Ramble On: President Knucklehead's Big Little Photoshopped Lie (video)

Morning thoughts on Trump's deficiency of intelligence, the sinister intent of his "tattoo" lie to ABC News, and the Russo-MAGA war on reality

Good morning! Here is today’s ramble:

And here is the transcript, edited for clarity:

Good morning. As you’re watching this, it’s Friday morning, May 2nd. As I’m recording this, it is 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 1st: May Day, which is what I think everybody here in the United States is saying to our friends in Europe and Canada: “M’aidez!”

In French, it means “Help me.” We need all the help we can get. That’s for sure.

On Wednesday, Nadine Smith and Lisa Graves did a wonderful show on The Five 8 1/2, which I encourage you to go watch in case you missed it. One of the topics that they talked about was Trump’s interview that he gave with ABC News—the guy’s name is Terry Moran, ABC News—in the Oval Office. And it was a disaster. I just had a couple of thoughts that I wanted to share about it because I think it’s important, even though, in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t, right?

So first of all, they’re arguing about the tattoo. Abrego Garcia supposedly has gang tattoos, MS-13 gang tattoos, on his hand. Never mind that Trump cannot tell MS-13 from 21 Pilots or Blink-182. He’s got no idea what any of this even means.

He held up a picture and shared it on his social media, showing Abrego Garcia’s hand and the tattoos there. And above the tattoos, it says, on each finger, M-S-1-3. This is Photoshopped on; it’s clearly Photoshopped on. And Trump refused, during the interview, just refused, to admit that it was Photoshopped. And not only did he refuse to admit that it was Photoshopped, he got angry and sort of insisted that Moran also admit that no, the tattoos are there, they’re on his hand, they’re real—what’s Photoshopped is real.

So two things I want to talk about with this. The first thing is, when I saw that graphic that he shared, I assumed that the Photoshop pieces of it were indicating to me—not being, you know, well versed in gang tattoos—what each of the four tattoos on his knuckles symbolize. So he’s got a marijuana leaf, that’s an M; he’s got a smile, that’s an S; a cross is a one; and the other thing is a skull, is the three. And the graphic uses Photoshop to point it out:

President Knucklehead’s Photoshopped visual aid

Trump is so fucking stupid, he can’t even read the damn thing correctly. He can’t even make the argument that these tattoos indicate it’s MS-13. He can’t do that because his brain can’t grasp it. He’s too stupid to figure it out. So he insists that what’s there in Photoshop—which again, was only put there in Photoshop to help him make this argument—is real. He is insisting that the Photoshop is real.

So the first point is Trump is a fucking moron. We know this already. He’s an idiot.

Now, the other point is, with his insistence that this reporter, this journalist, his handpicked journalist—because he says it during the interview, “I picked you,” or whatever he said, “Terry Moran, ABC News. I picked you, I plucked you out of obscurity.” (I don’t think he said “obscurity.” I don’t think he knows that word. Too many syllables.) Anyway, Trump basically implied, “I created you. Therefore, you should just do whatever I say.”

And what’s dangerous about this is, it reminded me of something that happened the first time around: the war on reality that we constantly are engaged in with this guy. So in Rough Beast, my book that came out in May 2024, the first chapter is called “Dishonest Abe: Lies, Damn Lies, and Stuff Donald Says.” And I’m making the argument in the book that Donald is a serial liar. And I think the first part here is very, very important—just to take you back and refresh your memory.

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[from the book]:

The Trump presidency began with an assault on the truth.

The first time that Sean Spicer, the newly-minted press secretary, addressed the White House press corps, he lied about the size of the crowd at the Inauguration—and he did so at the new president’s stubborn insistence. Spicer may as well have been standing next to Shaquille O’Neal, indignantly insisting he was taller. We knew he was lying, he knew he was lying, the press corps knew he was lying, Saturday Night Live certainly knew he was lying. Even Chuck Todd, no journalistic paragon, took exception to it, in what turned out to be a historic episode of Meet the Press, on which Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway coined the term “alternative facts.” There was uneasiness, certainly, and plenty of jokes made at Spicer’s expense. But few imagined that this pathetic spectacle was merely the opening salvo in a four-year onslaught against reality.

Trump’s war on the truth did not begin when he took office, of course. Maybe it started when Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, gave him all that free airtime and presented him, falsely, as a serious presidential candidate. Maybe it started when The Apprentice showrunner Mark Burnett packaged him, falsely, as a successful, self-made billionaire, trust-washing him for the American public. Maybe it started when Trump joined Twitter, and opted to insert the word “real” in his handle, before his actual name. Or maybe it started on his first visit to Moscow in 1987, when the KGB began cultivating him in earnest (of which more in Chapter 2). Whatever the case, the annihilation of truth is Trump’s greatest achievement as president—his lone success. During those miserable four years, reality was not the winner.

So many lies! So much gaslighting! So much B.S.!

The first chapter of Dirty Rubles is called “The Russia Lie.” I wrote,

Throughout the campaign, during the transition period, and after inauguration, Donald Trump and his surrogates vehemently denied meeting with Russians of any stripe, for any purpose. Every time they were asked about a connection between the campaign and the Kremlin, they shot it down. And they were indignant about it. The response was always something along the lines of, “Russia? Us? How dare you accuse us of such a thing!”

and then listed 17 separate times Trump or one of his proxies flat-out lied about his connections to the Kremlin. These were, I pointed out,

all lies—the same big lie, repeated over and over. This repetition of the “Big Lie,” it should be noted, is a propaganda technique developed by the Nazis. Hitler wrote about it in Mein Kompf, one of very few books Trump is believed to have read. Either way, Trump has employed the Big Lie technique for years—lying regularly about his wealth (he lied his way onto the Forbes wealthiest Americans list), his fitness (he coerced his physician to lie about how healthy he was), his sexual prowess (a tabloid headline allegedly from ex-wife Marla Maples, saying Trump was the best sex she’d ever had), and so forth.

But this was different. This wasn’t about the size of his bank account, his good cholesterol levels, or his penis. This was about national security, about cozying up to an enemy. And yet still, Trump and his minions went on TV, took to Twitter, stood behind the podium in the White House Press Room, and lied egregiously to the American people, over and over and over and over.

I wrote that in 2018. The lies kept on coming. The lies still keep on coming. With Donald Trump, the lies never stop.

We were told that Trump’s campaign was self-funded; it wasn’t. We were told that he would drain the swamp; he didn’t even try. We were told that he would bring his successful businessman’s experience to Washington; this is a man who went broke running a casino. We were told Jared and Ivanka would be a moderating influence; they may well be more ghoulish than Donald. We were told Trump would release his taxes; the alleged audit outlasted his presidency. We were told he would release Melania’s immigration paperwork; we’re still waiting. We were told a wall would be built, and we were told Mexico would pay for it; a wall was not built, and Mexico did not turn over a single peso. We were promised a better healthcare plan than Obamacare; the promised-in-two-weeks details are yet to be revealed.

We were told Trump was the healthiest president of all time ever; he isn’t. We were told he was 6’ 3” / 239; he’s well shorter than that, and far heftier. We were told the midnight run to Walter Reed in November 2020 was the first part of a physical, a cover story even the press seemed to realize was bunk in the moment; we still don’t know why he was rushed there. (Panic attack? Stents? Exorcism?) Even when white powder flew out of his nose on live TV, even when he appeared impaired, his eyes dilated, not a single member of the media told us about his drug use—despite Noel Casler, a talent handler on Celebrity Apprentice and an eyewitness, repeatedly insisting, including in an interview with me, that Trump was an addict.

We were told there was no communication between Russia and anyone associated with Trump or his campaign; turns out, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, Jeff Sessions, Mike Flynn, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos, at a minimum, all communicated with Putin’s proxies. We were told the Mueller investigation was a witch hunt; it was actually a hunt for traitors, and it found plenty. We were told Trump would be tough on Putin; he capitulated to him like a sniveling BDSM bottom in the world’s least sexy bondage club.

We were told the novel coronavirus was like the flu. We were told it was a hoax. We were told it was under control. We were told it would be gone by Easter, 2020. We were told that one day, it would just go away, like a miracle. We were told the Democratic governors were to blame. We were told Fauci was not to be trusted. We were told the CDC was not to be trusted; instead, we should put our faith in Michael Caputo, a GOP dirty trickster who once worked for Vladimir Putin, and whom Trump inexplicably installed as a spokesman at Health & Human Services. We were told Mike Pence, who as governor of Indiana presided over the worst U.S. HIV outbreak in the last 20 years, was the best man to manage the pandemic response. We were told that he did a fantastic job. We were told masks didn’t work, that wearing them was government overreach, an assault on our freedoms. We were told it was safe to reopen months before it was. We were told herd immunity was a smart strategy. We were told that certain already-available drugs treated covid-19 just fine. We were told the infection rate would be lower if we did less testing. We were told the virus wasn’t especially contagious, even as it spread like wildfire through the West Wing. We were told the effects were not that bad, even as Chris Christie spent a week in the ICU, even as Herman Cain died. We were told the Trump Administration’s handling of the pandemic was top notch, even as Jared Kushner killed a plan devised by his own hand-picked advisors that would have saved countless lives, especially in Blue States. We were told that the pandemic was over, even as the death toll hit 350,000. We were told that upon taking office, Joe Biden would immediately shut down the country because he was a pawn of China who would use the virus as an excuse to establish a Communist government in Washington.

We were told there would be a pivot.

We were told Trump was strong. We were told Trump was a fighter. We were told, on those rare occasions when he read from the teleprompter without going off script, that he was “presidential.” We were told he cared about people. We were told he cared about the victims of the hurricane in Puerto Rico. We were told he isn’t a sexist, isn’t a racist. We were told he was only joking.

And then there were all the lies about the 2020 election, and the fake electors, and the voting machines, and Trump’s failed coup attempt of January 6, 2021—lies that are now immortalized in a House investigation report and scores of criminal trials.

“Who are you gonna believe,” Chico Marx famously quipped, “me, or your lyin’ eyes?”

And now? Cleft by [eight] years of pounding by a psychological battering ram—four years with Trump in the White House, [four] with him out—our national reality is fractured. Alternative facts prevail. There is no universal, agreed-upon truth. And this is exactly what we were warned during the Reagan years that the Russians were trying to do to us, via psychological warfare: “Change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that, despite the abundance of information,” explained KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov back in 1984, “no one is able to come to sensible conclusions.”

Mission accomplished, comrades.

[end of reading from book]

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Now I read all that because, obviously we’re in the same place right now. This thing with the ABC News guy, it seems like not a big deal. Tattoos, Photoshop, who cares? It is a big deal. Everything is a big deal. It’s an assault on reality. And the reason why half the country has no fucking idea what’s going on is because there’s these alternative realities now that are being perpetuated by a craven, disgusting, disgraceful legacy media: Fox News, but even some of the better papers are just capitulating.

So I don’t know what the solution is, but one of the solutions has to be to call out lies when they happen—even the little lies. Because if you accept the little lies in the moment—as Terry Moran did during the interview; he accepted it so he could move on—if you accept the little lies, the lies are just gonna keep growing and growing and growing and growing.

And Trump will never stop. He can’t stop. He won’t stop. And that’s how it’s gonna be.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Thank you for indulging me, and have a great weekend.

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Join me and Stephanie “LB” Koff tonight on The Five 8. Lots to discuss, as usual:

And I was feeling glum and meh on Wednesday, and then I watched Nadine and Lisa, and I felt better, even though they were talking about really heavy stuff. I highly encourage you to watch the show. Their guest, Maria Smilios, wrote a book called Black Angels, about the nurses, most of them Black, who helped cure tuberculosis. Since RFK, Jr. has already brought consumption back, at the same time that President Knucklehead is eradicating DEI initiatives, it’s very relevant to there here and now:

If you subscribe to the channel—or, better yet, become a member—the notifications will pop up for you and you’ll know when the shows start.

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