Sunday, August 13, 2017

Trump's two failures

Last week was a bad week for us all.  The question has always been how will this unstable and childish president react to actual difficult world events?  How will this person who has major emotional public meltdowns when he is criticized publicly stand up to an actual crisis?

He failed - twice in one week.

First, he responded to Kim Jong Un's test firing of ICBMs by doing pretty much the stupidest thing you can do when dealing with a paranoid tyrant - he threatened nuclear war.  I know this excited his brutish base.  But, speaking of his base...

White supremacists violently rallied in Charlottesville - confederate flags, Nazi flags, assault rifles, batons, shields, torches at night - and created violent confrontations with counter protesters.  Three people died. Two police died in a helicopter crash, and one was killed by an appalling full throttle acceleration of his car into a crowd of counter protesters.  Many others were injured.  

So, our president's response?  To blame both sides.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides."

And then he went on to talk about how wonderful the economy is under his stellar leadership...

It is certainly appropriate to ask for calm, on both sides. But only after strongly condemning the instigators of the violence - the armed white supremacists who came to create violence.  But, of course, Trump didn't do that.  Indeed he can't do that - the heart of his base is the white supremacist community, who have been given permission by this white supremacist president to come out of the dark hiding places they have been lurking in for decades and strut proudly in the limelight - and do so with violence.  

Trump's favorite poll is the Rasmussen Poll which consistently skews conservative.  His approval there is 45%, compared to about 37% average of all the other polls.  But inside the Rasmussen Poll is 27% who Strongly Favor Trump.  It is not hard to conclude that the white supremacist agitators in Charlottesville are amongst the Strongly Favor group.