Every president from FDR to Obama, (and yes, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, even Kennedy AND JFK) responded to attacks on our country by uniting the nation. Roosevelt didn’t blame Republicans when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. George W. Bush didn’t throw petty insults and lies at Nancy Pelosi when al Qaida hit the World Trade Center. When a terrorist killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub, Obama didn’t use the occasion to remind us Ted Cruz is a hideous human being from Canada.
Donald Trump is a president who doesn’t know how to be president. That’s because he’s not supposed to be president. He especially doesn’t know how to react to traumatic events in his life, from a terrorist shooting over 50 people in Las Vegas to Kristen Stewart cheating on Robert Pattinson. The man totally wigs out and loses his sh–and his only response is to be as petty as he can possibly be.
ISIS does not expect to destroy our nation by killing eight people on bicycles in New York City by running over them with a rental truck from Home Depot (who still probably had a better week with national exposure than Papa John’s). Their goal is for us to use that to destroy ourselves. Terrorists failed at making us destroy ourselves over 9/11 and they have failed at every attempt since. Now, they have a president who will play into their hands. They have a true puppet in Donald Trump. Putin will have to share him.
After losing the cities of Mosul and Raqqa, ISIS rejoices at an American president who uses one of their attacks to attack his political opponents. It’s probably even better the president lies when he does it.
The president’s responses to attacks have been political, divisive, and outright stupid. As a candidate, his response to the Pulse nightclub shootings was to congratulate himself for predicting it. For San Bernardino, he called for a ban on Muslims entering the nation (as he did for Pulse). We can’t forget his response to the death of a young woman by racists in Charlottesville, when he said “good people” were marching with Nazis.
After Las Vegas, the White House told us not to politicize it, and they haven’t talked about any legislation to prevent similar attacks in the future. Less than eighteen hours after the attack in New York City, Trump is calling for an end to the “Diversary” Visa Lottery program for immigrants.
This is a system that offers citizens of countries with low immigration rates a chance to come to the United States. The NYC killer entered the nation seven years ago from Uzbekistan as a beneficiary of the program.
The Visa program issues up to 50,000 green cards a year, which is a tiny fraction of the more than one million who receive them. Applicants don’t require a sponsor, must pass a background check, have a high school diploma, and have two years of recent work experience. Citizens of Mexico, Canada, Brazil, China and other nations that have sent at least 50,000 people to the United States in the past five years are not eligible. The intention is to mix up our melting pot, which you don’t do by letting Nickelback stay here.
Trump ignored the facts Wednesday when he tweeted, “we need to get rid of the lottery program as soon as possible.” He also attacked New York Senator and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer with, “The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based.”
Schumer helped create the program in 1990, and it passed with bipartisan support and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. In recent years, he’s worked on legislation that would reduce the number of immigrants, thus ending the Lottery program.
Trump isn’t interested in the details. He needs something stupid for Huckabee Sanders to defend. Kellyanne Conway will surely double-down on the stupidity later today on CNN, and Sebastian Gorka will most likely follow the talking points on Fox News while also doing his creepy vampire routine. Bleah. Bleah. Bleah.
As others have pointed out, the president is very slow in criticizing white people who kill people. Sometimes, he compliments them, as if Putin sent them over. When the perpetrator is brown, he unleashes his Twitter Kraken.
I really miss having an adult as president and I’m tired of being stuck with an illiterate racist child who emboldens terrorists.
Clay Jones can be contacted at [email protected]