When Donald Trump is in revenge mode he does not act, he orchestrates. He is a Toscanini with Marlon Brando chops. In the case of Representative Mark Sanford who dared to vote 'no' on a piece pf health legislation, Trump sent an enforcer to convey a threat. That would qualify as an act that was either immature or crazy. He could have picked up his new iPhone and unloaded. But it was the threat itself that made the whole thing a mirror symphony.
It doesn't have to work
The very heart of Trump's Russia nightmare is similar. Trump says it never happened.
A British former intelligence officer says it did. What is stunning is that it bears the mark of what Trump just did to Sanford. It was a work of mirror art whose purpose was to please no one but the artist. Pointless you say? Not if your name is Donald Trump and your world is roughly contiguous with the whole inhabited earth.
It just has to be perfect
Remember the horror films where the mad scientist holds up some noxious, steaming invention and smiles at his handiwork? That is Donald Trump after he has gotten up in the morning and determined what he will do today. What can I do, he seems to ask, that will turn all eyes to me? Perfection has nothing to do with success. Success is private. It is my own appreciation of what I have done.
The world can go to hell. I am Donald Trump, dammit.
Trump sent Mick Mulvaney to threaten Mark Sanford in the 2018 race. https://t.co/EN2LGTETfk
— Axios (@axios) April 2, 2017
Trump to Mulvaney
So Trump summons his budget director Mick Mulvaney. What a name for an enforcer! Besides he comes from the same state as Mark Sanford, South Carolina.
The stage is set. Because Trump is not some marginal mad scientist, but the democratically elected, legal, ruler of America, Mulvaney follows his orders.
The true weirdness
It's already weird. You don't dispatch a high government official to issue a puerile threat to an elected member of the US congress. But it is the threat itself that is beautiful in the eyes of the beholder who is named Donald Trump.
The more vague the more ominous.
The President hoped Sanders would oppose the bill? That is clearly false since Trump worked to pass the faulty legislation. Why then did he want Sanders to oppose the law? So he, the Donald, could run against him in 2018. That's it. The mirror symphony. The stuff of mobs and gangs and evil designs. All in a day's work The true weirdness is this: what matters to Trump is the idea. The genius of the idea. He basks in it 24/7.
