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If there is one thing we should all know by now, it’s that Donald Trump is all about projection. The former president has spent much of the past six years saying Hillary Clinton couldn’t be trusted with U.S. secrets, that she should be locked up for a non-existent email scandal Trump and his allies still cling to. It’s like that girl in the movie Mean Girls who kept trying to “make fetch happen.”
Dear Republicans: Stop. It’s not going to happen.
And you know why? Because it’s clear to anyone not brainwashed by right-wing media that it’s Trump himself who can’t be trusted to safeguard American secrets. The news that Trump reportedly flushed official documents down the toilet and removed classified material when he left the White House, in blatant defiance of the Presidential Records Act, proves that case. It’s why the National Archives had to go down to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve boxes of documents it was determined were improperly moved out of the White House.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone who paid any sort of attention to the Trump White House during his chaotic four-year presidency. Look at the carelessness with which most of the people he surrounded himself with dealt with state secrets. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were found to use personal email to conduct official White House business. Should we start the “Lock them up” chants now? The same goes for one of Trump’s numerous chiefs of staff, Mark Meadows. And Trump reportedly had the habit of ripping documents up, which staffers would then grab later to tape them up, because they knew what he did was against the law. But it’s Toiletgate that may well be the defining scandal of the Trump era.
You may recall that during his presidency, Trump, numerous times talked about people having to flush toilets 10 to 15 times. And I wondered and many in my audience wondered what Trump was doing that he thinks people are flushing toilets 10 to 15 times. It doesn’t make any sense. Well, it might have been that he was trying to flush documents, and that’s why he was having to flush the toilet 10 to 15 times.
So as usual, the case he made against Hillary Clinton was pure projection. It was he who could not be trusted. It was he who was irresponsible with these documents. And then of course, there’s the question of consequences.
I’m doubtful myself that Trump will be held accountable for his blatant disregard for official policy. He’s made a career of dodging accountability, so until something actually occurs, I will remain skeptical. But one thing is certain: Trump’s accusations against Hillary Clinton are officially down the drain.
