OPINION: Trump’s chaos presidency resumes

It is no coincidence that, while news coverage this week had been focused on the fourth anniversary of the Donald Trump-inspired riot at the U.S. Capitol and the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, the next president conducted a rambling, shambling news conference where he said he wouldn’t rule out attacking a NATO ally and trolled the country with which we share the longest undefended border in the world.

Trump lives for chaos and distraction. He must be, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth said of her father Teddy, “the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.” T.R. had a big ego, but also a big brain. He read and wrote books and knew science. Trump knows chaos.

It was completely predictable that his fragile self-image could not tolerate extended days of laudatory coverage of Carter, an American president with more decency and character than the entirety of the incoming administration. Trump had to redirect attention to himself, even if the attention is mostly in the nature of slapping your forehead and muttering: “He said what?”

We’ve seen this show before. The soon-to-be president is a master at dominating the national mind set. He loves it, as do many of his supporters who think it’s great fun to spin up Canadian, Danish, French and German politicians who are forced to respond to his senseless rants.

Rename the Gulf of Mexico? Why not?

Pardon the lawbreaking thugs who took over the Capitol at his prompting? Sure.

Send the Marines — again — to Panama to reclaim “our” canal? We stole it fair and square, so why not?

Make Canada the 51st state? Why not alienate an old ally, our second largest trading partner, that supplies, according to CTV News, major quantities of energy products, motor vehicles and parts, consumer goods and forest products, among much else? Not to mention the great Canadian maple syrup you get at Costco.

It’s been suggested that Americans should take Trump “seriously but not literally.” Be wise and take him both seriously and literally. He is a psychopath literally capable of anything during the next four years — or whenever he decides to leave office — and most of what he suggests and does will be profoundly stupid and often disastrous.

“We have been so concerned about all the scary things that Trump’s going to do, we forgot he’s also going to do some really stupid things,” said Desi Lydic, a host of “The Daily Show.”

The only thing more predictable than Trump sending his firstborn to Greenland to scope out hotel locations is that not a single Vichy Republican — the spineless, gutless, cowering sycophants who have time and again enabled this flawed, ignorant man — would raise as much as a limp social media post against his chaos. They’re frankly too busy trooping to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his ring, or something.

You can’t help but wonder when the buyer’s remorse will set in. Maybe when he has to actually manage a natural disaster or a foreign crisis. Perhaps when the debt ceiling needs to increase to prevent a government default. Perhaps when bird flu or another public health crisis produces a new “disinfectant” moment, an indelible mark on the first Trump presidency.

Just to remind you: On April 23, 2020, while standing in the White House briefing room for the daily Trump follies during the COVID-19 pandemic, the then-president rambled at some length about the magic powers of sunlight before going totally off his rocker.

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.”

Bleach manufacturers had to issue warnings. Who knew that many Trump supporters were, well, that gullible?

“It honestly hurt. It was a credibility issue,” said one White House official at the time. “It was hurting us even from an international standpoint, the credibility at the White House.”

Credibility? International credibility? Not with this guy.

Imagine President John F. Kennedy during the tensest days of the Cuban Missile Crisis going on live television to say: No, he couldn’t rule out lobbing an ICBM into the men’s room at the Kremlin? (Actually, Barry Goldwater did say something similar, but poor Barry was seen in his day, even by many Republicans, as more than a little dangerous, and Goldwater never got anywhere near the nuclear codes.)

The chaos, the incompetence are the point with Trump, along with clinging to power no matter what.

In true Orwellian fashion Trump largely succeeded this week in rabbit holing Jan. 6. The avalanche of pure, unprocessed bull about the very worst of his behavior in the first term is taking hold. The coming pardons will further serve to erase this dastardly, ugly Trump stain.

“Trump has an audacious goal,” writes Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice, “to reinterpret one of the most public crimes in history, to wrap it in the gauze of patriotism.” He’s asking us to brainwash ourselves, and many of the gullible seem willing to embrace his utter nonsense.

The clear, cold fact for Trump supporters and the rest of us is simple. He’s back for only two reasons: to stay out of jail and to grift over everything from Bibles to golden sneakers. The Greenland threat, the Panama Canal, the mocking of Canada are all about distracting from the real and profound harm he will do.

Reflect on this: There is no greater contrast in American history than Carter’s exit and Trump’s return. As Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says of Carter, “He’s this figure who is so respected for a sense of decency — humility, really — from all sides … So the contrast was, of course, not lost on me, as we were thinking about what coming next in Washington.”

Which is to say we ain’t seen nothing, yet. Figure out how you are going to respond.

Johnson, of Manzanita, Ore., served as chief of staff to the late former Idaho Gov. Cecil D. Andrus. His new book on the U.S. Senate in the 1960s — “Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate” — has been published by the University of Oklahoma Press.