Donald
Trump has been a gift to writers with no end in sight.
That
is, Trump’s irrelevant idiocracy of a government is a golden calf which, in the
Old Testament, glittered and dazzled the followers of the prophet Moses. It is
a siren call to glamorize or invent excuses to prop up a world turned on its
head by a narcissistic ignoramus and pledge fealty to its purported leader—who
has been publicly described as a “fucking moron” by his own Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson.
The
editorial writers, cartoonists, satirists, serious columnists, and even fiction
writers are having a field day riffing on a never-ending stream of Trumpian non
sequiturs, abuse, thoughtlessness, greed, stupidity, outright fiction, cruelty,
absurdity, nativism, misogyny, and racism.
Wordsmiths
can’t think of enough synonyms to describe their disgust and angst with the
Leader of the Free World, now set loose on the international stage to disrupt
global order, economy, peace, and prosperity.
For example, The Atlantic reported that during Trump’s
recent visit to Puerto Rico two weeks after the second of two catastrophic
hurricanes devastated that island, Donald described residents who were isolated
among roads blocked with storm debris and washed out bridges—and were in
desperate need of clean water, medications, food, power, and telephone cell
services—as “very proud” they hadn’t endured a “real catastrophe” like Katrina,
“doing little to erase the impression that he sees hurricane relief more as a
political story than a human one.”
He then proceeded to lob paper
towels from a storm relief center to assembled residents of a toney San Juan
suburb as if he were LeBron James casually passing basketballs.
He compared the number of known
deaths in Puerto Rico—sure to rise—with the “thousands” of deaths by drowning
when the dikes and levies gave way in New Orleans. The actual number of deaths sustained
as Hurricane Katrina barreled through in 2005 was about 1,800, high enough but
nowhere near Ignorant Donald’s characterization.
Trump did not make any attempt
to survey the island’s interior with its millions of vulnerable, sweltering,
frightened U.S. citizens. As San Juan’s intrepid Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz pleaded on
cable news, “people are dying” and “it’s all about saving lives” in the
interior, Trump reacted by doubling down on his harsh criticisms of Cruz (“Democrats
must have told her to say nasty things” about him).
Trump then characterized
Cruz as unable to organize or otherwise do her job even with FEMA and other
help (i.e., supplies sitting mostly inaccessibly in tractor trailer units stranded
on Puerto Rican docks without necessary truck drivers or diesel fuel or cleared
roads or reliable communication to the interior communities in need).
Commentators from abroad are
aghast. Bigly. They describe the world’s reaction as “global strategic
whiplash.” And with good reason.
European diplomats
agree that Trump has become “something of a laughing stock . . . at
international gatherings [a] small group of diplomats play a version of word
bingo whenever the president speaks because they consider his vocabulary to be
so limited. ‘Everything is “great,” “very, very great,” “amazing,”’ indicated
one diplomat.”
Trump, they agree,
is “a serious threat to . . . peace and stability” on the international stage
and in the U.S.
For example:
— He wildly
threatens to nuke North Korea even as his Secretary of State is working through
back channels to negotiate a reasoned approach;
— He lambasts NATO
members for their purported failure to pay their “fair share” of costs even
though they have been doing exactly that;
— He refuses to visit Great Britain because
that country cannot guarantee that a visit would be free from significant
protests nor will it arrange for him to meet Queen Elizabeth, who appears to
loathe him as much as the rest of the world;
— He praises dictators such as (1) Russian
President Vladimir Putin, who by all accounts ordered the cyber undermining of the
2016 U.S. election and continues to attempt to put a Russian authoritarian
finger on the scale in favor of Trump, and (2) Philippines President Rodrigo
Duterte, a thug who has ordered the mass murder of at least 7,000 drug
traffickers by a “campaign of extrajudicial execution” in his brutal and quixotic
quest to quell a heroin epidemic;
— He wobbles back
and forth on terminating NAFTA out of misinformed conclusions regarding recent
trade results and conditions;
— He periodically
continues to threaten to build a completely useless, expensive wall with Mexico
to keep out “rapists” and other “bad persons,” although Mexican officials
refuse to pay a dime, the idea is ludicrous and reminiscent of the infamous
Berlin Wall, and the U.S. Congress has yet to authorize any significant funding.
This along with efforts to slash Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, children’s
health services, the EPA, HUD, HSS, the Department of Education, the State
Department including USAID, and numerous other essential programs that benefit
the American people and many in need located abroad.
The list goes on.
At home, Trump is often
under siege from highly critical traditional media reports (“fake news”) and the
worries of concerned administration officials.
Take,
for example, the following comments from Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the
conservative Republican Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who
had been a loyal acolyte and soldier for Trump. He has announced his intention
to forego another term in the Senate and instead has indicated that Donald Trump
“has not yet been able
to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be
successful.”
Further, he added in an interview with The New York Times, Trump is a man-child whose
threats against North Korea (and Iran) could put the country “on the path to
World War III.” Moreover, said Corker, “Trump acted as if he was on his old reality-TV show” and that he
concerned the senator, adding that “[h]e would have to concern anyone who cares
about our nation.”
Corker reiterated those concerns this past
week by describing Gens. John Kelly and James Mattis—Chief of Staff and
Secretary of Defense—along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as the three
individuals who “help separate our country from chaos.” Significantly,
these three top administration leaders have purportedly entered into a private
pact forming a sort of bulwark whereby the firing of any one of them, with
Tillerson being the most likely to be sacked due to his open disagreements with
Trump, would result in the resignation of the other two.
A few days later, after Trump tweeted
aggressively and negatively about Corker, Senator Corker responded that, “It’s
a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously
missed their shift this morning.” This exchange was characterized by The Guardian as “the
latest undignified episode in Trump’s bizarre and fractious relationship with
the Republican establishment and parts of his own administration.”
Corker’s
support will be needed if Trump is to enact a budget since Corker sits on the
Senate Budget Committee, and the future of the Iran agreement—supported by
Corker—is in doubt as a stormy debate over that agreement’s fate looms.
Senator John McCain, terminally ill with
brain cancer, has twice been pivotal in preventing the gutting of the ACA
(Obamacare) on the Senate floor, and seems to see his legacy writ large in
heroic opposition to a president who derided McCain’s service as a Vietnam POW
as insignificant. This because McCain was captured in 1967 over Hanoi after he
parachuted out of his crippled dive bomber and became a POW rather than evading North Vietnamese
soldiers, and Trump—a five-time draft evader—ridiculed McCain for being unable
to escape. McCain had broken three major limbs during his high-speed aerial ejection
and endured considerable torture during his lengthy captivity.
The atmosphere in the White House is heavy
with threats of Trump fury and rife with intimidated aides who leak more than
Niagara. One former staffer apparently kept such detailed notes of his months
in the Trump White House that his journals will no doubt end up in the hands of
the Mueller investigatory team.
With
an executive government severely understaffed and in significant part being run
by inexperienced ideologues who could fairly be described as Trump bootlickers,
this would leave already isolated and lonely Twitter addict Trump further
adrift in the pre-dawn White House, baying to the world in contradictory and
often alarming memes.
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