Member-only story
Wag the dog comes to life
Nowadays, truth is stranger than fiction. At least in the movie, people had to believe the story
You may remember the 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” in which an American president tries to cover up a sex scandal just before he faces re-election by fabricating a military crisis. The movie was hilarious, but seemed a bit far-fetched.
Now, we have a President who is known for his sex scandals. His party faces a midterm election, and to convince people to vote for them, the President has manufactured a military crisis. Unlike the small one in the movie, however, this imaginary crisis involves 15,000 military personnel deployed to the border at a cost of around $200 million. Truly, if the Trump presidency were a movie, nobody would believe it.
The crisis is just about as fake as the one shown in the movie. A bunch of poor refugees without shoes, mostly children, are 800 miles away from the U.S. border walking toward us. They’re a threat? If that is the case, then the U.S. is a lot weaker than I thought.
In the movie, there was a theme that was returned to repeatedly. Just as it seems the lies will be exposed, the director hired to help with the job played by Dustin Hoffman comes up with a new twist to distract folks. In short, according to the movie, the story had to…
