Maybe Donald Trump’s Eyesight Is Failing

Donald Trump defended his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski Tuesday after he was arrested for assaulting reporter Michelle Fields. Trump claimed the video showed there was “nothing there” and even went a step further, saying that Fields grabbed him, saying that maybe he should be the one filing charges.

What makes the accusation so odd is the image Trump tweeted doesn’t show her grabbing Trump. In fact, it clearly showed that Fields couldn’t grab Trump; one hand was holding a phone and the other was crossed across her body.

It should without saying that watching the full video, no, Fields never actually grabbed Trump.

Later, Trump tweeted out an image that purported to show Fields touching him (what happened to “grabbed”?), because apparently he’s never heard of perspective or depth. “What is in her hand??” he wondered.

It’s a pen.

We’ve seen this before. Trump claimed with a straight face that Lewandowski “didn’t touch” a protester at one of his rallies, despite clear video already showing

he dragged him by his collar. Then there was that time Anderson Cooper asked him about the fact that the “Trump steaks” he presented at a Trump rally were actually another companies’ steaks. Again, despite clear photographic evidence already existing proving that was the case, Trump denied it.

But at least in those instances, Trump himself didn’t tweet out photographic evidence that proved he was wrong. This time, it’s almost as though Trump wanted to save journalists and fact-checkers some time and write our articles for us.

So why on earth would Trump tweet out an image that proved him wrong? The first possible explanation is that his eyesight is failing him. Donald is after all nearing his 70’s and would be the oldest man ever elected president. It may be that Trump’s eyesight is so poor, he cannot even see the images he tweets (actually, this would explain a lot).

The second alternative is that Trump is an unabashed liar. This would require his supporters to be brainless cultists who will support literally any statement he makes despite clear evidence to the contrary, because they are completely incapable of independent thought. It would mean that supporters like Andrea Tantaros who claim that there’s no clear evidence of what happened are either equally brainless or shameless charlatans.

It would require a kind of mass psychosis not seen in the United States since we all decided the

Macarena was cool. It would be an indictment of democracy itself, a repudiation of Andrew Jackson‘s radical idea that the poor, unlanded, and uneducated could be trusted to choose America’s leaders, not just elites. It would be an affirmation of Orwell’s prediction that people would be willing to accept even something as obviously false as 2 + 2 = 5 if presented with nothing more than the threat of an external enemy and a charismatic figure. It would be, in short, the single most disturbing and dangerous development in American history.

Nope, definitely the eyesight thing.

[Image via screengrab]
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