By Denny Gulino
THE WHITE HOUSE (MaceNews) – It was Monday – so long ago in the Trump era – and the memory won’t fade even though Tuesday is full of news about fresh transcripts, the quid pro quo now remembered by ex-ambassador Gordon Sondland, the Roger Stone trial’s jury selection, more about Lev.Parnas and on and on.
What won’t fade is the scene on the South Lawn of the White House under flawless blue skies. It was so exquisitely normal.
When normality becomes a surreal nostalgia trip, like a movie set in the 1980s, that tells you something about this White House, something no one probably needs to be told.. And it tells you something about memories of past White Houses that go back for one reporter to Ford, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton.
There were nifty events held on the South Lawn every once in a while back then, a full-fledged carnival, for instance. Reporters could mingle, happy to be there and knowing nothing particularly newsworthy would happen, at least until the next day’s news briefing. Back then the context of normality was – normality. Normality was not a jarring departure.
So one day ago, with a military band playing, and the world champion Washington Nationals up there on the steps on both sides of the White House South Portico – most of them, anyway – and there was President Donald Trump above the crowd on the Truman Balcony. He marveled at the size of the crowd. It looked like thousands. Perhaps no one told him he was standing on Barack and Michelle Obama’s favorite spot in the executive mansion.
For a relatively long time, 27 minutes, one could forget about angry tweets, be in the middle of a large crowd not cheering whatever red-meat phrases the president tossed out aimed at his enemies. There was a MAGA moment, when catcher Kurt Suzuki was called to the podium high above the crowd. He was wearing one of those red hats and said nice things about the president. And Trump hugged him from behind, the one awkward visual that the Internet could seize upon.
Mostly, though, it was a presidential address that could have been included in any feel-good movie were there such a thing any more. Trump was doing the unadorned presidential thing, not fighting the role as defined by his predecessors, instead embracing it.
“Enjoy the lawns of the White House,” Trump concluded. “Enjoy looking at this great building. But this great building is celebrating great people, and that’s the Washington Nationals. Congratulations, everybody.”
It’s been written before, fantasies of what it would have been like had the president been capable of being magnanimous and inclusive and not, in the eyes of his many targets, vindictive and divisive.
He could have still been the ideological foe of liberals, of Democrats, pushed for his wall at the border, killed regulations and pushed an agenda at odds with his predecessors, demonized China – even exited the Paris climate accord. Yet he could have been personally generous and so many of his enemies would have been disarmed, so much less motivated to remove him from the presidency. So many more would have been inclined to give him the benefit of any doubt. The spectrum of opposition would have been narrower, without the same extreme extremes.
In the reality that exists, there are Never-Trumper conservatives who are “human scum.” There are “the radical Democrats (who) are going totally insane.” There is “crazy Nancy.” Tuesday night in Lexington, Ky., Trump spoke for an hour and 16 minutes, going for the applause lines which included blasting favorite targets, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN, prompting the crowd to turn to the media pen and boo.
The tweets continued Tuesday morning. “The Radical Left Dems are killing our cities. NYPD Commissioner is resigning! “ The entire state of California was the target Sunday. Wildfires burn “and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help,” he wrote of the governor. “No more. Get your act together Governor.”
The sight of a tearful Leon Cooperman on CNBC Monday, caught between Elizabeth Warren and Donald Trump, could have been the dramatic climax of a movie about life in 2019 and 2020, sort of the Howard Beale “not going to take it any more” moment from “Network,” just more in sadness than anger.
Trump, the hedge fund manager said, “has to become a president for the entire country and not just his base. So if I was him,” Cooperman continued, “if I’m not prepared to change my behavior, I would take a victory lap and not run again.”
Tuesday’s White House schedule had no public events.
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Contact this reporter at: denny@macenews.com