It must be tormenting to be Donald Trump these days.
Sitting in his Oval Office, under the watchful gazes of eight American eagles atop the eight flagpoles he chose to decorate the arcing wall of windows behind his desk, only President Donald Trump truly knows what damaging truths might exist that special counsel Robert Mueller suddenly seems ever-closer to discovering.
Late at night, before he goes to bed on the mansion's second floor and when he awakens in the predawn darkness, Trump must find it sheer torture every time his trusted Fox News briefers inform him of a breaking-news leak that Mueller just did this or discovered that.
Trump has been reportedly flipping back and forth between wanting to: (A) Ignore his lawyers' advice and be interviewed by Mueller; or (B) Fire Mueller, and/or fire Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller and just approved a raid on Trump attorney Michael Cohen's office and hotel home.
Today, we may be able to provide some unsolicited guidance to ease Trump's torment. We have obtained a report that provides insight into the danger that can befall someone who chooses to be interviewed by law enforcement authorities, believing he can conceal his wrongdoing and con his interrogators. (Trump may not be familiar with this report, since it became public not on cable TV news or Twitter, but in a slightly longer form of writing called a short story.) This report wasn't written by a Washington pundit, but by a Baltimore writer named Edgar Allan Poe. He titled it "The Tell-Tale Heart," and wrote it in the first person, although it apparently did not really happen to him. (Loyal readers know that's not my style; when writing about Trump, for example, I prefer to write in the third person.)
While reading Poe's report, I found it instructive to imagine our president sitting in his Oval Office, in front of his flags (which include three U.S. flags and three flags bearing the presidential seal). In Poe's tale, the fellow he wrote about was so convinced he could charm and con policemen who wanted to talk with him and search for evidence of his wrongdoing that he had them sit directly above the place where he had hidden beneath floorboards the evidence for which the police were searching. (Readers: Not all aspects of these two cases are parallel: In Poe's example, the items police sought and Poe's narrator carefully hid consisted of body parts of a man who Poe's narrator had just demised and dismembered. I am relieved to report that in this respect, there is clearly no similarity with our occupant of the Oval Office.)
But a few parallels are hard to miss: Poe's fellow began by confidently instructing us to "observe how healthily � how calmly I can tell you the whole story." He repeatedly boasted of his acute sense of hearing, including a reminder that "have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses?"
Our fellow has regaled us repeatedly with boasts about the excellence of his brain and this campaign 2016 classic: "I went to an Ivy League school. I'm very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words."
Poe's fellow becomes convinced he is hearing the beating heart of the fellow he'd done in � beating that grew louder and made him combative: "It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage." Ours becomes combative at the first sign of criticism.
Poe's fellow becomes even angrier when his police houseguests hear no such beating heart: "I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations..." Ours gets like that too.
But the noise in the head of Poe's man increased to the point it drove the angry man mad. He confessed to his crime. And � whoa! � Trump's attorneys sure don't expect that. But they do fear Trump's anger may lead him from being argumentative to launching into his perpetual pattern of pathological lying. And, as our 42nd president could remind the 45th, lying to a court or the FBI can become an impeachable offense. Liar beware.
Historians have yet to show us the nuances of how the heck we got into this mess of incompetence of governance that's far worse than we've had from any president in U.S. history. Here's hoping Trump's Tell-Tale Torment has stiffened the resolve of all Americans to a degree suggested by recasting another epic from Baltimore's Poe:
Quoth Trump's eagles: Nevermore!
