Oops

“I was mistaken.”

This was Moscow Mitch McConnell’s explanation for having said President Obama did not provide a 69-page pandemic playbook for the incoming Trump administration.

Admitting mistakes, while sometimes embarrassing, is always a good thing. Realizing we’ve made mistakes is how we learn, admitting them is how we grow.

Because he is unwilling or incapable of doing either, Donald Trump remains an intellectual five-year-old. He is a 250 pound man-child who happens to be president of the United States because sixty million Americans made the mistake of voting for him in 2016.

Not everyone would agree with that statement. They don’t have to. How we vote isn’t necessarily a mistake regardless of the outcome, or whether the winner turns out to be good or bad, competent or incompetent.

In Trump’s case, we know he can’t speak intelligently, he doesn’t read, and is so thin-skinned that those around him must baby him to keep him from flying off the handle. When was the last time the leader of the free world had to be babied?

He also is incapable of making decisions. He simply thinks out loud, tells us what people—real or imagined—are telling him, or what he heard on T.V., or what he concocted in his own “brilliant” mind.

These are all observations from the last three and a half years of his presidency, but these facts were all true and in plain sight when he was running in 2016. That’s why voting for him was a mistake of massive proportion. We are not seeing a new or different Trump. He’s the same man-child, intellectual idiot now that he’s always been.

His presidency began with a mistake and the mistakes continue to mount.

He puts people in positions of authority only to have to remove them because he made a mistake.

Sometimes people remove themselves because they realized joining his team was a mistake.

Every encounter with Speaker Pelosi has turned into a mistake for Trump.

Making that “perfect” phone call was a mistake.

Promoting bleach as a cure for COVID-19 was a mistake. It certainly wasn’t an example of sarcasm.

Every day of his administration, from the estimate of the Inauguration Day crowd size to opening up America without adequate testing, has produced new mistakes by him or his accomplices like McConnell, Barr, Giuliani, Rep. Nunes, Pence and just about everyone else in his inner circle. Until now, few have admitted to making a mistake. 

McConnell’s admission that “he was mistaken” is something—if he was, in fact, merely mistaken.

What exactly is a mistake? The dictionary defines mistake as an action or judgement that is misguided or wrong—like giving the wrong answer to a test question. Most people don’t give the wrong answer intentionally.

So, what is a mistake not?

I don’t think a lie is a mistake. Telling a lie might possibly be a mistake—especially if the lie is exposed—but the lie wasn’t a mistake. The lie was a lie and was wrong.

I have to think that if former Obama administration officials were saying they handed over a 69-page pandemic playbook to the incoming Trump administration, they were telling the truth. It would be foolish to say it existed if it did not. Nothing gets exposed more quickly in Washington than a lie.

Nevertheless, Trump said the playbook did not exist. Obama left him no guidelines, no PPEs, no nothing. McConnell, because he has not stood up to Trump in that past, could not stand up to him in the present. Not only could he not stand up to the president, he had to demonstrate his loyalty because babying the president is what Republicans do. Apparently, he felt he did not have the luxury of simply keeping his mouth shut.

Against all the rules of common sense, he sided with Trump, a man who has told tens of thousands of lies during his presidency and God-knows how many in his lifetime. He echoed Trump’s claim that Obama left him nothing. Furthermore, McConnell declared that Obama should have done what he, himself, was incapable of doing—keep his mouth shut and not criticized the president.

McConnell’s statement wasn’t a mistake. It was a lie. It was a mistake in judgement to tell the lie. It was a mistake to think he could get away with a lie. Hell, it was a mistake to call it a mistake.  

People like Trump, and apparently, McConnell is one of them, can’t help themselves. Lies roll off their tongues like slop fall from pigs’ snouts.

I have written on other occasions that Trump and McConnell are bullies and cowards, throwing their weight around, but standing for little.

They lie because, as cowards, they can’t face the truth. The bully in them makes them think they can get away with lying. When their lies are exposed, they make excuses, much as you would expect intellectual dimwits to do.

Trump, and the people around him, continually attack those who expose his lies, making outrageous claims that he was only joking, or being sarcastic. I don’t recall Trump ever taking the baby step of admitting he was mistaken, much less lying.

This is ample proof that as bad as he is, McConnell is only a piker compared to Trump. 

He shies away from the personal insults that Trump relishes handing out. McConnell is still a bully, still a coward, but he isn’t quite the psychopath that Trump is. He is still naive enough to think he can get away with “I was mistaken.”

Why wouldn’t he opt for this route?

“I was mistaken” draws out the response, “That’s okay. Mistakes happen.”

“I lied” begs the obvious response, “Why did you lie?”

Anyone with an ounce of brains, which seems to be the minimum requirement for this administration and its supporters, knows that the answer to why did you lie will only result in more lies.

This is the tale of two cowards, bullies, and liars and how they behave when caught in a lie.

One man, McConnell, says he was mistaken, goes into hiding and hopes for the best.

The other, Trump, double-downs, says his accusers are nasty for questioning him, and declares the truth to be a hoax. If this does not work, he turns and walks away crying, “Why is everybody always picking on me?”

If a five-year-old behaved like this, the expectation would be that someday the child would grow up.

Trump isn’t a five-year-old. He only acts like one. He is a 73-year-old man-child. What we see is as good as it is going to get.

As for McConnell, I only see more “mistakes” down the road. Anyone powerful enough to stand up to Trump, but too coward to do so will continue to lie and apologize for the mistake.