Hard to see a third possibility

Charlie Sykes asks a compelling question this morning that I have often asked in this blog.

President Trump has insinuated that TV personality and former Florida congressman Joe Scarborough murdered his secretary even though he wasn't even in the state at the time. The lady fainted due to a heart condition and sustained a fatal blow to her head. It is simply not possible that Mr. Trump's suggestion is true. But beyond that, there is exactly no evidence to even suggest the idea and no logical reason to think that it even might be true.

This is the same Donald Trump who once suggested that Raphael Cruz, the father of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President Kennedy. He did provide evidence for that accusation. The evidence was a photo of a man who looked a little bit (though not very much) like the elder Cruz having a conversation with Oswald. 

That was it. Other than the slight resemblance, there was no reason to think that the man talking to Oswald actually was the Reverend Mr. Cruz- whose politics are the polar opposite of Oswald's-  or that even in the highly unlikely event that it was, they were discussing anything other than the Dallas Cowboys' prospects that season.

Now he suggests that rather than being essentially a spontaneous outbreak of anger over yet another unjustified killing of an African-American by a policeman with a previous record of abusing his office and mistreating private citizens, the recent riots following the death of George Floyd were organized and orchestrated by ANTIFA. For the uninitiated, ANTIFA is an extremely loose, decentralized, and by all indications very small alliance of violent far-left groups that is a favorite boogeyman of the radical right, blamed for pretty much any domestic disturbance for whom it needs a scapegoat- and very often without any evidence that it was even involved.

The evidence that ANTIFA was behind the protests against the murder of George Floyd? An elderly white bystander in Buffalo, N.Y. injured by a policeman shoving him out of the way during a disturbance was holding a telephone, which could have had a police scanner app in it.

Note that there is absolutely no reason to think that it did, or even might have. But if it did,  in which cit could have been used to help orchestrate the violence.  It is claimed that the man "took a dive," as they say in hockey, and purposely injured himself, though the event was recorded and the video proves the absurdity of that suggestion.




Again, no evidence at all ties the man to ANTIFA, just as no evidence ties ANTIFA to the violence. There is no reason to believe that the injured man did anything wrong, or that what he was holding was anything but a telephone. 

But neither Mr. Trump nor TrumpWorld is concerned that there is no actual reason to even suspect that ANTIFA has played any sinister role in the violence following the death of Mr. Floyd, There is merely Mr. Trump's desire, and that of an irresponsible far-right propaganda outlet called the One America Network (OANN) with a track record of promoting evidence-free right-wing conspiracy theories, to make the whole episode about a conspiracy which there is no reason to think even existed.

Do I sense a pattern here?

To blame ANTIFA for the violence would make the real story, not systemic racism in America or the need for police reform or even the death of George Floyd, but the need for law and order to save us from ANTIFA. It would make the solution, not reform, but repression. That, in turn, would fit Mr. Trump's narrative and that of OANN. Unfortunately, it does not fit the facts, which once again offer literally no reason for anyone to believe it.

Why would a person repeatedly make lurid accusations against people whom there is no rational reason to even associate with a crime or a series of crimes much less suspect of being responsible for them, based on exactly zero evidence?

The person might not care that he is telling lies and injuring people's reputations. He might have no ethical problem with character assassination. He might be dishonest and perhaps even a sociopath. Or he might actually believe the wild tales he tells and honestly confuses his imagination with reality. He might be unstable and perhaps even mentally ill.

I really wish there were a third explanation. But when the same person keeps doing it over and over and over, it's hard to imagine what it might be. Is it finally more charitable and respectful to explain this pattern of behavior by saying that someone is evil, or that he is mentally ill? And is it even remotely tolerable that in either case, that person is the most powerful human being on the planet?

Which, in turn, raises a second question: whichever explanation one accepts, how can any honest and reasonable person argue that Donald Trump is fit to be President of the United States?