Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke)

by Keith Olbermann

  So it’s important—it’s not happy, but it’s important—to remember that we need to not assume that the nightmare ends in some way when Donald John Trump puts his hand on the Bible tomorrow and John Roberts says, “Do you solemnly swear that you will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and—presuming the Bible does not leap from his hand or spontaneously combust—Trump replies to this call of our history and our democracy by answering, “Whatevah.” This is not the last scene of The Manchurian Candidate, nor Seven Days in May, nor It Can’t Happen Here. There are countless possible nightmare scenarios ahead of all of us. We have seen some of them before, the last time we let the antiquated math of the Founders elect a Republican president in defiance of the will of the people.

  We have seen a terrorist act and flames and collapses and ashes and pyres, and the immediate exploitation of that act by Republicans who demanded that we should do what they called “patriotic bipartisanship,” which was in fact mono-partisanship, in which they were to make all the decisions and our role was to acquiesce to them or be branded disloyal. We know what they will do if the opportunity presents itself again. And we know, from a year of his lies and calumnies and gaslighting, and Orwell-grade perversions of light into dark and fiction into fact, that they are all now practiced and prepared and ready to create an opportunity if none presents itself—a phony threat that requires a curtailment of liberties. Some plot “he and he alone” could stop. And we must be prepared to call such a stunt exactly what it is, and to be patriots, and to wrap ourselves in the flag that we love, and shout from the hills why what has happened to this country—two months from now, six months from now, two years from now—why that has happened because there is a Donald John Trump.

  And we know that this time they have tilted the playing field against us in advance in these areas: they have spent eight years delegitimizing a president, so that we might look foolish delegitimizing an actual illegitimate president. They have spent the length of a campaign refusing to promise to recognize a defeat, on the premise that it could have been obtained only by chicanery and dishonesty, so that we might look foolish refusing to honor a defeat that was actually obtained by actual chicanery and dishonesty. They have spent month after month insisting that the election, the media, the opinion polls, and now the polls about the transition are rigged and fixed, so that we might look foolish insisting that an election, the media, and the opinion polls are actually rigged and fixed. And we know that now we will and must play by rules that sicken us, against which our souls cry out. But we must. Our moral force, our moral high ground, our patriotic self-defense is simple. We did not seek any of these rules. We did not seek this battle. We did not seek this treachery. The rules, the battle, the treachery—are Trump’s. We will fight him on his terms. And we will defeat him. And we will restore democracy.

  And we will defeat Trump’s Russian masters. Some of us have been warning since the beginning of the presidential campaign that Trump’s connection and the connection of those around him to a dictator who has had the foresight to replace expensive, very complicated human war with the far more efficient cyberwar—invasion by remote control—we have noted that Trump’s connection was not mere admiration, nor the perverted envy of a sick American monster gazing at a sick Russian monster. And we were right. The Russians did this. All we need to learn, and we will learn it, is how much they did. How many acts of war they directed against this country. How much they had on Trump. How much they expect him to deliver. How many of the mainstream Republicans will remain loyal not to the Constitution of the United States but to Vladimir Goddamned Putin!

  *

  I wish to quote three men and only three men tonight: Sidney A. Chayefsky, John Lewis, and, first, Winston Churchill. Churchill, speaking after what was, in his time, in his country, in his context, his Trump election. We know it in history as Munich. And from the wilderness of his Parliament, with a coalition government cheering itself deafeningly for having averted war, with the formal leadership of his nation shunning him and marginalizing him and giggling at him, when everybody roared how well they had done, Churchill began, in almost a whisper.

  “Our loyal, brave people,” Churchill said, “should know that we have sustained a defeat, without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road. . . . They should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history”—and here I will briefly update Churchill’s words, if I may make that offense—“when the whole equilibrium of the free world has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the American democracy: Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.

  “And don’t suppose,” Churchill said, “that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us, year by year, unless, by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

  Churchill.

  *

  Tonight, in our country, which we all love in words and in ways that we cannot express—tonight is the end of the “olden time,” in comparison to what Churchill said in 1938. Tonight is the night before the disaster. Tonight is the night that we will look back at, with some longing and some nostalgia. Tonight is the night to which the whole of our beings, and all of our priorities, and all of our efforts must now be focused, on getting our country back. Democracy, as we have known it, with the rules by which we have played, ends at noon. The fight—our fight—begins one second later.

  *

  And it begins—as you will hear this weekend—on a series of fronts.

  The fight can begin in the media. You, everybody here, can confront anybody—reporter, anchor, spokesman, shill—who tries to publicly characterize all this as just some sort of political swing, as if it was not the seizure of power by the worst possible person to be found to serve as president, as if that person had not appointed the worst possible candidate to run each agency, as if Betsy DeVos was just some sort of an alternative to traditional education, when she is really an alternative to traditional education in the same way that stupidity is an alternative to traditional education. This weekend will show you ways to make this clear to the media, and it will introduce you to people whose job it will be to shine a constant, daily light on every broken promise, every shady nominee, every awful policy—and everything you can do to help directly.

  The fight can also begin in the courts. Trump will come as close to privatizing the presidency as anybody in history, before sunset tomorrow, and whether he believes it or not, much of what he will try to do is actually illegal, and there are still laws, and this weekend will show you ways to pursue him and to have at the head of this fight—a cliché—Justice with her Shining Sword.

  Or you can look at it more practically. Trump is coming for your money. You might as well spend some of it to prevent him taking all of your money.

  And the fight certainly begins with a state of mind.

  More than nine years ago, I ran into John Kerry in line to pick up World Series tickets at Fenway Park, in Boston. And as we came past each other, he congratulated me and he said thanks to me, and I said, “You’re welcome—for what, by the way?” He said, “It was you who decided to run headfirst into the brick wall of the Bush administration. You said the terror color-code system was uncomfortably in sync with Bush’s political needs. And then you said, ‘I think they may be doing this,’ just enough of that wall fell down, and the rest of us could storm through and start talking about it, and that’s what turned around the 2006 midterms.” And I said, “I doubt it, but I will defer to you, Senator.” So never think, no matter what has happened in the last few months, that you individually don’t matter. Or that an opportunity for you to prevail will not arise. Or that your state of mind does not matter. Or that even an act of symbolism by you does
n’t matter.

  To that point: John Lewis. I will contend that something he did on January 13, 2017, was just as important, or nearly so, and certainly just as dangerous, and will in the end prove just as saving and redemptive as was his agony on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As you know, Congressman Lewis was asked if he planned to try to forge a relationship with Trump. And he said: “I believe in forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be very difficult: I don’t see the president-elect as a legitimate president. I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected, and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. I don’t plan to attend the inauguration. You cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong.”

  The questioner was stunned. “That’s going to send a big message,” my friend Chuck Todd said, “to a lot of people in this country that you don’t believe he’s a legitimate president.”

  And John Lewis—as always—would not back down, would not equivocate, would not protect himself. “I think it was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians and others to help him get elected. That’s not right, that’s not fair. That’s not the open democratic process.” And John Lewis, in thirty seconds, moved “legitimacy” center stage. In the week since he said that, more than sixty elected Democrats have followed him. It should have been all of them. John Lewis leads us yet again—and there is the organizing principle of resistance.

  It is simple: As hard as it may be to believe and to put into proper historical context, and just because none of us have seen it before, does not mean it cannot be true. It is simple: this is not a legitimate president. This was a conspiracy involving, to a great or small degree, another country! This is not the open democratic process. And you, as John Lewis said perfectly, cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong.

  Every day, we bring up Russia.

  Every day, we shout Russia!

  Every day, we SCREAM Russia!

  Never do we speak this man’s name without invoking what Churchill called the defeat without a war. Never do we criticize or discuss or analyze his actions—or those of his White House, filled with the crew of a pirate ship—without reminding everyone that the Russians put him there and that the Republicans who enable him to stay there are passively collaborating with a foreign enemy of the United States of America. At the other end of the extreme in terms of simplicity versus complexity: Never, ever do we refer to Donald Trump as “President.” He is “Trump.” Certainly that is sufficient, and accurate. And it is also easier for when it is time for us to erase his name from history. For now—we will erase what’s left of his legitimacy. “I don’t see the president-elect as a legitimate president,” John Lewis said. “You cannot be at home with something that you feel is wrong,” John Lewis said. Wise words stand the test of time, and the test of struggle, and these words from John Lewis are wise.

  This weekend will be devoted to many means, practical and philosophical, with which we can fight this nightmare, on the terms the Republicans and their coalition partners the American fascists and the neo-Nazis have chosen. And to consider the first of the Republican hammers, which we can grab from their hands and which we can then use to chase them to hell, this weekend will be devoted to many means, practical and philosophical, with which we can resist Trump, reproach Trump, and ultimately “repeal and replace” Trump. Already we see the outlines of this: the boycott against the Breitbart advertisers was a spectacular success. It can easily be repeated, and it’s fun for the entire family.

  There are other media inroads to make: my GQ series just crossed 100 million views. A network—I don’t know if this is a pipe dream of mine—that is largely liberal in its orientation, that I could speak to you from every night, would be a nice thing to have, but I don’t know if we could ever see that. Why does it sound so vaguely familiar? But practically, again, with or without networks, we now know we are under no obligation to be nice, or cooperative, or Vichy, or bipartisan—that we can fight just as dirty and just as viciously, and we will beat them at their own game, because, as I have observed many times in my commentaries, democracy has survived not so much through the efforts of those who would protect it, as because of the stupidity of those who would destroy it—and this time the side that would destroy it includes Rudy Giuliani. We know the 2018 midterms must be fought on a wedge issue: “You, Congressman Rohrabacher; you, Congressman Chaffetz; you, Congressman Ryan—do you believe in democracy, or do you support Russia and Generalissimo Francisco Trump?” (You can tone it down as the circumstances warrant, district by district.)

  We also know those midterms are of an importance that cannot be overstated, because while the Republicans may realize, sooner or later, maybe by this time tomorrow night, that they themselves may have to impeach Trump, or more likely use the Twenty-fifth Amendment on him because he’s crazy, we must take no chances—we must have a Democratic Congress to impeach him two years from tonight. And we know that in the interim we must adopt the fighting style of Muhammad Ali. Yes, they will hit us. Yes, it will hurt. It has already begun to hurt. But each time they come in to land a blow—hit them back. As Richard Pryor phrased it, voicing Ali’s inner dialogue during a fight, “Boom—and there you go, you take that with you.” And we know that, yes, that means that Trump, the man-baby, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man whose psychosis can be inflamed by trolling him on Twitter, must hear the words and phrases weak, soft, lost the popular vote, no mandate, Russia, Putin, Assange, disloyal, treachery, videotape every time he turns around. And we know that, yes, that means we shall actually have to learn from what we watched them do to Barack Obama.

  So never again should Trump, or this Russian operative guy of his, Michael Flynn, or the native of the country of Exxon, Mr. Tillerson, or Kellyanne Con Job, or any of them—never again will they get to speak in public without somebody rising and yelling, not necessarily rudely, to interrupt them, although you can do that if you want, but somebody rising somewhere when they say these things and respond with every fiber in their being—before, during, or after they speak—“You lie!” And yes, we know that nothing has ever changed for the good in the history of man without men and women rising up and saying—whether they whisper or yell—but starting by saying “This is wrong!”

  However: behind all of this, behind every strategy, behind every plan made this weekend, behind everything we can do and everything we must do—to restore our bloodied democracy, there must be one emotion with which our side of the political pendulum is seldom associated. This emotion must now in some ways become our animating principle. And about that animating principle (and penultimately in my remarks), having already quoted Churchill and Lewis, I want to now quote—again with revisions, permissible I hope—Sidney Chayefsky. You may know him by his nickname, “Paddy,” or you may know the name of the character he wrote for the movie Network, a Mr. Beale:

  I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a coup d’etat. Everybody’s out of hope or scared of losing their freedom.

  Foreign governments buy influence at the White House, businesses are terrified of a Twitter account, shopkeepers keep a Klan hood under the counter, white supremacists are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do—and there’s no end to it! We know Trump is unfit to pass a sanity test and his enablers are unfit to lead. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen attacks on Obamacare and sixty-three racist bills, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

  We all know things are bad—worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere has gone crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my steady income and my sanctuary cities and my warm Obama memories and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alo
ne.” Well, I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I want you to protest. I want you to write. I want you to call a Republican congressman, because we all know exactly what you should say to him. I know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the corporate graft in the street. And I know that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say: “I’m an American citizen, goddammit! My! Democracy! Has! Value!”

  So . . .

  The rest of it—about going to the window, opening it, and sticking your head out and yelling—the rest of it you know. But to keep you motivated, and to keep you mad, and to keep you unwilling to take it anymore, as Howard Beale said, let me close by noting one overarching fact that has occasionally gotten lost since November 8, and that is the essence of everything, to my mind. Even with this nightmare that comes at sunrise. And even with the temporary end of much of our democratic experience in this country. Even with a gold dollar sign spray-painted on every American flag and spit on the grave of every patriot. Even with the confluence of Comey and the Russians and the lies and the greatest grifter in the history of this country. Even with the worst possible outcome that all that could produce. Even with the greatest possible grief. No matter what we have to face. No matter what we have to do. No matter how long the trip back is from tomorrow. Remember—and take strength from—and remind all those who forget—and remind all those who deny—and remind all those who lie—remember one thing.