If the key to good government is transparency, I’m afraid we are in the age of governmental opacity. Officials in both ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä and Washington are providing us with versions of reality that are distorted at best and fabricated at worst.
Politicians like President Donald Trump and West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey want to keep the public in the dark and ill-informed. They don’t want us to know the truth.
Case in point: Morrisey’s outright refusal to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request by the Gazette-Mail’s Mike Tony, who was seeking details regarding Morrisey’s announcement of $1.44 billion in coal-fired power plant refurbishment projects.
As Tony reported, the Morrisey administration first identified the $1.44 billion as private-sector investments, but in a speech in Parkersburg, Morrisey clarified that the $1.44 billion had not been secured, and was merely being sought from the Trump administration.
The governor’s office pulled out all sorts of excuses for rejecting the FOIA request, including that the requested materials included protected proprietary information, as well as internal memoranda and confidential communications intended to aid new or existing businesses.
In other words, a bald-faced refusal to live up to the intent of state FOIA law, probably to save face by preventing Tony from reporting that the highly touted $1.44 billion funding plan might well exist only in Morrisey’s imagination.
It's even worse in D.C.
Similarly, throughout Trump’s tenure, it is quite clear we’ve been subject to, at best, a warped version of reality.
Consider the incident at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in May.
It seemed peculiar that, having boycotted all five prior WHC dinners as president, Trump suddenly decided to attend this year.
Also peculiar that many longtime dinner attendees noted that security seemed particularly lax this year. At a time when Republicans are adamant that voters be required to show identification, no ID was required to gain access to the same room as the president, vice president and many cabinet members.
Odd that guests staying at the hotel hosting the dinner were not screened, and that one guest, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, charged with attempted assassination of the president, was allegedly able to bring a rifle and handgun into the hotel.
Peculiar that a total of seven shots were fired in close quarters, but only one person was hit, a Secret Service agent wearing a bulletproof vest who evidently was shot by a colleague.
Odd that Trump immediately used the incident as evidence that his obsession to build a White House ballroom must move forward posthaste, a message echoed on social media by dozens of MAGA influencers in a seemingly orchestrated response.
Peculiar that Republican senators obediently introduced legislation to provide $1 billion of taxpayer dollars to build the ballroom, never mind that Trump had said it would be fully funded through private donations, nor that even though it would be disproportionately oversized compared to the White House, the ballroom would still be too small to accommodate the more than 2,000 attendees for the WHC dinner.
Odd that Trump touted the ballroom as necessary to ensure presidential safety, but a month later spent hours outdoors attending the mixed martial arts cage fights that he staged on the South Lawn of the White House.
There was the same sense of distorted reality right back in 2024, with the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Nearly two years after the fact, the would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, remains a cipher, with little revealed about his background or motivation.
Contrast that with the flood of information the public received regarding would-be assassins John Hinckley, Jr., Lynette “Squeaky†Fromme and Sarah Jane Moore.
Why was security at that rally also described as being unusually lax? Why was nothing done when multiple bystanders told police beforehand that they saw a man on the roof of a nearby building?
To that end, two men who were shot and seriously injured at the rally recently filed suit against the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security, claiming the agencies were negligent in failing to adequately secure the location.
Why did the Secret Service allow Trump to stand and pump his fist at a moment when it was unknown whether Crooks had an accomplice? Contrast that with Ronald Reagan, who was pushed into the presidential limousine by Secret Service agents so forcefully post-shooting that he initially believed he had suffered a cracked rib.
Nearly two years after the fact, no medical information has been released regarding Trump’s injury or medical treatment, having sustained a minor injury that seems inconsistent with being hit by a bullet or bullet fragment from a high-powered rifle.
Again, contrast that with Reagan, where we quickly learned of the extent of his injuries and his medical treatment in extreme detail.
While former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s recent claim that Trump shut down the FBI investigation of the assassination attempt is highly suspect, the dearth of information regarding the incident undoubtedly has fueled speculation by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and others as to whether the incident was staged.
While that seems absurd, the lack of information, misinformation, and secrecy surrounding Trump seems unprecedented.
Another good example surrounds the rescue missions for two teams of pilots shot down during Trump’s misadventure in Iran. Other than confirmation that the fighter jet and helicopter were shot down, and of the successful rescues, we have received precious few details about what happened and have zero information about the pilots. We still don’t know their names, and they haven’t been allowed to give interviews.
Contrast that with West Virginia’s Jessica Lynch, whose rescue after being captured in the Iraq War made headlines, and made Lynch a national heroine, even though initial accounts that she fought courageously before her capture were embellished.
Lynch’s rescue was a cause for celebration; the rescue of the pilots in Iran has been treated as a state secret. Why?
Consider, too, the secrecy surrounding Trump’s health. At 80, questions have been raised about severe bruising to his hands, swelling of his lower legs, and his tendency of late to doze off in meetings and public events.
Trump has undergone four medical checkups in his second term, including three in the past 13 months, which, by his own admission, have each involved cognitive assessment tests.
After initially breaking precedent by not releasing results of the most recent examination, Trump’s physician eventually put out a memo outlining results that are seemingly as fanciful as its claim that Trump stands 6’3â€. The disclosure that he was examined by 22 specialists, however, suggests that his bill of health is not as clean as the memo purported.
Of course, lack of transparency on medical issues is not unique to the current occupant of the White House.
While it has been obvious for years that Jim Justice can stand or walk only for brief periods, and while we have records of him taking private jets to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, we are still in the dark about the then-governor, now U.S. senator’s state of health.
Perhaps nothing better symbolizes the current state of government opacity than the tarp that has been placed over the façade of the Kennedy Center, after a district court judge ordered that Trump’s name, illegally installed on the building, be removed.
Given Trump’s fragile man-baby ego, the giant tarp was set up to prevent onlookers from witnessing the removal of his name, and that tarp has remained in place, seemingly in perpetuity, as an act of petulance. If Trump can’t have his name on the building, then nobody is going to be able to see Kennedy’s name either.
It is, literally, a political cover-up.
Holding the powerful to account
The media is at least partially complicit in this opacity, given that in an era of understaffed newsrooms, the ability to do follow-ups is limited, and with the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, the emphasis is on breaking news, not follow-ups or investigative reporting.
And, granted, it wasn’t uncommon in the past for politicians to delay, distract, or obfuscate when they didn’t want certain information to come to light.
However, in the era of MAGA, our political leaders have become much more brazen, much more willing to lie, to hamper newsgathering, to treat the media as adversaries.
Democracy needs transparency to thrive. Currently, in both ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä and Washington, we have opacity instead.
The law doesn't apply to everyone
That the Trump administration killed a federal criminal investigation of environmental violations at coal mine operations owned by Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., is an audacious act of corruption even by the standards of arguably the most corrupt president in our nation’s history.
If we had a governor and attorney general worth their salt, they would direct the state Department of Environmental Protection and the appropriate county prosecutors to pick up the investigation where the Justice Department left off, and ascertain if the serial violations of environmental laws at the Justice mine operations amount to criminal offenses.
Of course, Morrisey and Attorney General J.B. McCuskey will find the courage and forthrightness to do so at approximately the same time as pigs begin taking flight.
Great season, Mountaineers
On a brighter note, congratulations to the West Virginia University baseball team for providing the entire state with three weeks full of pride and jubilation. That was an amazing run.
Also, happy West Virginia Day to those who observe.
