It never stops. There’s never a day that goes by where there’s not a major dust-up over something generated by Trump. Dominating the airways, he cannot keep his mouth shut and his words carry us from one bizarre situation to another. Though there’s always something new that has arisen or that’s on the horizon, there are certain phrases that are repetitive, either on Twitter, through his short bursts in response to questions by the press, or during his revival-tent type rallies. One knows that considerable time won’t pass without his blaming the Democrats for some problem he created, or lambasting Hillary for breathing, or ripping the FBI for daring to think he might have colluded with the Russians, or denigrating the nation’s intelligence agencies for information they may have given him about Russia which he refuses to accept. And then, of course, there’s always someone he’s fired or is going to fire.
Today the focus might be foreign policy when he decides to withdraw American troops from Syria without consulting with his National Security and military teams. Or he blasts NATO because the nations in the alliance are not paying their fair share and threatens to take the US out of the compact. Both with Syria and NATO he appears to be doing the bidding of his buddy, Vladimir Putin, who’s getting his way without giving anything back. Then there are those meetings with Putin, some held with no one else in the room except an interpreter. And Trump confiscated the interpreter’s notes afterwards, warning him or her not to breathe a word of what occurred in the meeting with Putin, even to the top members of his administration. Doesn’t that sound a bit suspicious, even to Trump’s base? Trump is the only president who has attempted to keep the information about his meetings with a foreign leader secret. And why is the administration trying to lift the sanctions on Oleg Deripaska’s companies, another buddy of Putin’s. Strange to say the least. How can one avoid the conclusion there’s a connection of some sort between Trump and Putin?
Domestically, everyone’s concentrating on the shutdown for the moment, a conflict that makes no sense at all to any rational human being. No compromise. Trumpi wants his wall. In addition to the damage he’s doing to the economy because of the shutdown, there are also his trade wars which he claimed were easy to win. Well, the impasse with China is still going on, hurting the Midwestern farmers who have no markets for their soybeans and other crops. And many of our domestic industries that need parts from China. And his tariffs on steel and aluminum haven’t done much except raise the price of products in the US like cars that use a lot of steel and aluminum.
America has a leader in Trump who has no idea what he’s doing, making big decisions on whim and not accepting advice from his experts in various fields. Aside from the fact that he may be a Russian asset and acting at times on their behalf, his ignorance in terms of government, politics, economics and so forth are overwhelming. He doesn’t need Russia to tell him how to damage America and Western democracies. His lack of expertise, his arrogance, and his unchained and high-handed decision making are enough to inflict major harm on the US and the nations that encompass the western liberal order. But just how much can America take from this arrogant compromised buffoon?
Resurrecting Democracy
www.robertlevinebooks.com
Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020