It’s a classic chapter in one of America’s iconic novels, the pages in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’’ in which the two Mississippi River rascals dupe a one-horse Arkansas town into ponying up admission for their brief and bawdy comedy. “The Royal Nonesuch’’ consists of nothing but an overdrawn introduction from one grifter, followed by the other scampering around in naught but body paint, and an abrupt curtain drop.
The flimflam farce stands as apt allegory for the age of Trump — except that Mark Twain’s townsmen soon catch on to the con, whereas the Trumpkins haven’t been quite as quick on the uptake.
So with the year half over, let’s look at what’s become of some of candidate Trump’s most notable declarations. There’s no better place to start than with a subject that brought his adoring crowds to the very peak of partisan frenzy and inspired an ecstatic chant of “Lock her up! Lock her up!’’ “Her’’ would, of course, be Hillary Clinton. She should be jailed, Trump said repeatedly.
And like an aspiring banana republican, he declared that, if elected, he would ask his “attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor’’ to put her there, for imaginary crimes involving classified information. But though President Trump regularly tweets about Clinton’s supposed offenses, he has made absolutely no effort to have a special prosecutor appointed, obviously aware that trying to use the legal process to punish an opponent — particularly one who has already been thoroughly investigated and cleared — would raise huge alarms and render him thoroughly ridiculous.
The call for a southern border wall was another megahit for Trump, so much so that “Build that wall, build that wall!’’ became a regular Trump rally refrain. And, when Trump asked who would pay for the edifice, his supporters answered, on cue, “Mexico!’’
Actually, it was obvious from the start that Trump couldn’t force Mexico to finance his wall. Still, just hours after President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico told Trump to his face that his country wouldn’t help fund it, Trump assured a rally that Mexico would pay 100 percent of the cost.
Since it now appears that a Republican Congress has little interest in going to bat for Trump’s pet project, it’s unlikely there will ever be such a border barrier, let alone one paid for with pesos.
On to Obamacare. During the campaign, one regular Trump refrain was that Obamacare was a disaster, one he would replace with something much better and much cheaper. As president-elect, he reassured the country that everyone would be covered.
The final fate of the GOP’s Affordable Care Act repeal effort remains uncertain, but Trump is obviously poised to break his health care promises. Both the House and Senate bills, after all, would leave millions more without insurance. Nor will the coverage be better or cheaper. It would offer less protection and be more expensive.
A couple of Trump’s campaign trail hits were on the foreign front. Trump hasn’t, of course, labeled China a currency manipulator, something he said he’d do on day one. As for the Iran nuclear deal, which he called “disastrous’’ and “catastrophic’’ and promised to “dismantle’’? His own State Department has verified what international monitors say: Iran is abiding by the deal. Although he’s camouflaging his flip-flop with another review, Trump has chosen to honor it as well.
After watching as the Mississippi River grifters “fairly laughed their bones loose over the way they’d served them people,’’ Huck counsels a fed-up Jim that “we’ve got them on our hands, and we got to remember what they are, and make allowances.’’
We’ve certainly got Trump on our hands for a few more years. But in this case, voters need to remember not just who he is, but also how he’s deceived them — and stop making allowances.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.
