Apparently, the “brave” men of the Trump administration are protecting their gentility behind the skirts of CIA Director Gina Haspel. Haspel, the only lofty Trump official who has reportedly heard the audio tape of the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was conspicuously absent in a hearing held before a closed-door Senate committee of Republicans and Democrats yesterday. Most of the things President Trump says or does have started to wash over me like water from my shower removing the dirt residue. It starts with an initial burst of water shocking you awake, then temperature balance and finally cleansing normalcy, until the next morning of accumulated grimy lies.
I know it is a mistake to get accustomed to the daily Trump shocks because that conveys an acceptance, but it is hard to function inside a swirl of chaos. Like the haphazard wisp of hair on his head—that scatter in the wind, you just try and lay low and hope the world is still there until the latest storm has passed. I have to admit, I am trapped in the horrifying thoughts of a man being dismembered, while maybe still alive, and the leader of the country I love condoning it. Trump supporters and sycophants will cover the President’s amorality with excuses, he did not forgive it, they will say, he said, ‘maybe, maybe not,’ and other Presidents have excused despots, and worse yet, the phrase “America first” will continue to rear its’ ugly head. The return to the World War I politics and rhetoric used as justification for bigotry, anti-Semitism, and isolationism is the stock and trade of President Trump.
Those attitudes probably led this President to direct the appalling absence of Director Haspel from the hearing. The President and his National Security Advisor [ John Bolton] as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, say they have not listened to the audio of Khashoggi’s execution-style murder because they do not “speak Arabic.” Both the National Security Advisor and the Head of the State Department are the ears and eyes of the President around the world, ‘I do not speak Arabic’ does not cut it. Is Pompeo conversant in Korean and Russian and Chinese, he has visited these areas with interpreters. He has had conversations with the leaders of all three nations. Did he just sit there nodding his head like a lost tourist in New York, saying yes to everything? It was not only an absurd thing to say but is insulting to the citizens of the United States and our allies that he would utter such a preposterous thing in public.
Unfortunately, this ludicrousness was echoed by Bolton and the Secretary of Defense General James Mattis. Mattis who has said he rejects the non-deplume ‘Mad Dog’ and is a combat veteran, says he has seen “no direct reporting” linking the Saudi Crown Prince to this heinous crime against humanity. So, of all the people with access, Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, and Mattis only Gina Haspel is reported to have heard the audio. Why is the White House., whose current President has declared himself a “stable genius” keeping, according to the Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, Haspel away from meeting with a group of Senators? Conflicting reports say this was on the orders of Mattis and Pompeo. Come out from behind Haspel’s skirt guys, we see you, my guess is she was not willing to toe the company line. I believe the world deserves better answers because we have not heard the half of it yet.
Vote in 2020 for Change.