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WVC football Week 4 preview: Another big one for Berwick, Valley West

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Ex-Harrisburg bishop cleared of abuse allegation

It was five minutes after noon on Aug. 9 and in the East Room of the White House. The president was speaking a few simple words that history might have dismissed as un-majestic, maybe even trite.Except, at that moment, he was speaking the words he knew his fellow citizens most needed to hear: &#8220;Truth is the glue that holds government together.&#8221;It was 1974 and President Gerald Ford had been in office for all of five minutes. He had just been sworn in as America&#8217;s 38th president. His predecessor, Richard Nixon, was flying west, probably over Kansas, having resigned and left the White House in disgrace that morning for having ordered the Watergate scandal cover-up and then lied to us all about it.The ordinary guy who became our unelected president understood that on that day, he needed to address and reassure a worldwide audience: &#8220;I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.&#8221;Truth. Today, sadly, America&#8217;s essential bond of democracy and governance is not just strained but broken, at home and abroad. A world that once felt it could rely upon America&#8217;s word now knows it cannot trust our unbelievable 45th president. The Washington Post&#8217;s fact-checker reports Trump is approaching 5,000 false or misleading statements in his two year presidency.So there is both much that&#8217;s new, yet nothing really new, in all the sad and disillusioning detailed reporting in Bob Woodward&#8217;s newly released book, &#8220;Fear: Trump in the White House.&#8221;&#8220;Fear&#8221; is listed as Woodward&#8217;s 18th book. But in its larger context it may not even be a book at all. Woodward&#8217;s &#8220;Fear&#8221; is functioning as America&#8217;s de facto warning siren. It has emitted a stream of alarms, in the form of detailed accounts about a president who is a compulsive liar.Trump often seems to be not just deceiving others but even himself. He is seen impulsively ordering actions that insiders say aren&#8217;t the result of fact-based decisions, but delusions. First reports of Woodward&#8217;s book were followed by a bizarre New York Times op-ed column, by a self-proclaimed anonymous Trump insider, who confesses to being part of an inside resistance movement that seeks to thwart Trump&#8217;s dangerously delusional impulses.Note: We&#8217;ve been there before too. The Nixon tapes reveal Nixon repeatedly ordering chief of staff H. R. Haldeman to firebomb the Brookings Institution progressive think tank; Haldeman said yes, sir, but never did.Woodward&#8217;s book begins by reporting a stunning incident: Trump&#8217;s former chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, ex-president of Goldman Sachs, stole a letter from Trump&#8217;s Oval Office desk to prevent Trump from signing and sending it to South Korea&#8217;s president. In it, Trump stated he was terminating the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement; Cohn was appalled that Trump didn&#8217;t understand the pact made it possible for the U.S. military to detect a North Korean missile launching in seven seconds and shoot it down before it reached California in just 38 minutes.Woodward also reports that John Dowd, then-Trump&#8217;s lawyer, met with special counsel Robert Mueller to warn that Trump proved in rehearsals he couldn&#8217;t stop himself from lying in live questioning &#8212; and would fail any perjury trap.Woodward&#8217;s book index contains a line that has probably never appeared in any historical work. Under &#8220;Trump, Donald,&#8221; there is this: &#8220;as liar, 208-9, 235, 320, 338, 353, 357.&#8221;<ins>But Woodward&#8217;s book really ought to have been targeted at one rather narrow audience &#8212; the Trump true believers who still back Trump despite all we&#8217;ve witnessed. We understand the frustrations of Trump&#8217;s truest believers &#8212; we still hear their clarion call: &#8220;Please lie to me.&#8221; </ins>Trump long ago mastered the secret of the art of lying. He simply lies to his people in the same way he lies to himself &#8212; by saying things that make him feel good. He doesn&#8217;t seem to care (or even be aware!) that he&#8217;s just made up his facts. Neither do his people.So it is that Woodward&#8217;s book ends oddly &#8212; with a non-quote from a non-happening: Dowd resigned as Trump&#8217;s attorney having seen &#8220;the tragic flaw&#8221; &#8212; but Dowd &#8220;could not bring himself to say to the president: &#8216;You&#8217;re a (f-ing) liar.&#8217;&#8221;America&#8217;s presidential soap opera may end oddly, too. The GOP leaders seem to have succumbed to Dowd&#8217;s disease. They have seen Trump&#8217;s tragic flaw, but they don&#8217;t have the guts to tell Trump&#8217;s true believers what they urgently need to hear.<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>Martin SchramGuest Columnist</bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Readers may send him email at <a href="mailto:martin.schram@gmail.com">martin.schram@gmail.com</a>.</shirttailMeta></div>

Our view: Our president is absolutely unbelievable