perversity in its lame defenses and hollow accusations. So, yes, go ahead and claim I'm deranged.

 

Welcome back, Trump derangement syndrome. I missed you.