A US president from a surreal world

The US and the international media covered President Donald Trump's February 16 interview at the White House as an event with all the trappings for which viewers wait for a long time to watch on the television. That a US president would face the world and make such a show, setting aside all the fun, is sad for America and underlines with all the seriousness that the country is headed to a direction that, according to the Republican Senator John McCain, is one that dictators take to "get started."
When a correspondent questioned him on his claim that his victory was not the biggest one on electoral votes since President Reagan's in 1980 and that President Obama, President Clinton and President GW Bush had all had more electoral votes than him, his answer was he had made that claim based on papers "someone" had given him! When the mess in his administration was obvious like daylight, he claimed that the "fake" media was making that claim and his administration was running like a perfectly oiled machine!
It is, of course, a waste of time to point out the extent of lies and falsehoods in the statements of the new president of America. He has created a world of alternative facts that is the same world that Saddam Hussein had created leading to the Iraq War in 2003 and that all dictatorial regimes have created in history where nothing existed that the ruler did not like or want.
Thus while the US and allied troops were routing Saddam Hussein's troops during their invasion of Iraq in 2003, his spokesman in Baghdad was recounting with the foreign media stories of their imaginary glorious victories against them! Nicknamed as Baghdad Bob in the USA and Comic Ali in the UK, Saddam Hussein's spokesman, would tell those lies of the imaginary victories of the Saddam regime day in and day out without blinking an eyelid.
The same surreal atmosphere is prevailing these days in Washington. The White House Spokesman Sean Spicer is fooling America and the rest of the world as Baghdad Bob/Comic Ali had done for the Saddam Hussein regime! There is, of course, a major difference between the Trump administration and the Saddam regime. The Iraqi dictator did not himself make the absurd claims. President Donald Trump is leading with gusto, the world of alternative truth or the fake world.
Nevertheless, the US media that the new administration has identified as the enemy is again making the same mistake as it had done during the campaign. The media went into denial over the absurdities and lies of Donald Trump during the campaign because it believed that unless it propped him up, the election would fizzle out into a non-event allowing an 'unpopular' Hillary Clinton an easy passage to the White House. Thus it harassed and harangued the Democratic candidate over the email issue that the many Republican investigations in the Congress had failed to dig anything to damage or destroy her candidature.
The media allowed Donald Trump to say absurd things to distract its focus away from him whenever embarrassing truths came to public attention and threatened his candidature. It went after the new absurd things allowing him to get off the hook. If it had brought Donald Trump to even a part of scrutiny to which it had subjected Hillary Clinton, his candidature would have been over much before he made it to the Republican Convention. The media did so in order to make the election competitive!  
Donald Trump is again playing the same trick on the media. The intelligence leak that led to the resignation of General Flynn for his "Russian connections"  - now named as Kremlingate - was developing and leading towards the president. It was revealed after the General's resignation through further intelligence leaks that senior members of the Trump campaign were in constant touch with intelligence sources in Kremlin. If the leaks were to reveal that the Russians influenced the election for Donald Trump, the legitimacy of the election would come into serious doubt.
Donald Trump's weird press conference on February 16 was his old campaign trick of doing something unbelievable to stop the media from pursuing something threatening against him because Kremlingate is loaded with dangerous possibilities for the new president. He has followed the press conference by visiting North Carolina and Florida using his base of alt-right supporters to show the same type of support as they had done during the campaign to throw the media off track from pursuing his "Russian connections."
Whether the new president would be able to come out of the political quicksand into which he has fallen largely due to his own doing would depend not so much on the media as the politicians. The media, of course, is now aware of his old tricks and therefore it would not be as easy to fool it again. The Republicans in Congress are biding their time and waiting to use his presidency to get a great deal of their conservative agenda across that they were unable to carry through in the last eight years under President Obama. But they are worried whether they would be able to use his presidency for their conservative agenda.
There is a lurking suspicion that the mainstream conservatives could set into motion the exit strategy for Donald Trump to bring their first choice to power. Therefore, a Republican-inspired impeachment of President Trump to install Vice President Pence as the president is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. However, Democrats may not be as willing to see the exit of Donald Trump by bringing in Mike Pence in his place who is a more dangerous prospect to their short- and long-term interests than Donald Trump.
Instead, it is likely the Democrats would want the conflict between the White House and the Republicans in Congress to sharpen and implode. Senator McCain has already alerted that unless not just the Republican Party but America as a whole stands up against Donald Trump, the country could slide towards a dictatorship. Therefore, it is more likely that the Democrats would pursue the "Russian connections" of the new administration.
With the media now the declared enemy of the White House and the intelligence community more or less in the same predicament, there is no telling what could eventually come out of the "Russian connections." The Democrats could pursue Kremlingate to see whether there are more dangerous revelations that could even bring into question the legitimacy of the election. Before Donald Trump, no one even in a state of insanity could think that the legitimacy of a US presidential election would be in doubt. In the Trump era, everything is possible.
The new US president has taken to the roads on an election mode when his presidency is just a month old to get out of these dangerous possibilities. Donald Trump has chosen to take Washington to the doorsteps of his constituents and with them by his side, humiliate it with all its institutions to run the country. But many who had voted for him are realising that they had made a very bad choice and those who voted against them are now willing to do anything to get rid of him.
Donald Trump has embarked upon a way of running his administration that just cannot succeed unless he gives up his racist agenda and his world of alternative facts and returns to reality. It is the media that now must show its resolve to ensure that the fear of Senator McCain that is shared by many is stopped in its track.
The writer is a former Ambassador.
serajul7@gmail.com