I wish I didn’t. But I do. Here’s why:
He’s a pathological liar, according to Republican Ted Cruz.
He’s a fake, a fraud, and a con-man, according to Republican Mitt Romney.
He convinced 81 percent of white evangelical Christian voters to throw Jesus under the bus to vote for a man who bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.”
He fired the acting Attorney General in a Monday Night Massacre because she determined that the president’s executive order on immigration was constitutionally indefensible.
He’s created an environment in which a southern white man can shut down a northeastern white woman while she’s reading from the floor of the Senate the cautionary words of a heroic southern black woman about a southern white man, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, who was deemed too racist to be a federal judge in 1986.
He disrespects duly-appointed, Senate-confirmed federal magistrates: “so-called judges.”
He’s offended our friends and allies, treating the Mexican and Australian governments in much the same way he’s treated John McCain and Megyn Kelly and a disabled reporter and Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz and the Gold Star Khan Family and Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and Rosie O’Donnell.
He hasn’t, as far as we know, paid federal income taxes in years, bragging that it’s smart on his part — meaning it’s dumb on our part to do so, thereby undermining citizen investment in shared governance. Nor has he released federal tax returns, as other presidential candidates have for the last 40 years.
His wife in New York City, his weekly trips to Mar-a-Lago, and his gallivanting children are costing us a fortune.
He’s sloppy with national security. Proof: Michael Flynn.
He’s given us a Secretary of Education who was born into and married into a billionaire family, has never attended a public school or taught in a public school, never taken out a student loan or applied for a Pell Grant, or even much supported our public schools.
He nominated a labor secretary (now withdrawn) who took advantage of an undocumented worker, pays his fast-food employees a shitty wage, and wants to replace humans with robots because they don’t take vacation days.
He’s put together an administration of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy.
He’s not kept his campaign promise to release documents and even hold a press conference to prove that the third Mrs. Trump never worked in the US illegally. (We know she lied about having a college degree and — knowingly or not — plagiarized part of Michelle Obama’s DNC speech.)
He said he’d negotiate lower drug prices from pharmaceutical companies. Now he says he won’t — but will give big pharma tax breaks and lift certain regulations on their industry.
He turned the nomination of a Supreme Court justice into the finale of a prime-time reality-show.
He knows little about the history of the United States, about our constitutional system, or about our institutions of government.
He has left millions of Americans who acquired health insurance via the ACA worried sick that this great benefit will be stripped from them.
His closest advisers have added to the chaos of the first weeks of the new administration: Kellyanne Conway and her universe of “alternative facts” — like the Bowling Green Massacre; Steve Bannon, who wants to play war with our military; Stephen Miller, who yells at the American people that the president’s views “will not be questioned!”; and Sean Spicer, period.
He uses Twitter to harangue and berate and demean individuals and journalists and companies that question his infallibility.
He’s rattled and incoherent, unfit and unqualified and unstable.
He uses fear and anxiety to bring out the worst impulses that lurk just beneath the surface to pimp for votes and deepen the crevasse between his America and the rest of us.
He has not drained the swamp, as he promised. It’s deeper. It’s wider. It’s even more dangerous.
The Russians. The Russians. The Russians.
Conservative Republicans would have crucified our former philosopher-president, Barack Obama, for behavior that even resembled that of our schoolyard bully president, Donald Trump. Where is their outrage now? President Turmp is not making America great again. He’s making America ugly again. But Republicans, who created this president in their laboratory of anger and resentment, will use President Trump as long as he’ll sign his John Hancock to their legislation.
He’s my tenth president. I’ve appreciated or admired something about all of them. Until now.
Sad!
Rodney Wilson
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