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Thursday
I’ve written numerous posts about the slavish devotion Donald Trump demands of his cabinet officials, but Digby’s Hullabaloo website has just given me another literary way of imagining it: “The Celebrated Jumping Magas of Washington, D.C.”
For extra measure, the post references King Lear, and it also gives me the opportunity to share a favorite image of mine from Gulliver’s Travels.
The title, as no doubt you know, references Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” Channeling Twain’s satiric tone, Digby notes that it took Pam Bondi a whole three hours and 37 minutes (!) to respond to Trump’s command to investigate Democrats associated with Jeffrey Epstein. Trump, of course, wants to deflect attention from his own association with Epstein, but no president since Richard Nixon has had the gall to sic the Justice Department on his enemies—and not even Nixon did it openly!
The need to maintain distance between the president and the attorney general has been so important that even casual encounters can create as stir, as Obama AG Loretta Lynch learned when she had a brief discussion with Hillary Clinton’s husband on an airport tarmac during the 2016 election. AG Merritt Garland, meanwhile, was scrupulous to a fault in maintaining distance from Joe Biden: when he saw that it was necessary to investigate Trump himself for instigating a coup attempt and stealing government documents, he appointed a special prosecutor.
Forget all that when it comes to Trump, who on Friday tweeted out,
Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.
To which Bondi responded,
Thank you, Mr. President. SCNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I’ve asked him to lead. As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.
Noting the time lapse between when Trump tweeted out his “ask” and Bondi responded with her reassurance, Digby comments, “Surely you can do better, Pam. Usually, Trump’s people are pretty snappy about shouting, ‘Yes, sir! How high?’ whenever he says jump.”
Digby then suggests a contest between cabinet officials:
Why not a competition on the White House South Lawn? Let’s see who can jump faster and higher for their king. Consider it a trial run for the UFC the former reality TV star has planned there for the country’s 250-year anniversary. His entire boot-licking cabinet, plus Stephen Miller and OMB Director Russ Vought. Open the games with a solemn quote from King Lear: “Which of you shall we say doth love us most?“
For the record, here’s the response of Lear’s oldest daughter to that question:
Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter,
Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty,
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare,
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor;
As much as child e’er loved, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
As apt as the Lear reference is, Swift goes it one better. In his visit to Lilliput, Gulliver witnesses two gymnastic exercises required of those seeking the emperor’s favor. The first involves a tightrope, a metaphor that every politician who has ever had to balance competing interests will appreciate. Flimnap in Swift’s allegory is Prime Minister Robert Walpole:
When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England.
The other test involves either jumping over a stick or crawling under it (i.e., groveling). The threads awarded as prizes stand in for different orders of knighthood (the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Bath, and the Order of the Thistle):
There is likewise another diversion, which is only shown before the emperor and empress, and first minister, upon particular occasions. The emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads of six inches long; one is blue, the other red, and the third green. These threads are proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor has a mind to distinguish by a peculiar mark of his favor. The ceremony is performed in his majesty’s great chamber of state, where the candidates are to undergo a trial of dexterity very different from the former, and such as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the new or old world. The emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates advancing, one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it, backward and forward, several times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed. Sometimes the emperor holds one end of the stick, and his first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it entirely to himself. Whoever performs his part with most agility, and holds out the longest in leaping and creeping, is rewarded with the blue-coloured silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the third, which they all wear girt twice round about the middle; and you see few great persons about this court who are not adorned with one of these girdles.
In the case of walking the tightrope, everyone takes a fall sooner or later, but Flimnap/Walpole has special insurance:
These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great numbers are on record. I myself have seen two or three candidates break a limb. But the danger is much greater, when the ministers themselves are commanded to show their dexterity; for, by contending to excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is hardly one of them who has not received a fall, and some of them two or three. I was assured that, a year or two before my arrival, Flimnap would infallibly have broke his neck, if one of the king’s cushions, that accidentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the force of his fall.
In Swift’s mind, the cushion is the Duchess of Kendal, mistress of the king and a Walpole supporter. When Walpole messed up, Kendal was there to smooth things over. In Trump’s case, the cushion is merely undying loyalty to Trump so that various screw-ups are allowed—mistakenly leaking battle plans (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth), using a government jet to visit a mistress (FBI director Kash Patel)—if one is satisfactorily dancing, jumping, or crawling.
Gulliver and Lear actually fit Trump better than Twain’s jumping frog since a stranger rigs the contest. As the storyteller recounts it, “he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot—filled him pretty near up to his chin.” It’s this stranger who bears the most resemblance to the current White House since Trump has been sabotaging his opponents his entire life. And as with this stranger, they have yet to “ketch” him.
But whether as jumping frogs, avaricious daughters, or gyrating Lilliputians, the heads of our most important governmental bodies are putting on quite a show.
