We have never before seen a major national political candidate in this country who set off so many alarm bells from such a wide portion of the country before Donald Trump in 2016. It's one thing that Democrats did not like or trust the man, but the number of Republicans who seemed unusually skeptical about him should have tipped more people off that there really is something different, and very alarming, about the man.
Yet, he was nominated as the official GOP candidate and, eventually, was elected to the highest office in the land.
Afterwards, many Republicans fell in line, and supported their new president. But many also did not, and this man remains very polarizing, even within the GOP. I mean, seriously, how often have you seen the president being so criticized and questioned, even by people who normally would be political allies? Sure, every politician, and every President, has critics, even by fellow party members. But the vehemence with which he is being attacked, the relentlessness of charges that he is, for all intents and purposes, an immature, overgrown child, just do not go away.
Why do his supporters have such a difficult time seeing that there might be a good reason for this? When will they ever see, or admit, that these criticisms are not coming from left field, but are grounded in concrete reality, based on Trump's own conduct, and his own words?
Now, it surely is no secret to anyone who knows me, or follows this blog, that I am no fan of President Trump. Like most everyone else, I too think of him as an immature, overgrown, overly entitled and bratty child.
But it's more than that. It's worse.
My big suspicion with Donald Trump and his team is this: they hold the American people in contempt. They want to keep playing the big important rich boys, and they want to keep making money the only way that they know how, which is by taking advantage shamelessly, by making shady deals, perhaps even illegal business transactions. They want to continue being vulture capitalists, and they want to encourage other powerful people like them to do the same. If it seems like they are doing everything humanly possible to make the country, and even the world, a worse place, it's because that is exactly what they are doing. Honestly, I do not know that they know how to do anything else, and they do not appear to have it in them to be or do better than this, generally.
Naturally, this poison is affecting the country for the worst. Trump is not the symbol of what the country should be, or the direction this nation, much less this world, should be going in. Cut throat, vulture capitalism has not worked for a vast majority of people, and not surprisingly, the gap between rich and poor, between the powerful and the weak, between the haves and the have-nots, has grown dramatically in the short time that Trump has been in the White House. It did not get there accidentally, or by static, somehow. This was done by design, and the widening gap is also by design, as the most privileged among us, including Trump and friends, are helping themselves to our money and our resources, because they know they can. At least, they assume that they can, and nothing has really suggested otherwise yet.
One of the charges that Trump finds continually leveled at him is that he is a con artist, that all that he really offers are lies and scams. Indeed, if you look at his history, you will find an extensive history clearly showing good reason for people feeling that this is all that Trump is about. He has a long and alarming history of shady deals and abuses, and promising much while delivering little.
He thrived because people believed what they wanted to believe, and abandoned their critical thinking in order to fool themselves into believing it. He thrived off of this, it worked for him, and so he used it, encouraged it, and mastered the art of manipulating the masses. Not only does he trick and use people, but he then looks down with contempt at the very people that he did this to, because when you view the world in simple, black and white ways, seeing only winners and losers, and feeling that you are the ultimate winner, then how else can you possibly view the people you took advantage of? To Trump, and people like him, anyone who does not play the game the way that they do, anyone who is not filthy rich and scamming people out of their money is just a loser.
Is this really who we want as our president?
Not surprisingly, the President surrounds himself with like-minded people as himself, which is perhaps why he has the most blatantly corrupt administration in history. And, since Trump also wavers so incredibly in his opinions of people, one day holding them up as model citizens, and then the next scoffing at them and ridiculing them publicly, it is not surprising that there is such a high turnover rate in the Trump White House. Frankly, it would be surprising if there was not.
And of those who remain, we can expect only the worst kind of conduct. The kind of conduct that Trump gives his stamp of approval for, and which makes the country worse.
Case in point, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Here is a guy with the worst kind of ethics. A man who owns apartments meant for low-income people, but who hides that fact when it suits him, and has no qualms about trying to raise the price of rent, and essentially force the poor people out, so that he can pocket the profits and come out "the winner."
Kushner has indeed had some shady deals, and new headlines on a daily basis reveal numerous situations where he is guilty of conflicts of interest. The fact that he did not even get the security clearance that usually should be an automatic for such a high-ranking official within the White House strongly suggests that something is not right with this guy.
This man basically looks down on members of his own Republican party, for that matter. When Elizabeth Spiers called out Trump on his birther stance and claimed that it was racist, Kushner, according to her, responded like this:
“He rolled his eyes and said ‘He doesn’t really believe it, Elizabeth. He just knows Republicans are stupid and they’ll buy it’”.
This is not the first time that Trump has been accused of dismissing his own Republicans as, at least by and large, stupid. However, it cannot fully be proven, although frankly, it would not surprise me that he would feel this way. It would be even less of a surprise for me to know that he not only feels this way, but joined the very party that he feels is populated with stupid people.
What really depresses me about the present, and especially the future, regarding what is going on in this country, is that people seemingly truly cannot see through a man like Trump, nor the people who he surrounds himself with. Whether or not he outright said so boldly that he thinks Republicans are stupid, I have no doubt that, given his winners and losers perspective on life, he does indeed view them as losers, with himself of course being the winner, once again having scammed people into believing what he wants them to believe in order to get what he wanted.
Trump has incredibly low approval ratings, has been condemned worldwide for many of his actions and viewpoints, and is generally seen as a clownish figure by far too many to be easily dismissed. Yet, he also is the sitting President, and like it or not, has a solid 30 to 35 percent who serve as his base of supporters, and seem to let him get away with nonsense time and time again.
The unanswerable question now is why?
Jared Kushner 'admitted Donald Trump lies to his base because he thinks they're stupid' The Independent Maya Oppenheim ,The Independent•May 31, 2017:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jared-kushner-apos-admitted-donald-102800653.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=fb
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