A Warning

by Anonymous

The president spreads false claims almost daily. He is the nation’s most prominent re-tweeter of “fake news” while simultaneously being its biggest critic.

His concern tends to be about whether he is being treated fairly personally. “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” he tweeted after the show mocked a White House press conference in February 2019. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!” The president was insinuating that television networks needed to be investigated and punished for poking fun at him.

“As you know, I have a running war with the media,” he told the audience. “They are the most dishonest human beings on Earth.” All of us watching it winced. The president was making his comments in the most inappropriate setting, not just because he was at the CIA, but because he was standing in front of the agency’s memorial wall for fallen officers. President Trump did the same four months later in front of hundreds of US Coast Guard Academy cadets, turning part of their commencement ceremony into a rant about the press.

Giving nicknames to his targets is a favored tactic, too, allowing the president to turn attacks into instant memes. He road tests the insulting monikers with friends and is elated he has a new one to give to Dan, the social media aide. There’s Da Nang Dick (Senator Dick Blumenthal), Pocahontas (Senator Elizabeth Warren), Low Energy Jeb (former governor Jeb Bush), Slimeball (Jim Comey), MS-13 Lover (Speaker Nancy Pelosi), Dumb as a Rock Mika (MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski), the Dumbest Man on Television (CNN’s Don Lemon), and so on. Often Trump homes in on physical features, using names like Fat Jerry (Representative Jerry Nadler), Little Marco (Senator Marco Rubio), and Dumbo (for his former Secret Service director). Other acid-tongued presidents have had words for people they didn’t like, but I can’t think of any who regularly went out of their way to humiliate people with childish nicknames. If there is any silver lining, its that he typically keeps the R-rated ones within the West Wing.

Trump is a bully. By intimidating others, he believes he can get what he wants, not what is fair. It’s a philosophy he brags about. He regales staff with stories about filing meritless claims in court against other companies in order to coerce them to back down or to get a better deal. That’s how you get them to do what you want.

In his response, Trump made a revealing confession: “Real power is through respect. Real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, fear.” President Trump shows no mercy.

An investigation by USA Today found he’d been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the span of three decades, many of which included claims by individuals who said he and his companies failed to pay them. His businesses also received repeated citations from the government for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act and failing to pay overtime or minimum wage. The trail of broken contracts runs parallel to another Trump trait, his lack of generosity. Kindness and liberality are part of Cicero’s justice checklist, but they are not a part of Trump’s character. His philanthropic history is full of empty words and questionable practices. The president’s surrogates claim he has given away “tens of millions” to charity over his career, yet investigations by journalists have found the cash donations to be far less than he boasts. Most of Trump’s charitable giving was apparently done by the Trump Foundation. Rather than fund it himself, the businessman reportedly used outside donors to fill the foundation’s coffers, allowing him to write checks with his name on them without diminishing his own wealth. This is not unheard-of. Other personal foundations are boosted by outside donations. But in December 2018, the foundation was forced to dissolve after a state investigation in New York accused it of “a shocking pattern of illegality,” including “functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.” In one instance, he used $10,000 in money...

While he has sought to cultivate the image of an unselfish billionaire, he is not. Many of us who’ve joined his administration recognize he is a vindictive and self-promoting person, one who spends inordinate time attacking others to advance his interests. Those qualities translate into governing. As a result, we have all learned the hard way that the president’s modus operandi emphasizes combat over peacemaking, bullying over negotiating, malice over clemency, and recognition over true generosity. In sum, he is the portrait of an unjust man.

At the height of the Vietnam War, when others were joining the US military to serve their country, he sought to avoid the draft. Trump received five deferments: four for education, one for medical reasons. The excuse? “Bone spurs” in his feet. The injury was concocted, according to the daughters of the podiatrist who made the diagnosis, as well as the president’s former lawyer, who recounted Trump saying, “You think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam.” Don’t fool yourself into believing this goes unnoticed by the men and women he commands in the United States military or the veterans who didn’t have a convenient way out of Vietnam. They would have gone to war with or without an excuse, and they deserve better than the boasts of a man who stayed home.

The president has difficulty showing restraint and lashes out without warning. His behavior is quintessentially unseemly, from crude rhetoric and vulgar jokes to immodest public reactions. There are far too many examples, so we will choose one category. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his attitude toward women. Many in the Trump administration are put off by his misogynistic behavior, which began well before the election. How does Trump talk about women? Sex appeal. Beautiful piece of ass. Good shape. Bimbo. Great in bed. A little chubby. Not hot. Crazed. Psycho. Lonely. Fat. Fat ass. Stupid. Nasty woman. Dog. Ugly face. Dogface. Horseface. Disgusting. These are the types of comments he makes. Trump did not spare his opponent—the first female presidential nominee of a major US political party—of his sexism either. “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband,” he tweeted in 2015, “what makes her think she can satisfy America?” At a campaign stop in Ohio the next year he remarked, “Does she look presidential, fellas? Give me a break.” I don’t care if you supported Hillary Clinton or not. There is no denying the smoldering sexism heaped onto these words. At times, his sentiments border on what many women today would call predatory. Trump once purportedly made the following statement, referring to himself in the third person: “Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power alm...

He condemned the vehicular homicide, but then he opined that the “Unite the Right” rally included some “very fine people” and that “the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.” The dazed, resigned look on Chief of Staff John Kelly’s face went viral; for good reason. Those of us watching it live had to pick our jaws up off the floor. What was he talking about?

Donald Trump has been accused of being a bigot; whether it is of conviction or convenience is debated.

When he makes statements that encourage racists and knows full well he is doing so, it is wrong.

after Charlottesville. We felt the president’s reaction revealed an uglier side of his nature: the shallow and demagogic politician, prone to self-inflicted disaster. So many of us were already frustrated by the president’s handling of his job. Now, purposefully or not, he was channeling the views of bigots, who were in turn excited that an American leader was sticking up for them. Once people like David Duke are praising you, a normal person quickly figures out they’re on the wrong track and corrects course. Not Donald Trump.

I scanned the portraits of American leaders adorning the corridors. One thought started to grip me and never left: Donald Trump does not belong among them. He isn’t a man of great character, or good character. He is a man of none.

President Flip Flops. The webstore literally sells sandals with a Trump tweet on the left shoe contradicted by a Trump tweet on the right shoe, including gems such as: his claim that the Electoral College was a “disaster for a democracy”; followed by an online post hailing the Electoral College as “actually genius” after he won the election.

His tweet citing an “extremely credible source” with rumors about Barack Obama; followed by a warning to his followers: “Remember, don’t believe ‘sources said’…If they don’t name the sources, the sources don’t exist.”

He has long said he is “pro-choice,” but later while running for president, that he was so deeply “pro-life” that he believed “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions.

declared on the White House lawn, “I am the Chosen One,” gesturing knowingly toward the heavens in front of a gaggle of reporters. He said he was teasing, but he wasn’t.

This should be only a temporary comfort to worried Republicans. Because the base will not matter to Trump if he is reelected in 2020.

Over the last three decades, Trump has changed his political party registration five times. He has been a member of the Independence Party, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, a registered independent, and then decided he was a Republican again. I doubt during any of these switches that he did much “studying up” on the philosophical identity of each group.

Trump again repeated that he identified “as a Democrat” on key issues like the economy. In the years up to that point, he donated to the biggest Democrats at all levels of government—Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Anthony Weiner, John Kerry, and Harry Reid. He gave money to Andrew Cuomo, Terry McAuliffe, and Eliot Spitzer. It was only after he started to get serious about running for president as a “Republican” that he gave money primarily to Republican candidates.

he did with his belief system what he did with any Trump product. He outsourced it for low-cost manufacturing to someone else, then slapped his name on it.

Astoundingly, instead of a mutiny against President Trump, GOP congressmen whistled past the graveyard as they went to cast their votes on his disastrous budget deal, proving yet again that Trump has a Darth Vader chokehold on weak-willed Republicans.

In his first three years, Bill Clinton issued 90 executive orders. In that same time period, Barack Obama issued 110. Donald Trump issued 120 before his third year was over.

Trump suggested the military and intelligence agencies embrace torture as a tactic against America’s enemies, vowing, “I would bring back waterboarding. And I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

The president’s impetuousness poses a danger to our military, the full extent of which will not be known for years.

Our warriors risk everything to venture into the darkest corners of the world to hunt those who would do us harm. They deserve better for their inviolable code of duty than a man lacking a basic moral compass.

I have to admit, it’s knee-slappingly hilarious to watch Trump tackle this issue. In late 2015, he said his wall would “be made of hardened concrete…rebar and steel.” At one point in 2017, he proposed that the wall be solar-powered to generate clean electricity. A month later, he said that “you have to be able to see through it.” The wall was no longer a concrete slab, but “a steel wall with openings.” Then the wall became “artistically designed steel slats.” Then, in 2018, the president claimed he could have “a steel wall—or it could be a steel fence—but it will be more powerful than any of the concrete walls that we’re talking about.” At the end of 2018 he said “an all concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED, as has been reported by the media,” only to tweet less than a week later that “We are now planning a Steel Barrier rather than concrete.” Midway through 2019, he flipped again, touting the “brand-new” “high steel and concrete Wall” that he’d already built and previewed that there was much more to come.

“We get these women coming in with like seven children,” he told his listeners, briefly attempting a Hispanic accent. “They are saying, ‘Oh, please help! My husband left me!’ They are useless. They don’t do anything for our country. At least if they came in with a husband we could put him in the fields to pick corn or something.”

His convoluted view of economics is beyond repair.

Trump is acting like a dictator. At one point, he tweeted, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China.” That’s not how a democratic system works, Mr. President. You can’t “order” American companies where to make their products. The markets have been spooked by his increasingly unhinged behavior on the matter, and top CEOs have warned the president he needs to reverse course.

Republicans should bring more people under the tent, the authors wrote, but instead they were ostracizing them.

“Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country,” the document declared. “If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence.”

If you’ve been at least half-conscious during the Trump presidency, you probably know the president has followed virtually none of this advice. In fact, it seems as if he’s deliberately written a counter-playbook, flagrantly dismissing the RNC’s recommendations and alienating the populations the GOP needs to reach. On Donald Trump’s watch, the party has become less fiscally conservative, more divisive, less diverse, more anti-immigrant, and less relevant.

if there’s a theme to Trump’s life—in politics, business, or family—it’s that he’s disloyal.

Republicans gave the keys to the kingdom to a man who paid hush money to shut up a porn star he’d been sleeping with while married to his third wife, who’d recently given birth to their son. Are we surprised he’s run afoul of the party’s most cherished ideals? If elected to a second term, he will cheat on naive Republicans over and over again.

Trump’s little hints are in fact improper demands masquerading as innocent suggestions, and the administration’s history is strewn with them.

Donald Trump has abused his power to undermine all three branches of government, at times flagrantly and at times in secret.

In an interview with The Hill newspaper, Trump said he avoided it because “it sounds so conspiratorial.” He added, “And believe it or not I’m really not a conspiratorial person.” This was like the Marlboro man saying he wasn’t a smoker. It wasn’t remotely believable.

Trump is out of his mind.

Which means that members of the “Deep State” really are just people whom Trump doesn’t like. Once he likes them, they aren’t in it anymore.

We are losing talented professionals every single day because of the president. The result is that our sprawling government is often run by a skeleton crew of partisans. Important issues get neglected with regularity.

Good advice is getting ignored because it isn’t being sought in the first place.

“I mean, give me a break. They’re political hacks.” That’s one way to describe people who would give their lives for the country.

Trump suggested a president doesn’t need daily intelligence briefings. “I get it when I need it,” he told Fox News’s Chris Wallace. “I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.” When he does sit down for a briefing on sensitive information, it’s the same as any other Trump briefing. He hears what he wants to hear, and disregards what he doesn’t.

His paranoia is the best evidence of a guilty conscience.

Here was a man who was apoplectic at the (completely false) theory that Barack Obama had his “wires tapped” at Trump Tower, but who was more than happy to tap those of the people around him.

“Can we just get rid of the judges? Let’s get rid of the fucking judges,” Trump fumed one morning. “There shouldn’t be any at all, really.” He went a step further and asked his legal team to draft up a bill and send it to Congress to reduce the number of federal judges.

Trump continued complaining anyway. “I’ve only won two cases in the courts as president. And you know what one of them was? A case against a stripper.” Eyes widened at the reference. He would later repeat the comment, undoubtedly to get the same reaction from a new set of captive listeners.