Parker got right to the point by citing — and amending — Mark Twain’s admonition, “There’s lies, damned lies — and Donald Trump.”
According to the columnist, “The president of the United States not only lies routinely, but he believes other people’s lies without a modicum of skepticism.”
“This week, the liar in question was North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who claimed to have known nothing about what appears to have been the torture and, ultimately, murder of American college student Otto Warmbier<" she wrote before noting Trump backed up Kim, to which she sarcastically adding, "Right." "It is mind-numbing and breathtaking to hear such nonsense from a president who, if normal, would vindicate the victim through punitive actions rather than side with a violent dictator in some weird, contrived, nonproductive chitchat about nuclear weapons," she continued, before offering the following options about Trump, "The president is (a) a useful idiot; (b) a malevolent force in the universe; (c) a small-pawed, big-dog fanboy; (d) a strategic genius." "I think most of us can eliminate option “d,” she immediately suggested. "Even if we pretend that Trump is a strategic genius who is flattering his foes by faking belief in their lies, one is left to wonder to what end? To win their approval? To soften them for the next round? To charm them into believing he’s one of them, that they are essentially the same but for minor differences resolvable through the art of the deal?" she asked. "What every foreign ruler, dictator, president or potentate now knows is that every American tourist, journalist, college student and diplomat is fair game for capture, arrest, hostage-taking, torture or murder — all without consequence. All they have to do is lie to the president, a proven weakling, and the bad thing that happened will just go away," she added before concluding, "The American people must not let him get away with it."
