Why I Oppose Trump

 Recently, I posted something on Facebook, on the order of a challenge.  I said:

“Given the lack of understanding on both sides, I wonder what would happen if both supporters and opponents of Trump were asked to list the top ten actions/reasons people hold dear for either supporting or opposing Trump. Maybe we would learn something important about the American people.”

And, of course, as with most of my suggestions on Facebook, nobody took me up on it.  But I was serious. I am so tired of seeing/hearing people who are Trump supporters say things like, “well, he is the best president we have ever had”. Or, worse yet, “Well, God has sent Trump to lead our country through these trying times.”

But, to be fair, people like me rarely provide objective reasons for opposing Trump. I really thought that, if you could get folks to actually write down their reasons—why do they support/oppose Trump—we might have an objective basis for debating his presidency. So, I thought I at least should set down my reasons for opposing his presidency.  I thought maybe ten reasons for or against would be an adequate basis for a debate. So, let’s see:

1.    Lying – probably the single most negative attribute is his constant lying. By some counts, Trump has lied in excess of 20,000 times since becoming president.  Now some of the lies are just terminally silly, like telling us that more people attended his inaugural than at any time in the history of the United States.  Such a lie is just stupid, given how easily it can be revealed.  Then he simply made a fool of himself. But then, by his own admission, he tells us via Bob Woodward that he purposefully lied to the American people about just how serious was this COVID viral disease. Now he says that he lied in order to quell the panic that might well ensue a proper understanding.  Instead, his lies on the seriousness of the disease has likely exacerbated the situation and caused the numbers of people infected, and then the numbers dying to exceed any other nation’s count.  One could say that he collaborated with the COVID virus, much like collaborating with an enemy.  And, however weighty such an accusation, it seems clear that his lies about the relative utility of masks and other protective approaches, his advocacy of unproven treatments, such as Hydroxychloroquine, and even bleach, and his assertions that COVID will simply disappear and will be no worse than the Flu, have all contributed to our vast number of people infected. He basically told us that we didn’t have to take it seriously. People died as a result. So, lying is my number one problem. Oh, and his lying also means that no one—repeat no one—can believe anything he says on any subject. Think of what that means in international negotiations on War and Peace.

2.    Concentration Camps – Trump’s rhetoric about our Southern border, in his zeal to sell his Wall, led directly to policies that separated kids from their families as they tried to enter the United States, and then to housing those same kids in cages within what can only be called Concentration Camps at our border. In many cases, the families did not even know where their kids were shipped by our Gestapo-like border police.  It is hard to imagine any other president implementing such a Nazi-like policy, and his rhetoric (“murderers, rapists . . . from shithole countries”) is what we would have expected from Germany 1939.  Certainly not America 21^st century.

3.    Denying Climate Change – Trump withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Accord is arguably one the most globally catastrophic acts we have seen from this Administration.  But it is part of Trump’s approach to almost all of life’s challenges.  He never seems to rely on Facts or on Science. Instead, he goes with his own economic instincts, which always serve his own personal agenda.  Here we have two of Trump’s less endearing qualities—his essential ignorance, coupled with his extreme narcissism.  In virtually all matters, Trump seems uninformed at best, willfully ignorant at worst. His extreme narcissism means that he will interpret all events in terms of what it means for him personally. He seems to have no wider perspective than himself.  In this case, the very future of our planet, and all its living inhabitants are at risk.  And this is not one of those scientific challenges in which scientists are in serious disagreement. While not all the facts are in, scientists worldwide are in reasonable agreement that climate change is real, that we actually have very little time left to introduce changes to alleviate the worst effects, and that barring action, the planet may well become uninhabitable. But acting now, requires changes to industrial approaches to producing power, and that brings great risks to the fossil fuel industry that seems to be supporting Trump.  And, so Trump will not act to save the planet.

4.    Withdrawing from World Organizations – Beyond the Paris Climate Accord, Trump seems to be removing the United States from participation in other global partnerships, including the UN, the EU, and, perhaps even NATO.   He seems to be bent on labeling all other global organizations as “corrupt”, or somehow counter to American interests.  He refused to remain committed to the World Health Organization’s efforts to produce a vaccine for COVID, instead, trashing that international body.  He seems disposed to shift away from global cooperative efforts in all matters to an America-only approach. This approach seems similar to past dictators, from the prior century. Trump is arguably the closest parallel we have seen to early 20^th century dictators. Instead of working hard to pursue a course in which America can help to lead the way to a safer, saner planet, Trump seems intent on demonstrating that we are not real allies to anyone in any sense of that term.

5.    Public Education – Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos to head up our Department of Public Education seems to demonstrate his contempt for the entire concept of public education.  Devos has never attended a public school of any kind, nor I imagine has Trump.  In fact Trump’s entire education seems to be a very large unknown area. He claims all kinds of things, including graduation from Wharton. His abysmal ignorance on almost all subjects precludes accepting him at his word, although it is a complex issue. His name is known to be associated with various schools. I continue to wonder whether daddy paid to have someone else sit in class in his name, while Trump himself doodled at home alone. But the serious matter here is that the American public needs and deserves a quality public education program, one accountable to the public. If we have problems in that system, and we do, then the solution is to ask groups of intelligent people to study the problems and to recommend new and improved approaches to improve that system, rather than abandoning the system and punting it to various unknown private institutions.

6.    Personal Ethics – From the very beginning of his Administration, Donald Trump seems to have decided that there is no reason for him to disclose his personal financial status, or in fact anything about himself or his family to the public.  We have never seen any president mix personal and public business, as though there were no lines to be drawn, ever.  His appointments to government work of his children practically screams nepotism, and worse, because his children have no discernible skill set for any of the issues to which they are assigned.  It suggests that he has no care for quality or performance, preferring instead personal favoritism.  Plus, of equal concern is his constant mixing of his personal financial businesses with government affairs. The golf course visits, the hotel exchanges, all deliver very substantial sums of money to his personal businesses. To anyone else, these transactions would be completely unacceptable. With Trump, it is business as usual.  And then his constant lies about why he refuses to disclose his taxes is really beyond the pale.  In this, he certainly exceeds past presidents in corrupt business practices.

R   Racism – Trump’s constant rants about his Wall and our Southern border and his Imperial America vision, where no one from those “shithole” countries may gain entry shouts racist at a very high pitch. His past is rife with racist business practices, as are those of his family, dating back certainly to daddy’s business practices.  His racism seems to seep into his attitudes on almost any subject.  In an article in The Atlantic, Trump is quoted going into one of his many racist rants. “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump tweeted on Sunday, July 14, 2019. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. “Trump was referring to four freshman members of Congress: Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali American; Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, an African American; Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a Palestinian American; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a Puerto Rican. Pressley screenshotted Trump’s tweet and declared, “THIS is what racism looks like.” In the days leading up to Trump’s attack on Omar, Pressley, Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez, Fox News slammed the “Squad,” especially Omar. All four had been publicly sparring with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over a $4.6 billion border-aid package that they thought did not sufficiently restrain Trump’s immigration policies. Yet Pelosi promptly defended her fellow Democrats on July 14, 2019. “When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries,” Pelosi tweeted, “he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again.”

    Collaboration with Foreign Entities – It now seems clear that Putin decided that he preferred to have Trump leading America rather than Hillary Clinton.  While we have yet to see the total evidence demonstrating Trump’s involvement, it remains unclear whether Trump was assisted by Putin without his direct involvement, or with his active collaboration.  But his role in directing the linkage of foreign aid to Ukraine to their willingness to investigate Joe Biden’s son's activities there led to his impeachment. On September 24, 2019, the House of Representatives began a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump, led by six House committees. On October 31, 2019, the House of Representatives voted to approve guidelines for the next phase of the impeachment inquiry. Trump was impeached on charges of abusing the power of his office and obstructing Congress, but was ultimately acquitted by the Senate. On December 3, 2019, as part of the impeachment inquiry, the House Intelligence Committee published a 300-page report detailing that "the impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection. In furtherance of this scheme, President Trump conditioned official acts on a public announcement by the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of politically-motivated investigations, including one into Joe Biden, one of Trump's domestic political opponents. In pressuring President Zelensky to carry out his demand, President Trump withheld a White House meeting desperately sought by the Ukrainian President, and critical U.S. military assistance to fight Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine." In January 2020, the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan watchdog, concluded that the White House broke federal law by withholding Congress-approved military aid to Ukraine.

9.    Rule of Law – Donald Trump never seems to recognize that America is actually governed by things called Laws. In another CNN article, the dismal accounts of Trump’s abuse of the rule of law continue. They argue, “Trump's practices defy the norms of the modern presidency. Over the past three years, some comparisons have been made to President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 after it became evident that he concealed his role in a cover up of the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building.” But Trump stands out in his broadscale attacks on legal traditions and due process. To him, the system is always "rigged." He has publicly and ceaselessly derided judges. An early 2017 example was Trump's calling a US judge who ruled against his first travel ban a "so-called judge." More recently this week, Trump targeted Judge Jackson before she sentenced Stone, asking if she was the judge who, "put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure?" "How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton?" his tweet continued, "Just asking!" Trump has had startling words for those at all levels of the system. In 2017, as he addressed a group of law enforcement officers at a Long Island event, he said, "Please don't be too nice" when putting suspects into squad cars. He gestured with his hands and suggested suspects' heads need not be protected, saying, "You can take the hand away, OK?" A Trump spokeswoman said at the time he was just joking. The emerging conflict with Barr recalls Trump's pressure on his first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, routinely humiliated with labels such as "beleaguered" and "weak." Trump appears to have taken his Senate acquittal on the House charges as permission to keep breaching norms. The US House of Representatives had impeached the President on two articles, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, related to his dealings with Ukraine. After the Senate vote, Trump fired individuals who had testified about the President's actions that tying US security aid to Ukraine on that country's investigation of Democratic adversaries.  

     Narcissism --  Finally, it is difficult to talk about Donald Trump without consideration of his extreme narcissism. A recent article in The Atlantic is a worthy summary of Trump’s narcissism. 

“Let’s start with the basics.

First: Narcissistic personalities like Trump harbor skyscraping delusions about their own capabilities. They exaggerate their accomplishments, focus obsessively on projecting power, and wish desperately to win.

What that means, during this pandemic: Trump says we’ve got plenty of tests available, when we don’t. He declares that Google is building a comprehensive drive-thru testing website, when it isn’t. He sends a Navy hospital ship to New York and it proves little more than an excuse for a campaign commercial, arriving and sitting almost empty in the Hudson. A New York hospital executive calls it a joke.

Second: The grandiosity of narcissistic personalities belies an extreme fragility, their egos as delicate as foam. They live in terror of being upstaged. They’re too thin skinned to be told they’re wrong. Narcissistic leaders never have, as Trump likes to say, the best people. They have galleries of sycophants. With the exceptions of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, Trump has surrounded himself with a Z-team of dangerously inexperienced toadies and flunkies — the bargain-bin rejects from Filene’s Basement — at a time when we require the brightest and most imaginative minds in the country.

Faced with a historic public health crisis, Trump could have assembled a first-rate company of disaster preparedness experts. Instead he gave the job to his son-in-law, a man-child of breathtaking vapidity. Faced with a historic economic crisis, Trump could have assembled a team of Nobel-prize winning economists or previous treasury secretaries. Instead he talks to Larry Kudlow, a former CNBC host.

Meanwhile, Fauci and Birx measure every word they say like old-time apothecaries, hoping not to humiliate the narcissist — never humiliate a narcissist — while discreetly correcting his false hopes and falsehoods. They are desperately attempting to create a safe space for our president, when the president should be creating a safer nation for all of us.

Third: Narcissistic personalities love nothing more than engineering conflict and sowing division. It destabilizes everyone, keeps them in control. Trump is pitting state against state for precious resources, rather than coordinating a national response. (“It’s like being on eBay,” complained Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York last week.) His White House is a petty palace of competing power centers. He picks fights with Democratic officials and members of the press, when all the public craves is comfort. Narcissistic personalities don’t do comfort. They cannot fathom the needs of other hearts.

Fourth: Narcissistic personalities are vindictive. On a clear day, you can see their grudges forever. Trump is playing favorites with governors who praise him and punishing those who fail to give him the respect he believes he deserves. “If they don’t treat you right, don’t call,” he told Vice President Mike Pence.”

Thanks to The Atlantic for that summary of Trump’s narcissism.

So, there. That is my list of ten reasons I oppose Donald Trump, and, really, everything he stands for.  Now you know.