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The Screaming Moderate

Clicking my heels and really trying

1/6/2017

5 Comments

 
  I’m trying. I’m really trying to accept Donald Trump as president. He's making it very hard.

And I’ve really been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt in these days leading up to his inauguration. I actually thought that he might go a little underground after the election to get his government ready to take over.

But he hasn’t stopped tweeting. Tweeting inane things. Tweeting lies. Tweeting to affect policies while someone else is in the Oval Office.

Upon being elected, he acted as if he is a shadow president to President Obama, rather than playing the traditional role of “there’s only one President at a time.”He’s weighed in on policy, foreign and domestic, and he’s not in office yet.

His ego knows no bounds.

He tweets one thing one day and the opposite the next, just as he always has. He has disparaged our intelligence community, which admits it’s made bad mistakes, but he acts as if the default is they are wrong rather than they are right.

What happens if (pray not) our intelligence community picks up information of an impending attack from, say, Russia and President Trump says, based on nothing, “I don’t agree. My buddy Pooty wouldn’t attack me, uh, I mean us.”

He tweeted that Julian Assange is a good guy. Julian Assange! It's like the conspiracy theorists have taken over the country.

Today, I read he’s meeting with editors of Vanity Fair. But he hasn’t had the traditional after-election press conference yet. Vanity Fair?  Really? You really care about what Vanity Fair writes about you, Mr. President-elect? That’s what you’re spending your time on?

I also read today that against precedent he has informed all politically appointed ambassadors to return home by January 20, when he is sworn in. That leaves, us, first, without ambassadors in key countries until Trump names replacements; second, tells these men and women on short notice they have to vacate the residences, get visas so they can remain in the country and, third, worry about whether their kids can finish the school year and if they can find school placements for them when they return. Likely some will not be able to and it could set a innocent kid back in his schooling time. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but probably not. Oh, and we won’t have replacement for most of them for months.

I really am trying. I’m trying to believe Sean Spicer, a good guy, will not cut back on White House briefings. I’m hoping he will not cut back on the pool that follows the President of the United States around for the people’s knowledge, not their own. But they've already started having the president-elect go places without letting the media know.

I’m trying to believe he gave up the idea of his “great wall along the Mexican border” but this morning he apparently said  (I say "apparently said" because he may tweet he didn't say it) the U.S. will pay for it and be reminbursed for it by Mexico. Uhhuh. I believe that. I believe that about as much as contractors hired for his D.C. hotel will be paid on time. (For those who haven’t read it yet, he’s already being sued by two contractors for lack of payment.)

I’m really trying. But it’s getting harder and he hasn’t even been sworn in yet.

For me, and I assume for millions of others, he has no credibility because he hasn’t earned it. He doesn’t stick to a position longer than an hour, but then an hour later may reverse himself again.

He’s been insulting our intelligence community – men and women who literally have their lives on the line for us – and then says “no, I haven’t been insulting them. The media is saying that.” Yes, the media is reporting it because you said it, Mr. President-elect. There are tapes –audio and/or video –proving you did.

Heck, last week he promised that by Tuesday or Wednesday he would reveal things “no one but me knows” about hacking. It’s Friday. Nothing yet.

 What can we, the people, count on? What can our allies – or enemies –count on when he speaks as President of the United States?

I’m really trying to accept this – I think more so than many others who didn’t vote for him. I thought, for a just a minute, of course because that’s all the time we can believe him he’s proven, that he would try to bring the country together. But not only hasn’t he, he’s talked, I mean tweeted. about wishing his “enemies” a happy new year.

These days, I’m not sure who he means by enemies. We, the people he’s about to govern?


5 Comments
Harold fidler
1/6/2017 08:41:35 am

How does one impeach a president?

Reply
Roberta Ricciardi
1/6/2017 09:06:08 am

1. Accusation of a federal crime. 2. Impeachment (discovery/trial). 3. Decision (the part where you can say "you're fired" or throw him in jail or say "woops, my bad" and keep him in his position).

B.Jay: I had no faith in him from the get-go. He's been a thorn in the side of business, his own peers, his family, his city, his country, and the world ever since he first decided to renovate his first office - and then decided not to pay the contractor for the work. He will be a dangerous president; he is already proving this, and he's not even sworn in yet.

Reply
B. Jay
1/6/2017 09:09:29 am

Cuz, it wasn't faith, it was hope.

Reply
Bonnie
1/6/2017 08:50:34 pm

Yet, isn't hope the reason many gave in electing Obama the 1st time? Hope and change. We are suckers.

Reply
ann saybolt
1/6/2017 01:49:03 pm

sigh. so well said. what will we do?

Reply



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    B. Jay Cooper

    B. Jay is a former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also headed the communications offices at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He is a former reporter and is the retired deputy managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington, D.C., office.
    He is the father of three daughters and grandfather of five boys and one girl. He lives in Marion, Mass.

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