CNN just published an oped by Joe Lockhart entitled “Donald Trump is sabotaging American’s democracy.” I think he’s absolutely right. I blogged about this over two years ago, right when Trump became president.
Who is Joe Lockhart? He was White House press secretary for President Bill Clinton from 1998 through 2000.
Lockhart rightly says the Republican Party used to be for smaller and more efficient government, fiscal responsibility (thus lower the national debt), and the government being less involved in our affairs.
Lockhart says President Trump is doing the opposite. He says, “Trump and his Republican backers now don’t want smaller and better; they seem to want to sabotage the actual work of government. They appear hell-bent on making it less transparent, less responsive and less effective.”
Yeah, to me, it’s not the Republican party anymore. It’s the Trump-Tea Party. I’m voted pretty much Republican all my life until recently. Yet I posted quite some time ago, “The Black House Is Turning Me into a Democrat.” It’s mostly because of Trump.
Lockhart lists all of Trump’s many firings of his cabinet members in only just over two years in office. The man doesn’t know how to run a ship. He has never been a CEO. His time in office reveals that his braggadocio book, “The Art of the Deal,” is questionable.
But I will say this for The Donald: he knows how to stack the deck. Figures, for a big-time gambling casino owner. In such a short time in office, he has put two conservative justices on the Supreme Court (which is partly just the luck of the draw) who will probably rule in Trump’s favor if push comes to shove. And I think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right in saying the new Attorney General William Barr who the president just appointed is “the attorney general for President Trump,” thus not for the USA. This all will ramp up next week due to the releasing of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s to Congress about possible Russian collusion with Trump or his orbit and Trump’s possible obstruction of justice.
Trump’s mentor, who he still idolizes, was attorney Roy Cohn. He was Senator Joe McCarthy’s attorney. Talk about a which hunt! McCarthy orchestrated a Communist Hunt in government. He held televised hearings in Congress in which he erroneously accused all kinds of members of Congress and other people of believing in “better red than dead.” Alcoholic McCarthy was soon disgraced and died a miserable man.
It is a sham that Donald Trump reportedly says he wishes he had a Roy Cohn to protect him in his presidency. A man who says that doesn’t believe in democracy.
Joe Lockhart further states, “The charitable explanation that Trump supporters always float for all this chaos is that the President doesn’t really understand how government works and how Washington operates. I think it is something profoundly worse. The problem isn’t that Trump doesn’t understand how our democratic government works; he fundamentally doesn’t doesn’t believe in or trust in democracy as an operating principle for our entire system. I believe he is intentionally undermining faith in our system as a precursor to changing it.”
I believe that is right on. The reason is mostly that Donald Trump is a psychologically sick man, being a classic narcissist. His personality favors dictators, not democratic leaders who truly serve the people. Lockhart says that Trump favors “authoritarian government, or the cult of personality” as being “the only thing that could save our country.” Indeed, Lockhart quotes Trump saying in his speech to the 2016 Republican National Convention, “I’m the only one who can fix our problems.” What hubris! Sounds like the Antichrist. From that, we should have known where this was going.
Lockhart concludes, “I hope I’m wrong. But if I’m not, it sure does explain his affinity for foreign dictators and illustrates just how dangerous a position our country is in.”
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