Jekyll & Hyde

Maybe people are starting to get wise to Donald Trump, to see that he’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in one body. Dr. Jekyll shows up when the president wants to seem “presidential”—as when he spoke before Congress—and Mr. Hyde appears when Trump is under fire and wants to change the subject. That’s when he’s likely to toss out a whopper or do something provocative to divert the media’s and the public’s attention.

He is, as many have noted, a master of distraction. And he continues to misbehave because, so far at least, he’s gotten away with it.

Most recently, as everybody knows, he charged, without a scintilla of evidence, that President Barack Obama illegally wiretapped Trump Tower. Is the president delusional or just crazy like a fox? Either way, it’s obvious he was trying to distract us from the muck his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is floundering in.

What’s also clear is that he’s successfully drawing our attention from the dramatic changes he and his fellow Republicans in Congress are making as they “deconstruct the administrative state,” to use Steve Bannon’s inimitable phrasing. The latest iteration of Trump’s ban on Muslims is just one of those distractions.

So far, bills introduced in the House would kill the EPA (HR 861) and the Department of Education (HR 899), repeal a rule protecting wildlife (HJR 69), repeal Obamacare (HR 370), defund Planned Parenthood (HR 354), criminalize abortion (HR 147), establish a national schools voucher program (HR 610), and institute a national right-to-work (anti-union) policy (HR 785).

Think about that. And don’t let Mr. Hyde’s tomfoolery distract you from what is really going on.