If you watched the Donald Trump news conference Tuesday — as I did, because it’s my job — you have my condolences.
And not just because we signed up for a rambling slog through Trump’s post-Festivus airing of grievances, but because the event at Mar-a-Lago could be seen, as CNN’s John King put it, as a preview of the next four years.
Trump was angry, Trump was vindictive and petty and, per usual, Trump was a fact checker’s nightmare.
(If you missed it, Meta — meaning Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and God knows what else — announced it is dumping its fact checkers because, well, Trump doesn’t like fact checkers. Like Elon Musk, Zuckerberg will now be using so-called “community notes” — a people-know-the-truth, because they’re the people, kind of fact checking — to do, or not do, the job.
(We know why Trump favors these changes. He knows facts often get in the way of his many lies. There’s a modern term for what Zuckerberg is doing — it’s called surrendering in advance. You could also call it, well, sucking up. Whatever you call it, Zuckerberg has gone along with the MAGA ideal that truth is relative, and even more concerning, irrelevant. More on this later in the column.)
Look, I’m unhappy. I’m miserable. I fear for the country.
But why is Trump so unhappy? If you watched the news conference, the big takeaway — other than the lunacy that he might use military force to take back the Panama Canal and swoop up Greenland — was how steamed he was. He looked angry even as he was threatening to impose tariffs — his favorite thing — to force Canada to give up on the “artificial lines” drawn between our two countries and become the 51st state.
What about Mexico, you ask, where the lines between our countries seem all too real? In one of Trump’s more bizarre news conference moments, he said he wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” He really did.
OK, we probably won’t see a lot of maps changing the names except on Trump’s personal Sharpie-enhanced maps, but still Trump is getting just about everything he could ever want, including a bill from the House, with help from 48 Democrats, that would deport undocumented immigrants charged with nonviolent crimes. You know, like Trump was convicted of.
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I mean, unless I’m living in a fever dream, Trump’s got the presidential seal again despite the January 6 coup, despite all the lawsuits, despite all the lies, despite everything.
He’s got oligarchs bowing to his will — a dream come true, publicly humiliating those he believes look down on him. He’s got a dozen or so Joe Biden executive orders to undo on Day One. He’s got a hundred or so executive orders of his own to sign on Day One. Day One’s gonna be busy. And that was the day, if you remember, Trump said he’d be a dictator.
He’s got — or he’s trying to get — the richest cabinet ever nominated, the craziest cabinet ever nominated, the toadiest cabinet ever nominated.
And I assume, we’ll soon see Trump selling — I don’t know — maybe gold-lined, Trump-signed candy bars in the shape of the Oval Office Resolute Desk.
And yet, he spent his time Tuesday slamming “deranged” Jack Smith, slamming “nasty” Judge Juan Merchan, slamming Joe Biden, slamming the Justice Department, slamming electric cars, slamming electric heat and the “itching” it supposedly causes, slamming windmills and the whales they’re supposedly killing. Sadly, nothing on sharks, but it’s early.
He also spent time telling lies about the January 6 assault, including that the insurrectionists had no guns and implying that the FBI, or maybe Hezbollah, was behind it all, while refusing to say he wouldn’t pardon those convicted for violent acts on the 140 injured Capitol police.
It went on. And on. And on.
It’s almost as if he had lost the election. You know, like he did in 2020.
Maybe you wouldn’t expect Trump to be sunny about the “hellscape” — as he calls it — he’s inheriting. That’s not his style. It doesn’t matter if the U.S. economy is the biggest and best in the world. Soon, under Trump, it will be bigger and bester — not that the stock market necessarily agrees.
It doesn’t matter that he won’t, as he promised, end the Russian-Ukraine war on the first day, or immediately end the war in Gaza. Instead he promised that if the Hamas-held hostages weren’t free by the time of his inauguration, “all hell will break out in the Middle East.” This once, I believe him.
Actually, it’s not that hard to figure why Trump is so roiled.
On Friday, it looks as if he’s finally going to be sentenced for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Meaning, he would be taking the oath of office as a convicted felon.
And even though Merchan has said there would be no jail time for the president-elect — not now or later — the stain would be there forever. Or maybe just until the Supreme Court eventually weighs in.
☀️ MORE FROM MIKE LITTWIN
That may not be as much as some of us would like, but it’s obviously too much for Trump. For those of us who wanted to see Trump pay a little more heavily for his crimes — including for those in the other cases that are now blocked or dismissed — this will have to do.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel free to lie about the case on Zuckerberg’s Facebook (and, of course, Musk’s X/Twitter) and say that jury conviction was a fraud or a misuse of the Justice Department (which wasn’t involved in a New York State case) or a Biden witch-hunt. Zuckerberg, who desperately wants to get back in Trump’s good graces, didn’t stop at killing fact checking. On Monday, he added Trump pal Dana White who heads the Ultimate Fighting Championship, to the Meta board of directors. His main qualification is that Trump likes him.
It doesn’t stop there. If you work at the Washington Post, you can have your editorial cartoon killed showing Post owner Jeff Bezos and the rest of the submissive media oligarchs worshiping, with bags of money in hand, at Trump’s feet. The courageous cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, quit her job after the axed cartoon, in support, she said, for what’s left of the notion of a free press.
And that’s not all. Trump is trying, also desperately, to quash the Jack Smith report — which should be called the “Big Truth” — on his many Trump investigations that the Justice Department could release before Inauguration Day, although Judge Aileen Cannon has temporarily blocked its release.
It’s apparently a comprehensive, weighty, fact-filled report that will blow up — for those willing to read it — the lies that Trump has told about the January 6 attempted coup and about the classified documents he stashed at Mar-a-Lago and about the so-called FBI raid to get them back.
I guess Trump can’t handle the truth.
Or maybe, as we can now see clearly with help from Zuckerberg and Musk and Bezos, it’s that Trump doesn’t believe the rest of us can.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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