If I were to tell you that this president knowingly hired someone as his national security adviser who was in secrets talks with Russia during the election, someone who promised quid pro quo with top Russian officials if Trump were elected, would you believe me? What if I told you the exact same scenario, but that the president did it unwittingly? Would you believe me? What if I told you he was warned that the perspective National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn might be susceptible to blackmail from the Russians by the acting Attorney General Sally Yates, the same woman he later fired for insubordination because she refused to uphold his Muslim ban? Would you still believe me? What if I then told you that this president didn’t read the reports on this topic? Would you believe that?
I’m throwing all these ‘what ifs’ at you because the basic story is true, but no one knows exactly what this president did or didn’t know about it. He and his aides have changed the story as is their wont, and it’s easy to believe any of the aforementioned scenarios. That’s the most disturbing thing to me: this president is so corrupt, ignorant, inept, and venal, it’s hard to discern which of the negative explanations is the correct one. My opinion is that he was told about Flynn at the time, but he either didn’t care or didn’t retain the knowledge.
Side note: I want this president to take a reading test, and I want him to do it in public. I know it’s not going to happen, but more than one person I know has wondered if this president can actually read. My response is: He’s probably functionally literate, but just barely. More to the point, he evinces no interest in reading, which automatically makes him suspect to me. But again, it’s equally possible that he can read at a high level and just doesn’t care to do so. He’s proven that he’s incurious about the world around him and anything that doesn’t reflect what he already thinks. I seriously cannot see him picking up, say, Toni Morrison and giving her a serious read.
To my questions above, I think it’s equally possible that he knew exactly what was happening and didn’t care, and that he was given all the information but either didn’t read it or didn’t retain it because it didn’t interest him. My brother asked me if this president was a rightwinger. I said I didn’t think he was especially so. My brother followed it up with, “Then why has he chosen so many rightwingers?” I was stumped for a second, but I quickly rallied. My guess is that some of the names had been given to him by his aides or Republicans in Congress, some are friends of his, some are quid pro quo from his campaign, and some are sucker-uppers who flattered this president into giving them a plum position.
Personally, I think he was warned about Flynn, but he simply didn’t care. This president is known in the business community for always taking shortcuts and stiffing his workers. The fact that other people in the business community have noticed how slimy this president is when it comes to business says a lot because ethics in business are notoriously fluid. Since this president is amoral and believes that whatever he wants/likes is good, I have no doubt that he dismissed all the warnings he received about General Flynn as irrelevant.
Are you old enough to have been alive through the W. years? I am. I remember cringing every time I heard him speak and wondering how such an ignorant man managed to become president. Having him as our president was an embarrassment, but he’s a fucking Rhodes Scholar in comparison with this president. Although, the similarities are numerous. Both surround themselves with yes-men, people who make them feel good about themselves. Both are easily manipulated as proven by W. declaring he knew Putin was a good guy by looking deeply into his eyes and because Putin talked about the cross he was wearing. Both are incurious men who don’t care about the world around them. I will say that I don’t think W. was a sociopath the way this president is, but that’s damning with faint praise. It’s really sad that this president is making me nostalgic for W., but he is. Oh, we were all so young and naive then.
I have a hard time accepting that we’ve gone from President Barack Obama to…this. I knew there was going to be a reaction to having a black president, but this much of a negative reaction? I didn’t expect it. At all. It shows me that for as cynical as I am, I still expect a base level of decency from people. Every time I think people can’t disappoint me any further, they do. That’s one of the lessons I’ve learned from this last election–there is no floor to just how shitty people can be.
I hate how bitter I’ve become over this election. It’s not like I’m being sore because my candidate lost–it’s not about the politics at all. It’s how a sizable portion of this country hates people like me so much, they’ll elect a man like this president just to spite us. Make no mistake that spite is the driving factor for many rightwingers. They delight in doing things that’ll piss off the ‘libtards’ as they so fondly call us. I remember one Earth Day, Erick the son of Erick told his readers to sit on their driveways with their cars running because it would make liberals mad. Besides the idiocy of that statement, how fucking childish do you have to be to waste gas like that in order to spite people you don’t even know? They are the classic example of cutting off your nose to spite your face, and I’ll admit I have a hard time being sympathetic towards the people who wanted to abolish Obamacare but are now panicking because the ACA is on the chopping block. They are so driven by hatred, they didn’t even take five seconds to research what exactly Obamacare was. It had Obama in the name and liberals love it, so that’s all they needed to decide that they were against it.
In the darkest recesses of my mind, I think, “I hope they lose their ACA coverage and fucking learn something from it,” but that’s not how most of me feels. One of the reasons I’m a liberal is because I care about the under-served and the overlooked. I’m almost always on the side of the underdog, and I don’t want anyone to lose their house because they need an operation. In other words, I am on their side, despite their hatefulness, but this president drains my sympathy quickly and steadily.
I read that this president hates this job, which, duh. He never wanted to be president, and I bet he’s counting the days until he can stop. I don’t think he’ll make it four years, in fact, I bet he won’t last two. To be honest, I think he’ll be gone before his first anniversary, but I don’t want to put myself out on the ledge too far. I don’t know if he’ll be impeached first, if the Republicans will get fed up with his mercurial temperament and finagle a way to oust him, if he’ll quit, or if he’ll die, but I’ll be highly surprised if a year from now, he’s still president. I would be happy about that if Pence weren’t in line to be president next. Pence is a true zealot who sold his soul for the possibility to be president, and I think he’ll do a lot of damage as president if he were ever to reach that position. More than this president? I’m not sure, but it’ll be more targeted at people like me. Women and queers, I mean. He hates both in equal measure, and under a Pence regime, there would be little joy to be had by anyone not exactly like him.
One of the things about this administration that boggles my mind is how often they lie about things and how badly they do it. I mean, to be fair, it’d be difficult to spin this president’s words and behaviors into anything other than a shit sandwich, but do they even hear themselves? Then again, this president is used to saying whatever he wants and being told his shit don’t stink, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he hired people who felt the same way. They were able to get away with it for the most part during the campaign because no one took candidate Trump very seriously. Now that he’s president, more attention is being paid to his every word and deed. Another reason he hates the job–the scrutiny. He’s being held to a higher standard (still not high enough), and he doesn’t like it one bit.
He also doesn’t like being made fun of, which is why it’s ridiculously easy to get under his skin. It’s childishly satisfying to see him turn red at being poked, but this is not a trait I want in my president. Think of all the shit PBO had to put up with while he was president and how he let it roll off his back. In fact, he demonstrated exactly how to do it during the 2008 election.
You just gotta brush the dirt off, which is something he took to heart while president. Think of how gracious he was to President-Elect Trump, and this was after Trump had bleated about PBO’s birth certificate for years. Now, imagine if the roles were reversed–how do you think this president would have treated PBO? Much differently, I can guarantee you.
The worst part for me is that I’ve become more and more resigned to this presidency, in part because even if the president were removed, we’d still be in a shitty situation. The Republicans are using this president’s antics as a shield to pass their bullshit bills, and they will arguably do more damage than he will. This president is mostly blunder and hot air; Congress Republicans actually know how to get things done, and they’re doing their damnedest to make sure they’re in power for decades to come.
Still. The first cracks in this administration’s facade are showing, and it’s time to double down and get rid of them all. Who knows? With the way they’re self-destruction, they may do it for us themselves.