Carry on, Clio

 Julian E. Zelizer is a Princeton historian and editor of The Presidency of Donald J. Trump:  A First Historical Assessment.  As part of that thankless task he and some colleagues were treated to a Zoom conference with Forty-five Himself, which he describes in the current Atlantic.  Trump apparently thought the project was yet another of his ghost-written memoirs only with more ghosts.  As usual, he was full of self-praise, complaint about the "rigged and lost" 2020 election, and his weird continuing obsession with the catapults on the USS Gerald R. Ford.  He's sticking to the lies about the insurrection, how "peaceful" and "full of love" the participants were (over a million!), how all the violence was caused by antifa and Black Lives Matter, the incompetence of the Capitol Police, etc.  And did they know his uncle was a professor at MIT?  (I'm an intellectual just like you, only with contempt for intellectuals.)  The historians were "a tremendous group of people...rather than being critical I'd like to have you hear me out..."  Pathetic.

"He seemed to want the approval of historians, without any understanding of how historians gather evidence or render judgments," Professor Zelizer writes.  Trump closed, "I hope it's going to be a number one best-seller!"  He's not going to read it but someone will tell him what it says.  And on whatever platform still allows him to comment, there will be days of contumely and rage.

Of course Trump has already published the history of his amazing, fantastic administration in a form his followers can enjoy:  photographs.  Our Journey Together, which sounds like the title of a high school yearbook, costs only $230 for a signed copy at Trumpazon or whatever his merchandise mart is called, and they'll probably sell you a coffee table to put it on.  The "publisher" is Donald J. Trump, Jr., a way to keep all profits in the Family, especially as the photos cost them nothing.  They were mostly made by Shealah Craighead, official White House photographer, and are therefore public property.  (Craighead was planning to publish her own book, as Pete Souza did with Reagan and Obama, but was warned off when Trump got wind of her plans and smelled money.)  Craighead gets no credit apart from a listing at the end with other photographers, possibly because Trump often dumped on her in the presence of guests -- evidently too many of her snaps made him look obese, vacant, or simply dumb.  During time when real presidents read briefings and background papers, and sometimes even books, Trump loved to pore over pictures of himself, selecting the ones where he looked less obese, vacant and dumb.  That's right, we saw the flattering ones.

History is being made and written every day because of the vanity and depravity of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.  The atrocities in Bucha were so appalling that Timothy Snyder's regular post was in free verse, too painful for prose.  Today in Trostianets, Shaun Walker recounts what he heard from residents after the Russians were driven out:  "They stole everything, even my underwear."  "The fuckers stole my laptop and my aftershave."  "The Russians are dogs, they are subhumans, they are locusts."  Walker writes, "Ukrainian sappers have removed mines and tripwires from the cemetery."  Who in hell mines a cemetery?  

Last night Chris Hayes asked why the Russians would leave the streets of Bucha littered with the bodies of murder victims and dump hundreds more in mass graves, then deny responsibility.  Isn't the point to terrorize people with your ability to kill?  When the bodies of murdered Polish officers were unearthed in the Katyn Forest in 1943 the Red Army insisted it was the work of the Germans (guilty of so many undoubted atrocities, what's one more?).  To this day Russia does not acknowledge the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.  As with Trump and his "stolen election," the lie is the point.  It doesn't even rise to the shabby grandeur of Goebbels's Big Lie, endlessly repeated and eventually believed.  Goebbels knew he was lying.  This is worse.  "I can make up my own alternative facts, my own reality, and you can't dislodge me from them."  

Herschel Walker is marching through Georgia telling people he was high school valedictorian and graduated from the University of Georgia.  Neither is true; both are easy to check.  Why bother?

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) showed up at a Trump hate rally to praise the way he "caught" Osama bin Laden.  In 2011, some six years before the dawn of American Carnage.

Madison Cawthorn told some pod that people come up to him with tears in their eyes and beg him to attend their sex-and-coke orgies in sinful Washington.  When challenged by literally every other Republiclown he confesses to Kevin McCarthy that maybe he misunderstood or something.  Who makes up shit like this?

Clio is taking names.