Saturday, March 04, 2017                                        10:16 AM

Today one of Facebook’s featured news-stories concerned a Trump tweet that accused President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower. This is the sort of thing he used to confuse us with—we’d be so busy laughing at how ludicrous he was we’d overlook the delusional nature of such statements. But I’m not laughing at his antics anymore—and the idea of a president who tweets his paranoia is no longer amusing.

To begin with—if such a thing were true, it would be as serious as a heart attack—it would require investigations and charges and who knows what else—and it would certainly, at some point, need a shred of proof. So, any sane normal person would not make the bald accusation, alone—no, they would say, ‘I have this proof here that something bad was done.’ We wouldn’t even need to ask for proof—a sane person would recognize that such a libel requires it—if for no other reason than as a starting point for an investigation.

But Trump seems to be free-associating, as he did when he accused Obama of ‘founding ISIS’ (just breathe—count slowly to ten…) after Obama had correctly pointed out that Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric was promoting the extremists’ agenda. Trump’s just telling stories to his base—stories he knows they’ll enjoy—they don’t need to be true, or have proof. Trump saying it is the only proof his base needs, now that we live in a bifurcated reality.

Then there’s the question of what exactly Obama would get out of ‘bugging Trump Tower’. Normally, one might wish to know a rival’s plans and strategy—but Trump doesn’t have any—we’re still waiting on his Health Care plan, his Jobs plan, his Infrastructure plan, his Education plan, etc. In short, there is no intelligence to intercept inside of Trump Tower. His tactics are petulance and disinformation to promote ignorance—it’s no great secret. There’s nothing to bug.

Let face it—it’s a false accusation. False accusations fly out of Trump’s mouth whenever he’s threatened—and they are always a mirror-image of the threat against him. Hil calls him ‘unfit’ and suddenly, he’s calling her ‘unfit’. She calls him a puppet of Putin, he—well, you know the clip. When the media exposes his lies, he calls them liars. When generals criticize him, he says the generals are incompetent. If this were a comic book, he’d be the evil villain using a mirror-shield to defend against the superhero’s laser-gun.

And we notice. At some point, we realize—this is a confession—this is Trump deciding he’s been tagged ‘it’ and he has to run up to someone else and tag them, or he’ll lose. So we wonder—is this Trump worrying that a Russian-interference investigation is starting to look inevitable? Or is it something more childish—say, a reaction to the Obamas’ enthusiastic reception on their return from vacation?

We continue to be puzzled by the media’s willingness to broadcast Trump’s tweets as news—he has followers who have volunteered to receive his personal disinformation—why can’t we leave it at that? They got fed up with Kellyanne Conway’s inability to resemble truth or reason—why shouldn’t they conclude the same about our president? Does the dignity of the office actually legitimize bullshit? I hope not.

So, I offer a new nickname for our pumpkin-in-chief: ‘Bugsy’—a fitting moniker, once used by a gang of criminals for a criminal even those psychos thought had a screw loose. When will the GOP get tired of ‘winning’ this country into an early grave and cut themselves loose from this deplorable Donald? Hey, Bugsy—take it from me—you’re going to make history. And, yes, that is another comparison of you to Hitler.