One year ago today, a corrupt and racist charlatan stood on a platform in front of the Capitol and vowed to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and …to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Most of us knew that Trump was lying that day. We strongly suspected that he did not know or care about the Constitution or the country and that he viewed the Presidency as a mere racket and marketing opportunity. Trump was in it to see what he could get.
Some of us fervently, if foolishly, hoped that the weight of the responsibility would imbue him with some gravitas and that Trump would grow into the office. What a cruel joke! His inaugural address set the tone for what was to come. Trump outlined a bewildering portrait of an America in decline— beset by criminality and decay, disrespected around the world. We couldn’t know at the time that he was articulating his vision, foreshadowing the fate America had in store under a Trump presidency.
His first official act was to sign an Executive Order reversing Obama era rules designed to make mortgage insurance premiums more affordable for middle income home buyers. Trump didn’t even wait twelve hours to start screwing over middle class Americans.
The very next day, Trump sent his press secretary, intellectual lightweight, Sean Spicer, to the podium to tell a laughable, easily disprovable lie about the crowd size at his inauguration. The point was less to try and fool us, than to establish that Trump was willing to destabilize us by insisting on an alternative reality. Sharp observers like Sarah Kendzior and Masha Gessen pointed out that this was a tool of autocrats and any of us who paid attention when we read George Orwell in high school saw the chilling parallels.
By every metric we use to measure modern presidents, Trump has been worse than a failure. He has been simultaneously ubiquitous in his destructive toxicity and yet, criminally absent where it counts. Trump is constitutionally incapable of donning any mantle of moral, civic or political leadership. Every predecessor, going back almost 100 years,whether considered great (FDR), average (George H.W. Bush) or terrible (George W. Bush), had moments where they advanced the country’s interests. Even Nixon had China!
Not so Trump. In the year that he has been in office, he has brought us closer to the brink of nuclear war than we have been in fifty years. Trump has been indolently corrupt, spending more than 90 days of his tenure golfing at properties he owns, while the country and the world lurch from crisis to crisis. He has presided over a gleefully sadistic Department of Homeland Security, which has sent the jackbooted thugs of ICE to raid 711s and courtrooms, in their zeal to deport Brown people.
Meanwhile, Trump, like some cross between Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and the Grand Wizard of the Klan, incessantly ridicules and insults Black people and attacks freedom of the press. There is not one moment, one action, one speech in the last 365 days in which Trump has acted like an American president. It is said that the American president is like the father to the country. By that measure, we are a nation of fatherless children. Time to grow up.
Thought provoking article accurately measuring the Trump Non Effect and cronyism we’ve witnessed with our own eyes. Interesting that he’s been predicting the type of presidency that’s left everyone in shock and in awe of his ridiculous claims and in his view what it takes to put America first. Consequently he’s turned the country upside down and his blind ambition is tearing it apart. We can’t take much more of this.