October 22, 2019
As the walls of the impeachment inquiry close in, Trump responds by ratcheting up his chaotic and corrupt behavior. Yesterday he railed against the “crazy” Democrats, blaming them for forcing him to rescind his decision to host the G-7 at his failing Doral Resort in Miami. This was a rare reversal for someone whose approach to being criticized is to brazen it out. As The New York Times reported, it was Republicans, weary of defending the indefensible, angered by Trump’s inexplicable betrayal of the Kurds, who told Trump that his decision simply could not stand, (Source: “Why Trump Dropped His Idea to Hold the G7 at His Own Hotel,” by Maggie Haberman, Eric Lipton and Katie Rogers, The New York Times, 10/20/19).
After three years of seeing no repercussions for his blatant and unceasing corruption, of having foreign leaders book rooms at his hotel as if they were paying tributes to a Roman emperor, Trump is in all likelihood, shocked by the uproar. Like the petulant moron that he is, Trump responded by attacking the Emoluments Clause as “phony” and making the fantastical claim that George Washington “continued to run a business while he was president and used two desks,” (Source: “Trump Dismisses ‘Phony Emoluments Clause,’ Defending Doral,” by Annie Karni, The New York Times, 10/21/19).
Like the cornered rat that he is, Trump reacts to being belatedly held to account by upping the ante. This morning’s unhinged tweet compared the impeachment inquiry to a “lynching,” a racist framing that equates Constitutionally mandated oversight to the terroristic murder of innocent Black people, (Source: “Today’s Agenda: Trump Calls Impeachment Inquiry a ‘Lynching,’” by Kate Riga and Nicole Lafond, TalkingPointsMemo.com, 10/22/19).
As we watch Trump implode, seeing that Republicans are sharply criticizing his disastrous Syria policy ,we may be comforted by the belief that a weakened Trump will be removed from office, if not through impeachment, then at the ballot box. Our confidence is misplaced. As the revelations regarding the torrent of misleading Trump Facebook ads reveal, we can hardly be sanguine that malevolent actors, both foreign and domestic, will not tamper with our electoral process.
In addition, as the events of the last week have shown, Trump reacts to the specter of accountability by wreaking more havoc and doing more damage. He is completely without empathy, morality or shame. He takes no counsel and brooks no dissent. Trump is an ambulatory sinkhole of depravity who casually trafficks in both the language and the practice of genocide. If that sounds hyperbolic, consider what he unleashed in Syria with a casual phone call. We laughed at his ridiculous statement that the Kurds didn’t help us in World War II, but it wasn’t so funny when he used the language of ethnic cleansing, saying that Turkey needed to have the area of Northern Syria “cleaned out.” Under his administration, migrant children who were ripped from their parents are being adopted by white Christian families, while their parents are deported, (Source; “‘They Want to Steal My Daughter’: Deported Parents May Lose Kids to Adoption, AP Finds,” by The Associated Press, Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza, Bloomberg.com, 10/9/18), a practice which has been condemned by the U.N.
As David Leonhardt and Michelle Goldberg opined in the paper of record, it is time to hit the streets. Our abandoned allies and innocent immigrants don’t have the luxury of waiting until November 2020. To tell the truth, neither do we.