Trump and a failing presidency. Photo: Gage Skidmore–Flickr.
Donald Trump is terrible at the job he was elected to do. Instead of growing into the role of President, he has diminished the presidency. Meanwhile, the cowardly GOP enables and coddles him at the expense of the American future.
Trump doesn’t really care about policy, he only cares about managing his image. He operates as if it’s all a reality show and his only concern is how he comes off from episode to episode.
That’s why he reacted to the criticism from Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh by blowing up a bipartisan strategy he had previously agreed to in order to force a government shutdown. He was accused of being weak, so he decided to appear to be acting tough.
In the end, his performative politics will result in nothing more than displaced federal workers, irate citizens and abject defeat.
We are just weeks from a midterm in which voters dealt Trump and his racism and xenophobia a stunning setback. In a more normal time, sane political minds in the GOP would see that divisiveness and bigotry backfired, and that in the run up to 2020 a strategy of addition is needed.
But the GOP is captive to Trump, and Trump is captive to the ethno-nationalist extremists he empowers. Together, they have but one trick – stoke fear of the other as they line the pockets of the wealthy and pick the pockets of the rest of us.
Of course, since it’s all about him and the show, Trump the fabulist claims he won the election. And when the shutdown ends, once again he will claim he won.
He will make some mendacious claim that he got what he wanted and talk incessantly about ‘artfully designed steel slats.’
But the rest of us will know. Trump is a terrible failure at the job he was elected to do.
Frank Sharry
Executive Director of America’s Voice
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