Last night, Trump stopped short of declaring the state of emergency that he had clearly been musing over for several weeks now in order to bypass Congress and begin to get his vanity wall on the southern border erected. He had been bragging - shocking, I know - that he in fact did have the authority to do so, and was willing to go ahead with it. But some critics strongly warned against this action, including some conservative critics, and there were suggestions that, as if Trump was not in enough trouble already, declaring a state of emergency and going over the head of Congress to obtain funding for his wall would be an impeachable act.
What we got instead from Trump was typical talking points that he shares with his enthusiastic audiences at his political rallies, which never abated following the 2016 election. Most of us were sick and tired of the 2016 election well before November rolled around, but Trump and his supporters just want that to keep going and going. But the Trump base was growing restless, beginning to worry that Trump's promises that he actually would fail to build the wall. Trump has tried to allay those fears, going so far as to post a "Game of Thrones" inspired picture promising that "The Wall is Coming." However, the opportunity to build the wall, which his followers felt this supposed artist and master of making deals would do, is fading. It is beginning to feel like just another Trump lie and failure, just like his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall.
Speaking from the Senate floor for the opposition, new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, gave their response to Trump's speech. Admittedly, I am not big fans of these two mainstream Democrats, but for the most part, criticisms of Trump and his style of what passes for governance are mostly bipartisan.
Schumer summed up Trump's recent behavior regarding the partial government shutdown fairly accurately:
“We arrived at this moment because President Trump has been on a destructive two-week temper tantrum demanding the American taxpayer pony up for an expensive and ineffective border wall."
For once, a mainstream Democrat (in this case, Schumer) showed some spine, stating point blank that President Trump "must abandon the wall, plain and simple."
And Schumer even alluded to Trump's past tendencies as a corrupt and heartless business con artist, suggesting that Trump's vanity wall was nothing more than the equivalent of one of these infamous trademark Trump scams:
"The Senate’s not interested in swindling the American taxpayer for an unnecessary and wasteful policy,. The wall is President Trump’s bone to the hard-right people."
Pelosi, for her part, also took some sharp swipes at Trump:
"Sadly much of what we heard from President Trump has been full of misinformation and even malice. The president has chosen fear."
I noticed that FOX "News" and Brietbart posted those words up like banners this morning, clearly taking them as fighting points to rally their side. But this is a losing battle. Convincing enough people that believed he would build that wall and force Mexico to pay for it was one thing. But convincing the nation that it urgently needed to be built after he failed to get Mexico to pay for it is quite another. Maybe his supporters buy into the idea that he is a master deal maker and can force his desires through to get the wall built. But everyone else with an ounce of objectivity sees that he lacks the experience, the intelligence, and the ability to compromise that is essential to be successful in being a leader in government.
Donald Trump was elected President of the United States because enough people were fooled into believing that he is a strong man.
What we got instead from Trump was typical talking points that he shares with his enthusiastic audiences at his political rallies, which never abated following the 2016 election. Most of us were sick and tired of the 2016 election well before November rolled around, but Trump and his supporters just want that to keep going and going. But the Trump base was growing restless, beginning to worry that Trump's promises that he actually would fail to build the wall. Trump has tried to allay those fears, going so far as to post a "Game of Thrones" inspired picture promising that "The Wall is Coming." However, the opportunity to build the wall, which his followers felt this supposed artist and master of making deals would do, is fading. It is beginning to feel like just another Trump lie and failure, just like his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall.
Speaking from the Senate floor for the opposition, new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, gave their response to Trump's speech. Admittedly, I am not big fans of these two mainstream Democrats, but for the most part, criticisms of Trump and his style of what passes for governance are mostly bipartisan.
Schumer summed up Trump's recent behavior regarding the partial government shutdown fairly accurately:
“We arrived at this moment because President Trump has been on a destructive two-week temper tantrum demanding the American taxpayer pony up for an expensive and ineffective border wall."
For once, a mainstream Democrat (in this case, Schumer) showed some spine, stating point blank that President Trump "must abandon the wall, plain and simple."
And Schumer even alluded to Trump's past tendencies as a corrupt and heartless business con artist, suggesting that Trump's vanity wall was nothing more than the equivalent of one of these infamous trademark Trump scams:
"The Senate’s not interested in swindling the American taxpayer for an unnecessary and wasteful policy,. The wall is President Trump’s bone to the hard-right people."
Pelosi, for her part, also took some sharp swipes at Trump:
"Sadly much of what we heard from President Trump has been full of misinformation and even malice. The president has chosen fear."
I noticed that FOX "News" and Brietbart posted those words up like banners this morning, clearly taking them as fighting points to rally their side. But this is a losing battle. Convincing enough people that believed he would build that wall and force Mexico to pay for it was one thing. But convincing the nation that it urgently needed to be built after he failed to get Mexico to pay for it is quite another. Maybe his supporters buy into the idea that he is a master deal maker and can force his desires through to get the wall built. But everyone else with an ounce of objectivity sees that he lacks the experience, the intelligence, and the ability to compromise that is essential to be successful in being a leader in government.
Donald Trump was elected President of the United States because enough people were fooled into believing that he is a strong man.
Frankly, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Trump is perhaps the weakest president that this country has ever seen. Since he took over, the nation's capital, and especially the White House, has felt like a circus act, almost literally. There is a definite lack of gravitas and seriousness, as the ridiculous tweets and missteps and idiotic and ignorant comments have come down like an avalanche non-stop since almost the moment that Trump took the oath of office.
Some people seemed to have their chests swell up with national pride at Trump rallies, and they believed their man when he claimed that the entire world was laughing at the United States for signing international agreements like the Paris Accord, and the Iran Nuclear deal.
But almost the entire world quickly condemned Trump's actions when he pulled out of these deals.
Trump claimed that he was the ultimate deal maker, seeming to suggest that he was the greatest deal maker in history. He claimed that he could get the United States a better deal with the Paris Climate Accord. Instead, the rest of the world stood firm in rejecting any new negotiation for special conditions for Trump and his nation, and the world moved on without the United States. The same thing happened with the Iran Nuclear deal. The United States withdrew, and the other nations involved worked hard to keep everything intact, and again, to make it work without the United States.
Indeed, Trump keeps proclaiming premature victories, boasting about what he is capable of, then falling far short of his own lofty promises. That was true with those two deals mentioned above, but it was also true of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall. They never did, and now we are in the midst of a government shutdown to get Americans to pay for Trump's wall. Trump also promised that he would defeat ISIS within 30 days. It has been almost two years since Trump took office, and he himself admitted that ISIS is still in the region, as he seems to be making plans to withdraw from Syria altogether. He promised that trade wars would be easy to win, strongly suggesting that he would be able to win it for the nation. But these trade wars continue, and they were imposed not just on China, which at least Trump had suggested during the campaign, but also on nations that were traditional allies of the United States, particularly Canada and Europe.
All of these things are glaring failures, and have hurt the image of the United States around the world, and I have not even mentioned the insults and absurd tweets that also garnered negative attention, both here and abroad.
And let us not forget that time last year when Trump gave a speech before the United Nations General Assembly and was literally laughed at to his face, for all of the world to see. Everyone who saw and heard it knew exactly what it was, and even Trump betrayed his surprise by stating that this was not the reaction that he was expecting. FOX News, and later the White House and it's supporters, tried to spin it like they were laughing with him, but Trump had not been joking about what he claimed were his great accomplishments. But the world community laughed, because they are smarter than the typical Trump rallies, which the president apparently thought he was still at while making those lofty proclamations.
The fact of the matter is that this man, who is frankly more like a child than a mature adult, has become the butt of jokes the world over. All of his buffoonery and posturing has hurt America's reputation the world over. So ridiculous is he, with his fake hair and his fake tan and his fake proclamations of having an athletic build, when the world can see that he is a lazy fat ass, have justifiably garnered negative attention the world over. Most people in other countries simply cannot understand how this nation elected such a ridiculous figure to represent us in the first place.
Here are the articles that I used in writing this particular piece regarding Trump's failures so far since becoming president, and in particular, his inevitable failure to build his vanity wall, which was the biggest and most iconic promise that got him elected in the first place:
Trump, Weaker Than People Realize The president deserves to lose his job — and he’s vulnerable. Just look at the final midterm results. David Leonhardt By David Leonhardt Opinion Columnist Jan. 7, 2019:
Trump's 'destructive two-week temper tantrum' forced shutdown BY JORDAIN CARNEY - 12/22/18
Pelosi and Schumer reply to Trump's border wall speech – in full posted by The Guardian, January 9, 2019:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/09/pelosi-and-schumer-reply-to-trumps-border-wall-speech-in-full
No comments:
Post a Comment