Our little puppy dog, Baby, backslid this week. She crapped and peed in the house a few times, and might have even eaten one of her poops. Not a good showing, considering that she just turned 6 months of age.
But, still, she had a better week than Donald Trump.
The fumbling, bumbling, stumbling Presidency careened into its 4th month, without much prospect of righting itself. It’s like the old Abbott and Costello gag…”Who’s on First?”…or, like the Keystone Cops running around, crashing into things, falling all over each other, making a mess of things. WTF!
This seems to be an Administration who’s motto is “Ready! Fire! Aim!”, with off-the-cuff ideas flowing down from Mount Trump, his subordinates trying mightily to understand on-the-fly, curious policy is implemented, and, then…the President changes direction, or claims that he never said something…and his staff has to re-explain things to the public/media or claim that the Prez was misquoted, etc., to cover-up the kerfluffle.
After getting his well-deserved public wedgie by the Press, Mr. Trump will then tweet his standard “Fake news!” summation of the events and whine about some “second-rate” or “failing” newspaper that has it in for him.
The worst job in the Trump Administration has to be explaining to the press exactly what The Boss means, whether it be teasing out some rational policy from hastily-thrown-together bullet points, or rationalizing a tweet that the President sent out at 3 a.m. while watching Fox News. There’s no “winning” involved, because the Press and the public are by now attuned to the lying coverups, and the President has a habit of reversing course the next day or claiming that he never said what he said (publicly). White House credibility is south of zero, and Trump has only been in office a little over three months. Press Secretary Spicer must not sleep at night.
The embarrassment of public officials in Washington D.C., both in the Administration and within the Republican Party, has led to a deluge of leaks, which has kept the pot boiling and pissed off the President. New scandalous stories are breaking each day. The Prez brushes them off with the “Fake News!” retort…until either his minions or The Boss himself has to correct the White House spin later in the week.
The White House Press Secretary tossed out a new threat this week…to do away with all press conferences, because The Media wasn’t being fair to Mr. Trump. This is probably where things will end up, as Donald Trump has made the Press to be the villain and “the enemy” ever since he hit the campaign trail back in 2016. It’s no wonder that journalists are now seeking his scalp.
Perhaps the White House press briefings should be curtailed, as they have turned into charades and comedies in the past months, with no factual information being disseminated. Poor Press Secretary Spicer…he looks like a deer in the headlights, a hapless contestant on Amateur Hour. I wouldn’t want his job.
This week brought us the James Comey firing. The President pulled the rug out from under the F.B.I. Director who, months before, was, seemingly, his best friend. (And, for good reason…Comey torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.) But, in Washington, D.C., it’s a case of “What have you done for me lately?”
Mr. Comey, if you didn’t know, is the guy who is responsible with investigating all of the Kremlingate issues…i.e. the idea that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections, and the cozy relationships that many Trump associates had with the Russians during this time. The stench of this story seems to grow by the week, infuriating, it seems, President Trump. High-level government officials are now testifying before Congress about the curious behavior, and, evidently, Mr. Trump had expected his F.B.I. Director to sidetrack said inquiries. When that didn’t happen, Mr. Comey was shown the door. “You’re fired!”
It all seems so eerily Nixonian, with that pungent aroma of the Saturday Night Massacre, where the President attempted to clean house at the Justice Department of anyone who wouldn’t quash the investigation of the Watergate cover-up. Nixon was impeached for that stunt. Not to be outdone, in just three months, President Trump has shown the door to three career public officials who wouldn’t kowtow to his wishes: Comey, for not derailing the Kremlingate investigation; Sally Yates, who was Acting Attorney General of the United States at the time, for not backing his (illegal) immigration Executive Order; and, Preet Bharara, U. S. Attorney for the Southern District, for vigorously enforcing Wall Street regulations.
We seem to have a problem on our hands with Donald Trump. He is proving to be the anti-patriot: rather than love of country motivating his actions, it is love of himself. He seems to despise the system of government that he has chosen to run, where there are constitutional checks and balances to ensure that democracy works properly. He abhors the transparency that a free press provides to the public, so that the public can understand what is being done by its elected officials, and why. He seems to value loyalty to himself above the rule of law. He flaunts his disrespect of the customs and traditions of the Presidency, by hiding his financial interests, hiring relatives, and taking actions which appear to promote Trump Industries. And, he acts like a spoiled child, throwing tantrums when he doesn’t get his way. Evidently, he thinks that he has been elected Emperor, not President.
Mr. Trump seems to have forgotten how much fun he was having when Congress was investigating the phony Obama “birther” issues that Trump raised, or how gleefully he and the GOP raked Hillary Clinton over the coals with the Benghazi investigation.
Oh, yes, and then there was the big campaign issue of Hillary Clinton’s email server, and the possibility that top secret information might have found its way into our enemies’ hands. That brouhaha was mentioned at every Trump stump speech. However, months later (this week, actually), President Trump blurted out some top secret information when hosting some Russian diplomats and spies. No problem, according to the Prez, and any account to the contrary is “Fake News!”.
Shooting one’s mouth off without thinking, or tweeting in anger, when you’re the President of the United States, is a dangerous way to conduct the public’s business.
Public policy becomes unclear, new enemies can be made, and old enemies are given a means to undermine and humiliate our country. Issuing retractions, spinning a new version of what was said, or claiming that something already in the public record…never happened!…well, these things are very un-statesmanlike.
Our leader doesn’t seem to understand, or appreciate, that government is a deliberative institution. Public policy is developed incrementally, after much thought, with input from many sources, both public and private, which much thought given to immediate and long-term impacts. Extensive hearings, debate, and soul-searching go into the development or modification of our laws. The process might get ugly, but at least the debate is out in the open. Our democratic system of government “corrects” for abuses and mistakes via frequent elections.
When someone such as Donald Trump puts out a “tax plan” which consists of bullet points on a single piece of paper, insults the integrity of the Federal bench, or tweets out an intention to ban Muslims from entering the United States, he disrespects the deliberative processes that make democracy work. Government is not impulsive: too many things are at stake.
Despite his incorrect assertion that his election win was of historic proportions (he’s called it a “landslide”), the fact of the matter is that most American citizens who could have voted in the 2016 election didn’t vote for Donald Trump. He didn’t even win the popular vote; Clinton beat him by 3 million votes. But, more importantly, about 90 million eligible adults didn’t vote at all. So, going in to his Presidency, Donald Trump had the electoral support of less than 30 percent of adult Americans. This was no “mandate for change”, and his approval ratings have been no higher than 40 percent since he took office.
The upshot of this situation is that President Trump should be working hard to bring the country together, to bolster his support. He should be contemplative, serious, deliberative, respectful, and working to mend fences. In short, he needs to act like an adult, not a whining, bullying, thoughtless, narcissistic child.
In one of his most thoughtless, everyone-is-picking-on-me statements of the young Trump Presidency, the Commander in Chief, speaking at the Coast Guard Academy graduation ceremonies this week, publicly said: “No politician in history…has been treated worse or more unfairly!” Uh, wait a minute, Mr. President…how about Julius Caesar, who was stabbed to death? Or, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Ghandi, and Anwar Sadat, who were shot to death?
Or, how about the fact that the U.S. media gave Donald Trump a free ride through the Presidential primaries, heaping upon him all manner of free publicity, while his opponents had to pay for their air time? That doesn’t seem like mistreatment; he must have forgotten about that.
What has been happening, unfortunately, is that he has realized that this job of being The Leader of the Free World is a tough one, something that he wasn’t really prepared for. The President is having to learn the job on the fly, and he is having a difficult time doing that because he is impulsive and thinks he knows more than he actually does.
It will be interesting to see how long the Republican Party will put up with this rank amateur. There will be Congressional elections in 2018, and the GOP will not want to campaign with an unpopular President in their camp. Heads could roll.