GREEDY? CRAZY? RACIST?

Rev. Franklin Graham, Katrina Pierson, and BBQ Becky typify what’s happened to some in America. (Photo credit: Asheville Citizen-Times, Liverampup.com, BBC, The Weekly Opine)

If you are still with Trump it’s one, or all, of the above.

Piling up like cattle manure at Southfork Ranch, Donald J. Trump’s failures – bad role model; highest fiscal deficit in 10 years; misleading, debt-laden tax cut; job-killing tariffs; healthcare; government shutdown; Mexico not paying for The Wall; nominated a liar to the Supreme Court; environmental mismanagement; no immigration plan; disastrous family separation policy; midterm election shellacking; strained relations with allies; North Korean summit humiliation (twice); Vladimir Putin summit humiliation; backwards approach to race relations; incoherent gun control plan; astonishing number of indicted/convicted criminals in his administration and inner circle; mammoth lies – beg the question, Who still supports this incompetent fraud?

Why is anyone not named Melania, Ivanka, Jared, Eric or Don Jr. still in Trump’s corner? What motivates a person to still stand with the most ignorant, destructive president in U.S. history? Why are some people still subscribing to, and defending, Trump’s prolific, daily rash of lies and distortions that endanger the country he was sworn-in to protect?

OK, but…

Sure, the stock market is up over 50% during Trump’s first two years. (For the record, especially since Trump often injects President Obama into the conversation when it’s convenient, the stock market rose 100% during Obama’s two terms. And Obama and his Fed Chair Ben Bernacke literally saved America from a second Great Depression.)

Unemployment is at historic lows. But in the cannot-have-it-both-ways-department, don’t forget that Trump railed the unemployment calculation was inaccurate when Obama was president.

Aside from unemployment and the stock market, which these days is in a volatility funk thanks in part to Trump’s asinine tariffs, what positives have emanated from the White House? Not many.

The Trump administration is a colossal failure. The self-proclaimed smartest man alive who, according to testimony from Michael Cohen last week, threatened his high school and colleges to prevent the release of Trump’s transcripts, presides over the most inept, corrupt administration in history.

This was easily predictable during the presidential campaign, if voters were paying attention.

Trump and his businesses have six times declared bankruptcy. He hides his tax returns with the implausible and fake excuse he’s under audit. He bragged openly about committing sexual assault. Trump bragged openly about entering a dressing room and ogling teenage beauty contestants. Trump mocked a disabled journalist and disrespected a Gold Star family. The list goes on and on…

Where are the brightest?

Trump has surrounded himself (inside and outside his administration) with a cast that appear to be auditioning for lead roles in the Three Stooges. During his campaign, Trump bragged he knew all the best people and they all would want to work in his administration.

But just look at them, models of incompetence and another broken promise:

Mike Pence. Jared Kushner. Ivanka Trump. Paul Manafort. Mike Flynn. Jeff Sessions. Rudy Giuliani. Kirstjen Nielsen. Scott Pruitt. Steve Mnuchin. Ben Carson. Betsy DeVos. John Kelly. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Sean Spicer. Mike Pompeo. Rick Perry. John Bolton. Sean Hannity. Laura Ingraham. Corey Lewandowski. Matthew Whitaker. Don Trump Jr. Omarosa Manigault. Ann Coulter. Steve Bannon. Mooch.

None of these people would be invited to work on the campaign, in the administration or the inner circle of trusted advisors for a real president.

Fake patriots be gone

It is nothing short of amazing to observe citizens turn their backs on the foundations of American democracy, which are the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law. (These same people lose sleep at night thinking about NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem.)

But these citizens have absolutely no problem with Trump committing a felony while president, when he wrote multiple $35,000 checks to buy the silence of a pornography actress with whom he’d had an affair, while his wife Melania was home with their baby.

They have no problem with Trump admitting on national television that he obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey. Many, many evangelicals, including church pastors, also deftly excuse Trump’s behavior.

Meanwhile, Robert Mueller, a man who did not hide from serving his country in Vietnam and who was decorated for doing so with valor, is under attack by people who honored men like Mueller back when America was supposedly “great.”

His impeccable and irrefutable credentials are such that the very people slinging mud at him now would have, in the past, held Mueller up as an example of what it means to be a real, true American: A decorated war hero. A G-Man. A truth-seeker who respects the process and goes about his business humbly and without fanfare. Mueller is as All-American as it gets.

It is now a sorry reflection of what the United States has become, to see fake patriots turn on uber-patriot Robert Mueller. Because in fact Mueller is everything fake patriots once wished they could be and wished their children would be.

This summer they will grill their hamburgers and hot dogs on Independence Day, waving the flag, pretending to love America. Yet, they kneel in unfettered and absolute fealty to a proven criminal, aka Individual 1. Fake patriots abound.

Still with Trump?

Is it greed?

The stock market has made a lot of folks a lot of money the past two years. And as actor Hal Holbrook said in the movie Wall Street, “The main thing about money is it makes you do things you don’t want to do.” Surely there are folks who cannot break with Trump because they crave more money.

Is it craziness?

The president himself is mentally unstable. Maybe Trump has rubbed off on those who do not possess the self-confidence, self-esteem or curiosity to be properly informed and think for themselves. (If Obama promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, and then broke his promise and shut the government down trying to make me pay for the wall, I would not show up, let alone cheer for him, at his next rally.)

Is it racism?

Trump has demonized people of all colors. Muslims, Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians. He has locked arms with white supremacists and the KKK. He embraces fascist-like authoritarianism. Since Trump took office, we have witnessed an increase in overt, worn-on-the sleeve racism. Have you considered calling the police because a person of color walked into your local donut shop?

Trifecta Man

After Trump, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is arguably the most embarrassing politician of my lifetime, more so than even the 1960s southern racist, Governor George Wallace of Alabama.

Graham seems oblivious to how pitiful he has become. His loyalty to his supposed friend, the late-Senator John McCain, apparently timed-out when McCain died last year. Since then, Graham has sidled up to Trump in a slobbering, unbecoming manner.

Graham’s strong admonitions of Trump in 2015, 2016 and 2017 have given way to slavish devotion toward the president, reducing Graham to less than a caricature of his former self.

Graham’s madman-like outburst, during Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Judiciary hearing testimony, will live in infamy, and in perpetuity, on Youtube. Years from now, you wonder how Graham will reflect on his political career.

One thing seems clear. Lindsey Graham appears to be all three: greedy, crazy and a racist.

Douglas FreelandMarch 7, 2019