I have always despised the phrase “It is what it is.” It’s a phrase that lets people feel like they’re saying something pseudo-philosophical, when they’re actually being intellectually lazy. It’s a grouping of words that means absolutely nothing. It’s a non-phase. A brain fart. A waste of breath for the speaker and a waste of time for the listener. As I’ve probably made pretty clear by now, it’s a pet peeve of mine, and it has been for years.
But today it got worse.
Donald Trump sat down for an interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan last week, HBO aired it last night, and it’s a stupefying, rollicking tour de farce of shocking stupidity. Among the lowlights are the following:
Trump repeatedly complained that recently deceased civil rights pioneer John Lewis didn’t attend his inauguration three and a half years ago, and he refused to say whether he thought Lewis was an admirable man. He concluded this segment by telling Swan that he (Trump) has done more for black Americans than anyone else, which just makes your brain seep out of your ear a little bit.
At one point, Trump tried to convince Swan that America is doing great when it comes to the country’s COVID death rate. That exchange went like this:
Swan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”
Trump: “You can’t do that.”
Swan: “Why can’t I do that?”
So our president is basically an old-man version of a student trying to convince the teacher that he’s read the book when he hasn’t read the book, and he keeps insisting loudly that he’s right even as the teacher is telling him he has no idea what he’s talking about. He cheats and lies and blusters his way out of everything else, so why not one more time, right?
We all know that testing for the virus is the best way for us to understand the scope of the problem and how to best respond to it regionally, but Trump again claimed in this interview that testing is bad. This is obviously because he thinks it makes him personally look bad, but the following dialogue demonstrates just how ridiculous this conversation has become:
Trump: “There are those that say you can test too much, you do know that."
Swan: “Who says that?”
Trump: “Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books.”
Swan: “Manuals? What manuals?”
Trump: “Read the books. Read the books.”
Swan: “What books?”
Trump: [does not answer]
Okay, the obvious joke is that this is coming from the guy who doesn’t read. But more importantly, this level of narcissist simply has no comprehension that the world he’s constructed for himself actually intersects with the reality the rest of us occupy, so he truly has no idea how to respond when he’s called out on his bullshit. It’s true every time someone pushes this guy on a lie (which is pretty rare, but good on Swan for doing it).
All those things are obviously outrageous and ridiculous. But the true standout of the interview for me was this excerpt:
Trump: “Well, what’s your definition of control? I think it’s under control.”
Swan: “How? A thousand Americans are dying a day.”
Trump: “They are dying. That’s true. And you – it is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.”
Did you catch that? “It is what it is.” A thousand Americans are dying every day now, but “it is what it is.” More than 150,000 Americans have died of this disease, but “it is what it is.” Trump’s words are extraordinarily dismissive and callous, but it’s something we’ve almost come to expect at this point. Still…it’s hard to become completely numb to it, and this was one of those times for me. And it was compounded by the fact that he used one of my most-hated phrases to achieve this effect.
One of the first things I thought about when I heard Trump say this was all the outrage Hillary Clinton elicited when she testified in front of one of the GOP’s 33 separate hearings about Benghazi. You remember that? Hillary was called to testify, and she went to Capitol Hill and sat and answered questions about the terrible Ansar al-Sharia attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. After 11 straight hours answering the same questions over and over again and fielding multiple conspiracy-fueled accusations, Clinton said “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”
That quote – specifically the “What difference at this point does it make?” excerpt – has been used for eight years now to vilify Clinton and cast her as indifferent to the deaths of four American agents. And look – I’m no Hillary fan. I’ve never warmed toward her, I thought she was a terrible choice for a presidential candidate, and I have no interest in exonerating or defending her – especially eight years later.
But what she clearly meant in this instance was this: what actually mattered more than anything else at that point was that these men were killed in horrible circumstances. They were four Americans who were tragically killed in a militant uprising overseas. She repeatedly expressed regret and sympathy about that – not just in that hearing, but in other public statements. Her specific quote during the hearing was in response to Republicans trying to get her to parse motives for the hundredth time. At some point, the fact that they died terribly is the point, and it’s enough to recognize that.
But the same people who have held onto this quote for eight years now will completely overlook the fact that Trump said “It is what it is” about the deaths of more than 150,000 people – deaths that could have been vastly reduced if he and his administration had taken the virus seriously and acted sooner to marshal federal resources and coordinate a national effort to fight it. The people who still scream about Hillary’s quote are the same people who are right now ignoring the fact that the President of the United States ignored U.S. intelligence reports that Russian spies paid bounties for the deaths of American soldiers. They’re the same people who ignore the fact that after five weeks, he still hasn't done anything about it. Hell, he still won’t even bring it up to Putin during a phone call (which he also admitted and defended during the Axios interview).
The hypocrisy and willful blindness of his enablers is vast and extraordinary. They refuse to hold him to account for anything, even when the consequences are catastrophic on a massive scale. I’m honestly not sure what’s worse: Trump’s willful deception and incompetence, or his supporters’ willful ignorance and cognitive dissonance. But what difference, at this point, does it make? They’re both fucking awful, and they’re leading us into national collapse.
What’s most distressing about this incomprehensible nonsense is that there are still people out there who support this guy – the guy who loudly and incessantly brags about passing a dementia screening – and insist that Joe effing Biden is the one who is mentally/cognitively/socially unfit for office. I really am running out of ways to describe this administration. This presidential debacle is the single greatest embarrassment for our country since I’ve been alive. At the end of the Axios interview, the camera pans out and scrolls across to portraits of previous presidents, as if to say “Look. Look at this shit right here. There has never been a bigger, more disastrous trainwreck to ever walk these halls, and we just heard it on full display.”
If I were someone who didn’t know what else to say, I’d say “It is what it is.” But it’s not. It’s not that benign. It’s something far more malignant. But it doesn't have to be. Thankfully, we'll get a chance to change it this November. "It was what it was" will sound stupid, too, but at least it'll be in that past. In this case, that'll be a vast improvement.
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