Scandal Porn

It's always instructive to read editorial opinion outside of the usual suspects at the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ. The editors of the Las Vegas Review Journal comment on last week's Comey testimony, the desperate efforts of #Resistance to find some shred of evidence of "collusion" and "obstruction of justice," even as a growing body of evidence and testimony points in the opposite direction. They write:

Last week’s congressional testimony by James Comey was thinly veiled scandal porn, the driving force in today’s Washington. The former FBI director made clear his distrust of Mr. Trump and said the president publicly lied about the reasons for his dismissal. That generated the expected headlines, but to what end? The Trump-Russia collusion brouhaha has now morphed into a feeding frenzy regarding obstruction of justice. But if Mr. Comey believed Mr. Trump had broken the law by pressuring the bureau, why didn’t he raise any concerns with the attorney general? Why didn’t he push back? Why didn’t he resign?

He offered no plausible explanation — and, in fact, told the Senate committee that nothing the president did had impeded the FBI’s probe. He also confirmed Mr. Trump’s assertion that the president was never a target of any investigation. As far as obstruction is concerned, as much as CNN hopes to hang the Watergate tag on the Trump administration, this remains a rallying cry in search of evidence.

As noted attorney Alan Dershowitz, no fan of the president, put it last week, while Mr. Comey’s testimony “may provide political ammunition to Trump opponents, unless they are willing to stretch Comey’s words and take Trump’s out of context, and unless they are prepared to abandon important constitutional principles and civil liberties that protect us all, they should not be searching for ways to expand already elastic criminal statutes and shrink enduring constitutional safeguards in a dangerous and futile effort to criminalize political disagreements.”

Scandal porn—what an apt description of the unhinged behavior of the four constituencies that want to see Trump gone. The central porn stars are the Democrats, who will do anything to satisfy the fantasies of their progressive base, titillating them with baseless allegations and stimulating them with unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo. The mainstream media sits behind the camera, salivating as it records the scandal porn, never letting on that the orgasms are fake. And finally, the Republican elites who profess to abhor porn, but secretly take a peak now and then, enjoying what they see just a little too much.

But Donald Trump is also a supporting actor in the scandal porn. Again from the LVRJ:

Make no mistake: Donald Trump tries the patience of even his most ardent defenders. A dose of discipline and humility would go a long way toward helping him survive the cresting onslaught. Mr. Trump instinctively seems to relish controversy, pouring kerosene on the embers to admire the flames. Instead of letting Democrats wear themselves out as they scurry from rat hole to rat hole in search the next indignation, Mr. Trump takes to social media and stokes the blaze. Following Mr. Comey’s appearance on Capitol Hill, the president unleashed a taunting tweet calling him a liar and a “leaker.”

It’s true that Mr. Trump didn’t beat Hillary Clinton by heeding traditional political advice. He doubtless attributes his rise to the Oval Office in part to his Twitter savvy and his ability to manipulate and frustrate the press, meaning he’s unlikely to change his unconventional behavior in that regard. The problem is, he’s no longer campaigning. The distractions in which he revels severely limit his ability to fulfill the promises that resonated with red state voters.

And therein lies the rub. Over 60 million U.S citizens voted for Trump, not scandal porn. They wanted a change; they wanted to see someone talk straight about everything from the economy to the threat of Islamic terrorism; they recognized that Washington, DC is a fetid swamp and they wanted to see it drained (sadly, that's also a fantasy), and they wanted a leader who did put their own country first.

If Trump remains a scandal porn actor, he'll accomplish little—and that's too bad. Because when you cut through the dumb tweets, the obnoxious bluster, the outrageous and ill-advised statements, Donald Trump has some solid ideas which would help this country regain its footing after eight disastrous years under Democrat rule.