Last night as I contemplated what to write
about this week, I pondered momentarily keying on Rick Perry, prospective
Energy Secretary. The irony here is
stunning. On November 9, 2011, under the
glare of the bright lights of the 2012 GOP Candidate’s Presidential Debate
stage in Rochester, MI, Governor Perry had an “Oops” moment, which he later
described as, well, embarrassing.
The Texas Governor had spent a good deal of his
campaign revving up the rhetoric regarding his intent to dismantle the
Commerce, Education, and Energy Departments.
Suffice it to say it came as more than a bit of a shock when he found
himself immersed in an epic memory fail.
It went a little something like this:
“It’s
three agencies of government when I get there that are gone – Commerce,
Education and the um, what’s the third one there? Let’s see. Oh five –
Commerce, Education and the um, um,”
Mitt Romney,
standing two podiums to Perry’s right, offered the Environmental
Protection Agency as a suggestion.
“EPA,
there you go,” Perry said.
But then,
the Texas governor quickly retracted his statement, saying the EPA doesn’t need
to be eliminated but simply rebuilt.
Again, he
tried to name the third mystery agency.
“But
you can’t name the third one?” CNBC moderator John Harwood asked.
“The
third agency of government I would do away with - the education, the
uh, the commerce and let’s see. I can’t the third one. I can’t. Sorry Oops.”
The third
agency Perry couldn’t think of was the Department of Energy, which he rails
against on the stump nearly every day.
Perry finally
remembered the third agency 15 minutes later after referring to his notes,
saying, “By the way, it was the Department of Energy I was talking about.”
Afterward,
he tried to make the best of a very bad situation.
“Speaking
of boots, I’m glad I had my boots on tonight because I sure stepped in it out
there. I stepped in it. Man, yeah
it was embarrassing. Of course it was.
From
time to time, you may forget about an agency that you are gonna zero out. Everybody tomorrow will understand the Energy
Department is one of those that needs to be done away with.”
About 10
weeks later, January 19th, Perry officially withdrew from the
campaign. The reality of the situation
is, he was done November 9th.
He never recovered.
Fast-forward
to the 2012 GOP Primary season and the former Governor was back on the
trail. This time faced with the (apparently) irresistible force that is Donald Trump, Perry would refer to Mr. Trump as:
“A cancer on conservatism” and “a barking carnival act.”
In response,
Trump said of Perry:
“Perry
did an absolutely horrible job of securing the border. He should be ashamed of himself.”
So now, in a
double dose of irony, Mr. Trump and Governor Perry appear ready to kiss and
make up. In what, at least for the
purpose of this summary, I will declare a win-win-win scenario. Perry gets a job, Trump gets the last laugh,
and we…we get to watch it all unfold.
Enough already about Governor Perry.
Last night, as I was
considering the topic du jour, I came across a PBS Special written and produced
by Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns, &
David McMahon, examining the 1989 Central Park 5 case. I have already written about this horrendous
historical hazing, but I could not stop watching. Nine weeks ago, on October 12, I penned a
post entitled, “Deny, Decry, Defend, Deflect, Divert, Dissemble, and Dismiss: The
Trump Mantra!” The case was the
focus of the piece. I believe it
captured the essence what happened, and of course, it pointed out Donald
Trump’s role in it.
Today, I’m just going to play it again.
The story included 10 examples of what I consider classic
Trumpisms. For this post, the last
bullet is an appropriate lead-in:
▪ Ran an ad calling for the State to kill
five schoolchildren
The list
above is not intended to reflect a Top 10 of Mr. Trump’s offensive deeds or
actions. In fact, it is an acutely abridged version of what some might refer to
as his parade of despicable antics. I am going to briefly elevate the last of
the preceding bullets notated. That bullet summarizes the Central Park
jogger case, which was a 1989 case familiarly known as the Central
Park 5.
A woman was attacked
while jogging in New York City‘s
Central Park, on April 19,
1989. The encounter consisted of violent assault, rape, and sodomy. The 28-year-old
victim remained in a coma
for 12 days. The New York Times characterized the assault as one of the most
widely publicized crimes of the 1980’s.
When the
story broke, it was detailed by police and prosecutors as a band of young
people, part of a larger gang, rampaging Central Park, and mercilessly beating
and assaulting the jogger. The story exploded upon the public sphere, having
been fanned by both politicians and sensationalized media accounts.
Five black
and Hispanic young men, ages 14 to 16 were arrested, and subsequently
convicted. Despite the fact all of them asserted that the incriminating
statements they gave had been coerced by authorities, their statements were
ruled admissible, and led to convictions in 1990.
In 2002, the
Manhattan District Attorney (DA) found DNA and other evidence that the woman
had not been beaten and raped by the five teens. Instead, another man, a
convicted rapist and murderer who had confessed
to acting alone in the attack, was the perpetrator. The DA concluded that the
new evidence, if available, could have resulted in a different verdict during
the trial. He joined a defense motion asking that the convictions be vacated.
In 2014, the
five men agreed to a $41 million
settlement from New York City to resolve a civil rights lawsuit over
their arrests and imprisonment. The settlement averaged about $1 million for
each year the men were imprisoned. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio
deemed it a “moral obligation to right this
injustice.” The suit alleged false arrest, malicious prosecution,
and a racially motivated conspiracy to deprive them of their civil tights by
the city’s police and prosecutors. It is worth noting, the previous Mayor,
Michael Bloomberg vigorously denied and fought against the suit in federal
court for more than a decade.
Let’s
rewind. On May 1, 1989, Mr. Trump published an ad
in the New York Daily News calling for the State to kill the five
teenagers who had been arrested, convicted, and as we now know, confessed to
the crimes under police coercion. Though convicted, they were not guilty, a
fact later proved by DNA and other evidence.
In
retrospect, it is clear the possibility that the Central Park 5 might be
innocent never occurred to Donald Trump. Apparently, it still hasn’t. He
emblazoned his opinion in a New York Daily News ad with a clarion call to anger
and fear: “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!”
Years later
when the city offered to settle the case, Mr. Trump again took to the New York
Daily News with an op-ed full of
disgust. He insisted it was “ridiculous” that the city offered a
settlement, and that “settling doesn’t mean innocence.” This was, and still is
his position, even after the men were exonerated, and moreover, after DNA
evidence established without a doubt that someone else (who also confessed) was
the culprit.
Just last
week Trump told CNN in a
statement “they admitted they were guilty. The police doing the
original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled
with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly
injured, will never be the same.”
This choice
to embrace some facts, while opting to ignore others, such as the new DNA
evidence and corresponding subsequent confession, are emblematic of what I have
come to characterize as the Trump Way…his hardwired philosophy, if you will.
This is an artful design with seven key principles. He has already written The
Art of the Deal (1987), and The Art of the Comeback (1997). Perhaps
his next tome should be entitled, The Art of “Deny, Decry,
Defend, Deflect, Divert, Dissemble, and Dismiss: The Trump Mantra!” At
least, that what it was called a couple of months ago. Today, it’s, “The Central Park Five:Revisiting A Travesty!”
I’m done; holla
back!
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