Hey, 'Memba When?

This week's Pilot column:

This week, a little trip down memory lane:

Remember back when a public official using a potentially unsecure personal line of communication was a threat to national security and an offense that not only disqualified one for the presidency, but also required that the perpetrator be locked up?

Well, it seems that President-Elect Donald Trump has discovered that having one’s own personal device, however unsecure, isn’t such a big deal.

He’s reportedly demanding that he be allowed to keep his personal Android phone with all its contacts, and has also been taking and making calls to world leaders on the unsecured device.

Oh, and tweeting, of course. Lots of tweeting.

Speaking of tweeting, remember when “safe spaces” were something that the right sneered at? I seem to remember The Pilot’s own Bob Levy doing so just last week. But now it seems that the Republican president-elect is a fan of safe spaces, at least for his Veep.

After the cast of “Hamilton” delivered a speech at curtain call that respectfully told Mr. Pence that “we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us,” Trump took to his unsecured Twitter account to complain that “The Theater (sic) must always be a safe and special place” and demanding that they apologize for their “rude behavior” toward Mr. Pence — an apology that, to his credit, Mr. Pence said he didn’t want because he didn’t consider the speech rude.

That didn’t stop King Donald’s fervent supporters from demanding that the peasants pay a price for their act of disrespect to the sovereign and that the most popular show in the country be boycotted. Yeah, good luck with that.

Speaking of rude behavior, remember when Trump and his minions were chanting “lock her up” in reference to Hillary Clinton’s emails and foundation and Trump himself was telling Secretary Clinton to her face that if he was president, she’d be in jail? Good times, weren’t they?

Now it seems those days are gone, just like Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, etc. Trump told interviewer Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” that he doesn’t “want to hurt the Clintons,” and just this past week, his spokes-harpy, Kellyanne Conway, confirmed that Trump “doesn’t want to pursue” those charges and that, while he was “thinking of many different things” right now, “things that sound like the campaign” are not among them.

Speaking of foundations and the misuse thereof, remember when the Clinton Foundation was, for unspecified reasons, just more evidence of the dastardly secretary’s foul sink of corruption and even more reason to “lock her up”?

The Trump folks seem oddly silent in regard to a recent IRS filing found by the Washington Post concerning the Trump Family Foundation, in which they had to fess up to multiple acts of “self-dealing” and “transferring assets to disqualified persons,” such as Mr. Trump or his family members.

If that language seems a little obscure, it might help to know that if you or I did it, it’d be called “embezzlement.” I guess being indignant about using one’s foundation for personal gain is one of those “things that sound like the campaign” that our new embezzler-in-chief isn’t interested in anymore. To paraphrase Sarah Palin, how’s that drain-y swamp-y thing goin’ for ya?

Oh, and remember when waterboarding was something Mr. Trump thought was pretty keen? Well, in Tuesday’s interview with The New York Times, Mr. Trump talked about how he’d spoken with his potential defense secretary, Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis, and Mattis told him he’d “never found it to be useful,” so, in Mr. Trump’s new and improved opinion, torture is “not going to make the kind of a difference that a lot of people are thinking.” It’s a heck of a thing when a guy nicknamed “Mad Dog” is the voice of reason.

In the same interview, Mr. Trump, who was adamant that the idea of climate change was a “hoax by the Chinese,” now says he’s going to have an “open mind” on the Paris climate change accords and “look at them very closely.”

Yes, times have certainly changed since Nov. 8, haven’t they? Either that, or nothing Donald Trump said in his presidential campaign has any meaning to him now whatsoever. One wonders if anything does, or if it was all just “campaign devices,” to use Rudy Giuliani’s phrase.

On the one hand, I’m happy if he’s really breaking those awful promises. On the other hand — man, you Trump supporters really got played.