There’s an old saying that Donald Trump should heed.
“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
That bit of unvarnished truth has been erroneously attributed to Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain and Confucius. In fact, it appeared in a now obscure 1907 book, “Mrs. Goose, Her Book,” by an obscure author, Maurice Switzer.
Switzer’s sentence became an aphorism because it expresses hard-won wisdom—wisdom that eludes our president.
Trump’s latest exercise in confirming his boorishness consisted of his comments about Norway at a campaign rally in Port Huron, Michigan.
“I’m not in love with Norway, frankly. Norway sucks. Norway has become a s***house country, actually,” the supposed leader of the free world told the crowd.
The president’s putdown of the perfectly pleasant Scandinavian nation is part of his prolonged pout about not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Trump being Trump, he blames the Norwegian government for his failure to secure the august honor—not the fact that he launched an unprovoked war with Iran, invaded Venezuela in violation of international laws and customs and has authorized Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to conduct extralegal harassment campaigns against people of Hispanic descent here in the United States, even if they are U.S. citizens or have the proper travel documents. He even has condoned shootings of unarmed citizens by ICE officers.
Saying it’s OK to gun down one’s own people doesn’t exactly place this president in the company of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa, both of whom were honored with Nobels.
Nonetheless, Trump has been obsessed with claiming the prize, perhaps because the American political leader he most fears, former President Barack Obama, has won the prize.
In January, Trump sent Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre an extraordinary text that read:
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
Set aside the president’s capricious use of capitalization for a moment, distracting as his near illiteracy is, and focus instead on the admission at the end of that text message.
Trump said that, because he hadn’t won the prize, he now could focus on what was in the best interests of the United States.
In other words, doing what was best for the country he took an oath to lead and defend was only of secondary importance to him.
Winning individual honors was number one on his hit parade.
In a sane time and with any other president, that alone would be grounds to begin impeachment proceedings or invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from power.
A president’s job always is to do what is in the interests of the United States. It isn’t to run around begging for someone to pat him on the head and tell him that he’s a good boy—particularly when he clearly is neither good nor a boy.
That Trump has opted to demean Norway, one of the nicest, most beautiful and most civilized countries on the planet, as part of his whining about how hard his life is only makes the rest of the world consider both him and the rest of us Americans—the suckers who put him in office for a second time—to be clueless buffoons.
Earlier this year, I traveled in Norway.
As I drove around the country and talked with the people there, I was struck not just by the physical beauty of the place, but its sheer niceness. There is next to no violent crime there and one can walk through even the largest cities without seeing homeless people.
That’s because Norwegians believe in caring for their people.
In Oslo, I visited the Nobel Museum.
As I looked at the displays honoring past recipients, I noted a common theme—a self-effacing quality that defined the honorees. Rather than screaming that they deserved the award, most often their contention was, no matter how superhuman their efforts had been, that they hadn’t done enough.
Trump, on the other hand, thinks he deserves the honor just, uh, because.
Really, Mr. President, it’s time to stay quiet.
At this point, you’re just removing all doubt.