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She was reading from a Times article1 about how Mary Trump, who had recently published a book about how her “family created the world’s most dangerous man,” had secretly recorded telephone conversations with the president’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry (which is legal in the State of New York with the consent of one party, which in this case was Mary Trump). Maryanne told Mary that she had once asked her brother for help in obtaining a judicial appointment. Mrs. Goines read from the Post article2:
“ ‘He had Roy Cohn call Reagan about needing to appoint a woman as a federal judge in New Jersey,’ Barry told Mary. ‘Because Reagan’s running for reelection, and he was desperate for the female vote.’ Then, she said, ‘I had the nomination,’ and Donald Trump never let Barry forget it...
“ ‘He once tried to take credit for me,’ Barry said of her brother, quoting him as saying, ‘Where would you be without me?’ Barry said she told her brother: ‘You say that one more time and I will level you.’ She told Mary that it was ‘the only favor I ever asked for in my whole life’....”
Mrs. Goines read aloud for several minutes – fascinating stuff, couldn’t put it down – and Goines couldn’t stop listening, however much most things Trumpian disgusted him. “Ms. Barry tells Ms. Trump what ended up being one of the most explosive allegations in the book by the president’s niece: that Mr. Trump cheated to get into college by having someone else take the SAT for him…Ms. Barry criticized the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents when they tried to cross the border from Mexico. ‘All he wants to do is appeal to his base,’ Ms. Barry told Ms. Trump, according to the paper. ‘He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this’.
“Maryanne Trump Barry was serving as a federal judge when she heard her brother, President Trump, suggest on Fox News, ‘maybe I’ll have to put her at the border’ amid a wave of refugees entering the United States. At the time, children were being separated from their parents and put in cramped quarters while court hearings dragged on....
“Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as president. ‘His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,’ she said. ‘I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.’
“ ‘What has he read?’ Mary Trump asked her aunt.
“ ‘No. He doesn’t read,’ Barry responded....
“Maryanne said on another occasion that her brother kept asking about Fox News. One day, Barry said, the president called her and said, ‘Did you watch Fox News?’
“ ‘No,’ Barry said she told the president.
“ ‘Why not?’ he said.
“ ‘I don’t watch much television at all,’ Barry said she responded.
“ ‘What do you do?’ the president asked.
“ ‘I read,’ Barry replied.
“ ‘What do you read?’ the president said.
“ ‘Books,’ Barry said.
“The president was incredulous. ‘You don’t watch Fox?’”
Goines was grateful that he felt energetic for his walk after breakfast; often lately he hadn’t. Soon now, a sopping sweat was drenching his T-shirt and, as he neared the three-quarter point of a vigorous walk, swinging his cane from side to side behind his back, holding each end with a hand, a limerick started to form itself. Knowing how quickly a verse (or a paragraph) could dissolve, he stopped to dictate into his iPhone. It was rough, but he could shape it later. Hot damn! Inspiration! He’d take it.
Self-inflation raised to the highest power,_______________
he legally breached our loftiest bower,
and there displays for all to see
how tiny such a one can be,
raving, tweeting, lying, hour after hour.
| Copyright © 2020 by Moristotle |
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