When I was the executive producer of the CBS Morning News, my then boss, Ed Joyce (they called him “the velvet shiv”) and I were in a meeting one morning talking about the day’s news.

A suck-up fellow producer suggested to Ed that he think about getting into politics and maybe even running for President. Such flattery was standard fare in our meetings, no one blinked. I said the same thing to one of my anchors every day.

There was an awkward silence. I asked Ed if he was serious about it.

“No,” he said, “I’ve seen what happens to people who are on TV too much or for too long or too successfully. They lose touch with reality and can only think visually, in terms of images. They start to believe their own publicity and their egos blow up and eventually explode.”

Hmmm, I joked, “it sounds like Greek Tragedy.” Nobody laughed.

Well, yes, it does sound like that.

The older I get, the more respect I have for Greek Tragedy. It just keeps popping up, almost as if it were following me through life, or maybe I am following it. I think it is following Donald  Trump right now.

President Trump’s 2020 Suicide Express keeps rolling, it makes a new stop every day or so, and each one is crazier and more surreal than the one before it. He’s just lost it, and he can’t hide it, the news is getting so much bigger than him and his very small thinking.

He blew the Pandemic, he blew Minneapolis, he’s blowing the healing.

If I were not living it, I would simply not believe what I saw from St. John’s Church yesterday.

But since it was true, I hope I might be able to add slightly to some understanding of it. Being a television producer changed my life and my understanding of the world, for better and worse.

Yesterday, I felt I had a sense of what Trump was going for, and why it missed its mark in such a stunning way.

I recognize so much of that world in the increasingly desperate posturings and panicked maneuvering of this broken man.

He is all about visuals and is fearful of substance. It bites him in the ass every time he tries some. Visuals have always worked for him, from those red hats to the bloodthirsty rallies.

Like most good TV people, he lives in a world of images, just like dogs and cats. He lives above real people, above reality, above common sense.

But this year is unlike most years; there is that murderous and pesky Pandemic, all those deaths, a crumbling economy, ugly and wrenching racial turmoil that can’t be shunted aside, like Dr. Fauci.

Fortunately for me, I wasn’t great at TV and decided to become a book writer instead. That decision saved my life. I’m sure of it.

Donald Trump’s decision to tear gas and grenade-bomb hundreds of peaceful protestors in front of the White House yesterday was a historic catastrophe in political as well as civic terms. They will be talking about it for eons.

His opponents in politics and the media will stick it up the ass every day from now to November and beyond. Lots of stuff slide off of this man, but this one will stick. Because powerful images go both ways – they can make you or break you. They are easy to share and simple to digest.

The photo of him holding that Bible with his most serious face will be the defining image of his Presidency.

As most people know, President Trump chose to march from the White House across Lafayette Square to historic St. John’s Church (which he has attended twice in his Presidency) and arrange a photo op of his holding a bible high up in his right hand. His face was set like a statue of Caesar while looking as General Pattonish as he could with a squirrel’s next planted on the top of his head.

I’m not entirely sure what the Bible was doing there, my best guess is that it was a kind of secret handshake meant for the Evangelicals, his spiritual shock troops,  but forgetting all of us were also watching.

In order to get to the photoshoot on time, Trump had to send his palace guard out to browbeat and gas and frighten hundreds of people who came to the “People’s House” to demonstrate peacefully a sacred American ritual. The D.C.mayor said she couldn’t believe it.

Trump was thinking big screen movie all the way, walking well ahead of his favorite sycophants, pausing only for the media to get in position.

All the citizens had been pushed out of the square, most by force, and I kept thinking that what he was going for was that famous shot of General McArthur walking out of that landing craft in the Philippines and shouting for the reporters “I have returned.”

But then, there was that Bible…

Trump, stung by suggestions he had hidden in the White House Bunker while protesters surrounded the White House on Friday, was conjuring up a different image.

You had to look closely at the video to see that heavily armed police officers in combat gear were lined up every foot or two apart along the entire walk, plus the scores of Secret Service Agents walking alongside the President just out of camera range.

By then, of course, all of the ordinary people – the citizens – had been chased far out of sight. They had no place in this presentation; they were irrelevant to it, dispensable and unimportant. And booing wouldn’t go with the new image, the Law And Order President.

I presume that General Patton would have waded into those citizens for a blunt talk, our President made sure they were far away. George Washington risked his life in every battle, two horses were shot out from under him. The British thought he was superhuman.

McArthur only had a PR officer or two to shepherd him along his beach; Trump had a good-sized army to walk with him.

Our Law And Order President had to choose between compassion and healing or White Man Tarzan TV imagery, and it was no contest.

Trump went, as he always does, for the White Man’s Idea of Courage – stand tall and scowl like John Wayne in Fort Apache or Gary Cooper’s Will Kane in High Noon, or the President’s favorite General, George Patton, who had a  frown that was said to melt the turrets of Nazi tanks.

When he held up the now infamous Bible, Trump, already serious, put on a grim face. He meant to look heroic, but as a fellow older man in his 70’s, I thought he had to go to the bathroom.

I know that look.

Whoever suggested this idea to the President, or whoever failed to throw themselves in front of him as he set out to walk to the church with his Bible should be draped in a confederate flag and parachuted into South Minneapolis.

I’m not sure why he was holding up a bible at all, nor did he explain. I think we were supposed to see him as holy, King Arthur off to save the Kingdom.

The ridicule and condemnation from actual religious people rained down on him like Jehovah’s wrath all the next day. The Episcopal bishop of Washington – Marian Edgar Budde –  gave the Republican party a lesson in what it means to be tough.

She gave the President a thorough and bloody Jesus whooping. A Jesus whooping is what every politician most fears, there is usually no coming back from it.

Every politician who ever ran for office in America refers to Jesus at least once, usually much more frequently. And none of them seem to want to follow his teachings.

Bishop Budde, who is articulate and photogenic, blasted  Trump all through Wednesday, on one network and cable channel after another.

She said the Bible Photo-Op was an outrage:”Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence.” She noticed what Trump did not, that the protesters were peaceful and obeying the law.

Generally,  candidates for office don’t unleash armed men with batons, tear gas and noise grenades on innocent citizens taking advantage of their constitutional right to protest what they think is injustice.

Trump made it quite clear that he has never read the Bible, or perhaps even opened one. Bishop Budde pointed out that Jesus in her Bible preached love and compassion, not vicious dogs, incredible weapons, and combat soldiers. No wonder Trump looked so sour.

His adoring Evangelical followers  – all sworn Jesus lovers – ran for the hills and were nowhere to be found over the weekend. But they will have to love what he did. Do they really have a choice at this point?

Trump’s sexual and marital history and his general bullying and lying don’t make for great Bible holding. The President does not love his neighbors, he blasts them on Twitter.

What on earth was he thinking?

But I know what he was thinking. He was thinking of all those Evangelicals he was sure would love the Bible visual, even though it had absolutely nothing to do with what was happening in the country.

Most people don’t look for context or depth, the image speaks for itself.

I don’t think many of them would win a Jesus contest with Bishop Budde.  She will have no trouble drawing crowds to St. John’s this year.

Pundits everywhere were lining up to condemn the President and to speculate on how he could carry out such a heretic blunder. It is presumed that his loyal followers loved every minute of it, but I’m not sure that’s true.

The guys I saw standing outside of Stewart’s Convenience Store in my little rural town were rolling their eyes about, making crazy signals alongside their ears and wondering over and over what it was the President really had in mind.

Perhaps it helps to have worked in television for a while and understand, as Ed Joyce suggested, that TV is a visual medium, one of the images, not generally one of substance or nuance.

Trump’s Apprentice took off after he first showed his “You’re Fired” line. The images of ambitious people getting fired ignited the show. The image was riveting  We all thought he was just acting, but it turns out it was all too real.

That is the very image he projects, again and again, yelling at reporters, trashing people who criticize, spouting outrageous and shocking conspiracy theories whenever it gets slow.

I have to get back to the Last Stand Of the White Men theory I unveiled last night, a theory almost every journalist knows is true, but that very few have felt free to write.

My long-time theory about journalism is that if reporters wrote the things they say to one another, journalism would really rock.

At our twice-daily production meetings at CBS, we talked obsessively about visuals – images that would pop, stand out, connect with the viewer in a visceral or emotional way. Stories without strong visuals or images just didn’t get on the air. That’s why so many fires and explosions do.

Strong visuals are what every successful TV show has. It doesn’t matter what is said, it matters what is seen.

Trump’s obsession with White Men visuals – those red and white caps, those photo ops with veterans, athletes, soldiers and sheriffs, and Nascar drivers – are all about what I call White Men Tarzan photo ops.

It was clearly a huge mistake for him to try a Jesus video, even to those Evangelical “Christian” leaders, who are happy to push Jesus out of the way to get some tax breaks and political entry while they pretend to be persecuted.

At one point, it occurred to me that Trump was channeling Ceasar himself, who always posed for statues with his right arm up in the air

What he did instead was set himself up for a shitstorm of ridicule and condemnation.

Even I know what Jesus said in the New Testament, and I am not holding a dog-eared Bible in front of a church that doesn’t even know I ‘m coming.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” Jesus said in Mark 12:298-34.
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” is cited as his second most important command in the Bible.

The problem for Trump is that Jesus is all about love, and Trump is all about Trump. He looked as uncomfortable as I would look on a bear hunt. I did wonder once what Jesus would make of Mar-A-Largo, and golf with Trump’s pals.

Bishop Mudde dragged the President out to the shed and took the Jesus whip to him.

And she isn’t the only one chewing him out. By Sunday, two governors, a mayor and the police chief of Houston all went on TV to beg the President of the United States to shut up, to just stop talking.

Each one said he was making things worse every time he opened his mouth. That seemed shocking to me.

One thing I did learn in television was that the camera really doesn’t lie. You can dress up the hog, a cameraman once told me,” but you can’t turn him into a princess.”

Ed Joyce was right. I also witnessed the power of TV success to bend minds and alter perspectives. Most anchors I knew were driven made by their popularity, their egos ballooned beyond safety or sanity. Look at Charlie Rose or Matt Lauer.

Many just spiraled out of control and completely lost perspective. Trump was not always this mean, cold or destructive. His ego is exploding almost daily.

All of his biographers say he went over to the dark side soon after the Apprentice’s great success. His ego ran away with him. What was once fun became deadly serious, what was once showmanship became cruel and vengeful.

As he himself said in that infamous video, when you’re a star,  you can do things.

But when you are a President, it seems,  you can’t just do things. You are scrutinized and criticized and monitored and listened to in a way that would make any sane man or woman squirm.

The people who call themselves “progressive” or “Democrats” are still shell-shocked by the very existence of Trump, who has plowed right over and through their values and ideals.

Many are terrified to acknowledge how much trouble he is in, or how sad it is to see any human being come apart in so public and painful away.  Optimism frightens them, a bad trait in warriors preparing for battle.

I hate to use the term, but people supporting someone other than Trump need to suck it up a bit. Nearly half the country will support him no matter what he does, and that is not going to change.

I don’t pay much attention to it, I just know he is failing at almost every level.

In recent weeks, Donald Trump’s misjudgments, blunders, provocations, and crude insensitivity have become his identity and permanent persona, not just an occasional lapse or mistake.

While he was desperate to define Biden, he went and defined himself. He is in a deep hole, and he dug it himself.

While Trump was soiling himself in front of St. John’s Church, Joe Biden was praised to the skies for uttering a few pleasant and welcome platitudes about leadership. Captain America read his lines well and delivered them sincerely.

People seemed relieved just to hear some normalcy.

Biden has the gift of sounding nice even when he isn’t being nice.

What more could one ask than to campaign against Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, holed up in his castle, calling out the army to bluster and punish and cover for his irrational obsessions?

Even Joe Biden, a nice man not known for piercing wit, got off one of the best lines of the day, a hanging curve handed him by a Mad King losing his grip.

“He should have opened that bible,” said Biden of Trump, “he might have learned something.”