PRESIDENT QUEEG

It is a cliche of politics that the cover-up is worse than the crime. In this case, the "crime" was just a microscopic hiccup in President Trump's seriously glitchy operating system. He referred to Apple CEO Tim Cook as "Tim Apple."

Life moved on for a while, then the wheels came off.

At first Trump said he actually uttered the man's last name very softly, in between his first name and the company he represents, like: "Tim [Cook] Apple." Unfortunately, the video record of the event was clear: There was no room in Trump's sentence for another word to have been spoken, softy or otherwise. Plus, his revised version of events made little sense. Why would he say "Tim Cook Apple"? In other words, the lie was not only ridiculous, it was no help at all.

Trump then explained he really DID say "Tim Apple," but it was on purpose. To save words and time, he said, he ran together the man and the company. In print he suggested it would have looked like "Tim/Apple."

He went on to excoriate the Fake News folks for trying to ruin his life, etc.

An unnamed supporter was quoted as wondering why Trump would bother to lie about something so small.

But lie he did. Twice. (So far.) And very badly. The man simply can't help himself.

Trump appears to see himself as a perfect being, incapable of error. That goes for the big issues, like North Korea and the National Wall Emergency, down to the smallest, like a momentary twisting of a man's name.

Perfection is all! And any reports to the contrary must be labeled with withering precision: Fake News straight from the Enemy of the People!

All apparent glitches can be attributed to the Press, you see. Those bastards make this crap up to harm the president and, by logical extension, the country. Trump knows this for a fact and reports it that way to his supporters.

And they appear to believe him.

There have already been attacks on the press by Trump supporters, and in the run-up to the 2020 election, there will undoubtedly be more. There's no escaping this. Anyone attempting to supplant Trump will just naturally cite items in the news as proof the president is unfit. Since (according to the president) all of this so-called news is fake, there must be consequences for those who make it up. Severe consequences.

After all, the future of this country is at stake.

Trump has no sympathy for the lying press. Whatever happens, they bring it on themselves by their treasonous actions. They're only getting what they deserve.

The president's ex-fixer, Michael Cohen, says he worries there will be serious unrest in this country should Trump not prevail in 2020. I'm not surprised. At the last presidential debate, Trump famously said he would not necessarily accept the results of the 2016 election. He was going to wait and see.

From the beginning, then, he's been setting the tone for his supporters: The rule of law is contingent on getting what you want from any given election.

This is no way to run a country.

In the court-martial that concludes The Caine Mutiny, the aggrieved Captain Queeg takes the stand to proclaim the disloyalty of his officers. He says they made up stories to make him look bad. He says, for instance, he can prove by geometric logic that someone had stolen strawberries from the officers' mess. (In the courtroom, folks begin to wonder if this is relevant.) Queeg hauls out his fidget-spinner ball bearings in an attempt to maintain his composure, but it's already too late: Everybody can see he's losing it.

That was then. Nowadays, President Queeg could hustle those steel balls till the cows came home, but none of his supporters would be able to see anything but Fake News.

In America, the obvious is not that obvious anymore.