With Tillerson out and The Donald still standing I thought it might be good to review a political tempest from so-long-ago last summer. This originally ran in the Long Prairie Leader.-----
Did Secretary of State Rex Tillerson call Donald Trump a moron in July? NBC television reported that he did and CNN says that they confirmed NBC’s reporting. When Tillerson was asked in an October 4th news conference if he used the M-word to describe the Commander in Chief, Secretary Tillerson said he didn’t want to talk about petty stuff. But shortly after Tillerson’s visit with the press, the State Department’s spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, denied that Tillerson called Trump a moron. Presumably Heather Nauert spoke with Rex Tillerson in early October and Rex was able to recall what he said ten weeks earlier. He then gave his spokeswoman permission to expose the pettiness of it all. Rex, Heather said, does not use language like that.
So what’s the big deal? Since America’s chief diplomat called his boss a moron, so has The Boss, aka Bruce Springsteen. Here’s what he told Rolling Stone on September 23rd:
“Well, you know, the republic is under siege by a moron, basically. The whole thing is tragic. Without overstating it, it's a tragedy for our democracy.”
And after Springsteen stepped forward and stated the obvious, there was Australian comedian Kathy Griffin.
“I am going to call him a moron and Nazi ... Americans are skittish about calling him a Nazi but he is one,” Griffin told Fox News on October 24th.
My Goodness! Such name calling!
Nobody has questioned whether Griffin or Springsteen called The Donald a moron. They flat out did. But as the stink over Tillerson’s alleged gaffe continued to hang over Foggy Bottom, Forbes magazine weighed in. In an exclusive with the President they asked: Did Tillerson or didn’t he?
“I think it’s fake news. But if he did [say] that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”
Attaboy! That’s our Donald.
So what’s a moron anyway? And is the 45th President of the USA one of those?
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines moron as a person affected with mild mental retardation or a very stupid person. A moron, the dictionary says, has actions that are moronic. That is to say a moron’s actions are very stupid and even demonstrate a mild mental retardation.
Those who say that Tillerson called his boss a moron say he said the M-word when The Donald claimed the US of A had too few nuclear weapons. They say that when the Tweeter-in-Chief learned that we have a mere 4,000 nukes (the most of any nation in the solar system) he wanted to increase the number to 32,000 weapons of massive destruction.
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| Is having the most enough? Photo of Nagasaki destruction thanks to Wikipedia |
Now Rex Tillerson is not the brightest light in the movie marquee but if he really responded to Trump by calling him a moron I’m going to agree with him. How moronic can you get? Is it mildly retarded or profoundly stupid?
Senator Robert Corker, a former Trump ally and a leader of the Senate Republicans, recently said that the White House is like an adult day care center and that Donald Trump is the Patient-in-Chief. That would suggest he’s going with the senility angle. That is to say, The Donald may once have been at the top of his game but that his mental capacities have dimmed substantially.
I wonder? Does it matter? Stupid, senile, or retarded, Corker suggests that Trump is leading us down the path toward World War III. Like Secretary Tillerson’s, I have high standards and won’t stoop to juvenile and petty name calling. However, I will say that the President too often behaves in a moronic manner.
As Bruce Springsteen says, “The whole thing is tragic.”
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