By Brigitte L. Nacos
When the man holding the highest office in our land displays publicly a deficit in basic human values and in positive character traits, this should not sit well with all of us—regardless of partisan and ideological preferences. While Donald Trump exhibits such a deficit day-in and day-out—particular in his Twitter feeds, he highlighted yesterday his ethical bankruptcy in the most regrettable ways:
As he celebrated the adoption of the "John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act" during his visit at Fort Drum in upstate New York, he thanked a number of individuals but never mentioned the US Senator of Arizona. Instead, he called the new law “National Defense Authorization Act” dropping the Senator’s name included by Congress in honor of McCain who is fighting brain cancer. Unable to forget his political differences with the old war hero, Trump attacked him at his next stop—a fundraising event—again without naming McCain. But everybody knew what he meant when he referred to Obamacare and said, "I would've gotten rid of everything, but as you know, one of our wonderful senators had thumbs down at 2 o'clock in the morning.”
I can’t think of more unpresidential behavior—apart from his on-bended-knees performance at the Helsinki “summit” and the press conference with Vladimir Putin.
That the 45. President is a pathological liar is well documented. Yesterday, for example, he tweeted that “the very unpopular Governor of Ohio (and failed presidential candidate) @JohnKasich hurt Troy Balderson’s recent win by tamping down enthusiasm for an otherwise great candidate…” The truth is that the last available opinion poll of June this year showed a 52% approval for Kasich compared to a 43% approval for Trump!
More importantly, there seem to be signs that the one-time reality TV star and shock jock may not get away with murder (as he has bragged) forever.
A just published CNN poll revealed the following:
55 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Russia investigation vs. 34 percent who approve.
56 percent say Trump has interfered with the investigation, only 38 percent who say he has not.
70 percent say Trump should testify to Mueller, 25 percent who say he should not.
57 percent say Trump knew about contacts between his campaign operatives and Russians, only 36 percent who say he did not.
These results indicate that there are some cracks even in Trump’s base. Thus, there is now some hope that alternative truth and alternative facts cannot trump actual truth and actual facts forever.
Comments