Do you ever wonder what constitutes “evidence” in the president’s mind? For most people, evidence refers to the facts of forensic investigations and eyewitness testimony, at least in the legal system. In the president’s mind, however, “evidence” seems to be whatever he wishes is true right at the moment.
In science, evidence refers to established facts and data. Scientific research includes carefully controlled experiments aimed at investigating various aspects of the material world, both biological and physical.
In chemistry and physics, attention is paid to the composition and properties of elements, changes induced by chemical combinations, the laws of motion and theories of gravity, evolution, etc. Among the luminaries are included Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and the late Stephen Hawking.
The difference is striking between what constitutes evidence in law and science and what the president seems to think it means. The president for years asserted President Obama was not born in America. He insisted there was no birth certificate to prove otherwise when in fact there was.
He appeared wholly ignorant of the fact that Congress has always had a committee that verified each candidate was qualified to run for office. As early as 1789 there was a Committee on Elections organized by Congress after the first election. (This was split into three Election Committees in 1895. The committees were later abolished in 1947 but their duties were taken over by the new House Administration Committee.)
If a candidate for president were younger than 35, for example, that would be red-flagged, as would the fact if he or she were born in another country. There was some discussion on this point concerning Ted Cruz and whether he qualified as a “natural-born citizen” who could become president because he was born in Canada; the answer was probably” yes” since his parents were Americans, although the need for final resolution of the issue never came to a head.
Years ago (1964) there was some minor issue raised about Senator Barry Goldwater—whether the fact that he was born in Arizona while it was yet a territory (and not a state) would create a problem. He was born in 1909 and Arizona was not admitted to statehood until 1912.
Was he a “Natural born Citizen”? As the senator was not elected to the presidency, the issue was not further addressed at that time—the point being, there is a congressional committee that examines closely all such matters.
President Obama could never have taken office had he not met all the qualifications for president, including his birthplace in Hawaii making him an American citizen.
Obviously the current president does not care to read much history but such congressional procedures and safeguards are locked in place; they are there for him to consider should he ever wish to turn over a new leaf. What kind of “evidence” did Trump have for making such a claim in the first place?
He had none whatsoever other than right-wing sources who spread it as rumor and then repeated it as anti-Obama fuel to fan-the-flames of racism. It was always a false assertion. Apparently, Trump has a problem answering questions by relying on facts and evidence.
Even after President Obama released the short form of his birth certificate, Trump could not let the matter go and demanded to see the long form!
Consider: the short form was already recognized as a proper legal document and legitimate for passport acquisition and other purposes.
The author discovered this for himself when he needed to request a copy of his birth certificate in 2013 in order to renew his passport; the certified short form of my birth certificate was delivered along with a brief history of its official adoption (2011). It was accepted as proof of citizenship by Passport Services, within the Bureau of Consular Affairs, under the U.S. Department of State.
It actually takes an extra step or two to re-acquire the earlier long form version which President Obama also did—and finally Trump kept quiet. After years of Trump making totally false allegations on this matter, without the slightest shred of evidence, he was forced to keep quiet.
When the Central Park 5 went on trial for rape, Trump took out full page ads calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. All five teenage defendants were convicted in 1989 but exonerated in 2002 when another man, already convicted or rape and murder, confessed to the crime. That man’s DNA proved a match to evidence left at the scene of the crime.
After spending six to thirteen years in jail, the Central Park five were finally cleared and New York agreed to pay them $41 million. Even then, Trump did not change his opinion.
The renowned film-maker Ken Burns made a documentary on the case in 2012 and opined: “Apparently Mr. Trump is unfamiliar with the concept of wrongful conviction.”
When a person throws out false accusations without evidence, it is shameful; when that same person refuses to change his opinion even after the legal system fully concedes a mistake was made, it is more than shameful; it is morally reprehensible.
And yet, all of this is only half the story. The first part deals with a president who ignores facts not to his liking, such as Obama being an American citizen. For the record, Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961 (which is two years after Hawaii became the 50th American state on August 21, 1959.)
The president likewise stubbornly refused to accept the exoneration of five falsely accused individuals, their wrongful convictions proven by the new science of DNA evidence and the confession of the actual perpetrator!
Now let us examine what happens when it comes to highly credible allegations of Russia’s 2016 election meddling and the Saudi Arabian government’s role in the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul, Turkey.
Suddenly the president becomes an expert on the insufficiency of evidence, a piece of irony reaching a level of lunacy given his long history of falsehoods and uncontrolled hyperbole.
Even though all the top intelligence agencies concur that Russia meddled in American elections, Trump chooses to ignore their findings!
The president’s response to the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Kashoggi was no less shocking and boggles the imagination.
In authoritarian regimes, everything is top-heavy and top-down; orders come from above. People don’t risk taking controversial actions on their own with such potentially grave consequences waiting to ignite.
For Trump to suggest that there’s a “question” regarding whether the Crown Prince (next in line to be king of Saudi Arabia) may have been involved–ranging from prior knowledge to actually authorizing the murder—is in itself disingenuous and superfluous.
Once again, American intelligence agencies (with some access to Turkey’s inside information) have already expressed a high degree of confidence that the answer is yes, the Crown Prince was involved—it could not be otherwise in such a society as Saudi Arabia now is.
The head of the CIA, Gina Haspel, met with a small group of Senators (12/04/18) to brief them on the matter. At least two of the Senators came out fuming and furious from what they learned:
Senator Lindsey Graham said of the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), there’s” zero chance” that the Saudi Prince wasn’t involved in the murder of Kashoggi.
Senator Bob Corker thought that if the crown prince were put on trial a jury would find him guilty of murder in “about 30 minutes” and there was “zero question” in his mind that the crown prince ordered and monitored the killing of Jamal Kashoggi.
And what is Trump’s position on Russian meddling and the Crown Prince’s involvement in the murder of Kashoggi? The president points out that Putin denies being involved in any meddling, just as the crown prince denies being involved in any murder!
What does the president make of all the evidence to the contrary? Apparently, he has made up his mind to ignore it for as long as he can. He naively chooses to believe two heads of authoritarian foreign states over the opinion of his own intelligence agencies, and despite the fact that those nations have a long history of human rights abuses.
Trump thus reveals himself to be a practitioner of the double standard taken to a new height of chutzpah or, perhaps better stated, to a new low of intellectual incompetence and moral depravity.
While he himself is repeatedly guilty of making the wildest accusations against others without a shred of evidence, he turns right around and ignores mounds of real evidence not to his personal liking—even though such evidence points to an inescapable conclusion and at times nearly rises to the level of irrefutable proof.
Note well: He repudiates genuine evidence, on the one hand, and offers unwarranted claims and wild speculation on the other. The president willingly spreads falsehoods even as he dismisses bonafide evidence.
He is becoming the poster boy for “double standard” thinking: a “switch-hitter” who revels in ignorance, falsehoods, hysteria, fear, bluster, and close-mindedness.
His reasoning, values, and opinions create an amazing mess of inept and inane contradictions.
This would be true for any average citizen with a similar history of such strange and inexplicable beliefs and utterances. Such a person would soon be recognized within the field of psychiatry as needing therapy.
When an irrational attitude is witnessed in the leader of a democratic nation, such psychological instability must necessarily lead to grave concerns regarding the mental health of the president and the welfare of the nation.
The president’s foibles and follies appear to reflect willful blindness, criminal deception, and the placing of smug egotism over constitutional duties; taken all together, they threaten to drag the president across the threshold of impeachable offenses.
Any man who holds truth itself–and the evidence upon which it is based–in such contempt cannot be trusted to lead America.
