1. It’s Tuesday, May 30, 2017.

2. On this day 134 years ago, fake news led to death. There was a rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge, opened just six days earlier, was about to collapse – the ensuing stampede killed 12 people.

The Brooklyn Bridge is still standing.

3. Despite Trump’s constant protestations, the scandal of his administration is hardly fake.

Today, his communications director is resigning. This administration is a little more than four months old and it’s already hemorrhaging senior staff.

That’s probably because no matter who holds the title of communications director, there’s only one communicator in this farce. The guy who tweets out fake fake news alarms at 7 a.m.

A real president – hell, a real man – would want to clear the crap away once and for all.

He would tell Congress and an independent prosecutor and, yes, respected news operations to bring it on. Take their best shot. Try to find what he or his son-in-law or the double-dealer he chose as his national security adviser or the bigot he named attorney general did wrong, because they did nothing wrong. There’s nothing to hide.

4. So the only conclusion anyone who can reason will draw is that there is something to hide. In fact, a lot more than something.

Trump can start with answering – intelligently, and not tweeting like a ranting fool – if his son-in-law met in December with a man whose bank has been linked to Russian intelligence and is subject to U.S. sanctions.

And if they did meet, why? What was discussed? How was what was discussed in the interest of the nation?

The New York Times quotes Trump spokeswoman, Hope Hicks – I wonder if she still has a job – as saying Kushner was acting in his capacity as a transition official. That implies that he wasn’t acting in the financial interest of his own or his father-in-law’s family. She also says Kushner will answer questions from congressional investigators.

That statement alone might have calmed the waters a little. But then Trump started tweeting this morning. Fake news, blah, blah. Russians laughing, blah, blah. Democrats embarrassed Hillary Clinton lost, blah, blah.

The insecurity of this guy who has been entrusted with the most important job in this country is scary and infuriating.

The tweets are the fake news. They’re the smoke screen Trump is using to hide what he and his confederates are doing to destroy this country.

Let’s not let him off the hook. To do otherwise would not be true to our values or our future.