Fascism has arrived in America
That canned laughter heard at President Trump’s CIA address was from his own people
In Politics by Drew Salisbury / January 23, 2017
On Saturday, President Trump appeared at the CIA’s headquarters in front of its “most hallowed ground,” a marble wall with 117 stars carved to represent each agent who has died in service, to attack the media for supposedly misrepresenting the tiny turnout at his inauguration. ( I was at the inauguration. It was very, very small.) Later that night, conservative pundit Jeffrey Lord defended the president against criticisms his CIA appearance was wholly inappropriate by noting that the audience frequently laughed and applauded Trump’s remarks, meaning nobody there seemed to be too offended.
“Members of the CIA were clearly laughing at his jokes and clapping,” Lord said. “So what he said couldn’t have been inappropriate.”
This seems like an apt response. There was plenty of applause and laughter throughout the speech, surprising considering that, recently, the president was comparing the agency to Nazi Germany. Unsurprising, however, once you learn that the audience was made up of “a self-selected bunch: CIA employees who signed up to come in on a Saturday to see the new POTUS,” according to The Washington Post’s Greg Miller. “Mostly Trump voters.”
Now, just because the audience reportedly wasn’t an accurate representation of the CIA as a whole doesn’t negate its reaction to the president’s speech — after all, these people still are agents, right? Unless “the cheering and clapping was not from the CIA staffers but people who accompanied Trump.” That’s what The Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler, and others who were present for the appearance, noted.
Basically, Trump brought an IRL laugh track to the CIA meeting to make people at home believe agents he spent the last two months shitting on were eating up hackneyed insult comedy about the dishonest press in front of a wall memorializing their dead colleagues. “CIA agents weren’t offended by President Trump’s speech” is yet another “ alternative fact” (aka lie) Trump’s administration will use this to toy with the public’s perception of reality. Here’s a real fact for you, though: The recently resigned head of the CIA is pissed.
“Former CIA Director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes,” Nick Shapiro, a former aide to John Brennan at CIA, told NBC News. “ should be ashamed of himself.” |
