And the insanity continues. About which, Tennessee’s Republican senator Bob Corker issued a great counter-punch Tweet: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.” He also stated in a Sunday interview with The New York Times: “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.”
Michelle Goldberg, in her Oct. 10, 2017 New York Times op-ed (“Corker Told the Truth About Trump. Now He Should Act on It.”), states that Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center (a libertarian think tank), “is in frequent contact with anti-Trump Republicans, and he senses a growing sense of urgency among them. ‘Having an unstable narcissist who is ignorant of politics, policy and foreign affairs with the nuclear codes has probably turned them white as a sheet,’ he [Taylor] said.”
Within the past few days, amid reports that Trump’s Secretary of State, Rex W. Tillerson, has referred to him as “a moron,” Trump challenged Tillerson to compare their IQ tests. But when MENSA offered to administer the test (something I would LOVE to see), Trump retracted his offer so fast I’m surprised he didn’t get whiplash. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was only joking. Ha Ha. Good one. Was that the joke?
Since Sanders shared something funny, I’ll now share something funny as well. And this is a true story. When I was very young — twelve?, I’m guessing — I was talking with my parents about presidential campaigns, and they started laughing. Why were they laughing? I had mistakenly thought that before you can run for president, you had to first take some sort test — after all, isn’t that how you advance from one grade level, to the next? By taking tests? Well, now I know better. But I still think it’s not such a bad idea.
Are you ready for more? Okay. Three days ago, The New York Times published an editorial (“Presidential Etiquette Guide, Part II” Oct. 9, 2017) in which it lists 38 new examples of presidential behavior we’ve witnessed since their last “periodic report on the changing standards for presidential behavior.” This current list, the editorial states, “is meant to ensure that … congressional Republicans never forget what they now condone in a president.” Here are some of those examples that they list, concerning what, “if you are the president, you may now” do – all of these, I quote directly from the Times editorial:
call for the firing of “son of a bitch” athletes who choose to exercise their right to free speech; pick nominees to the federal bench who call a siting Supreme Court justice a “judicial prostitute” and refer to transgender children as part of “Satan’s plan”; spend one of every three days as president visiting at least one of your own properties; say nothing when a foreign leader’s bodyguards brutally attack peaceful protesters in the streets of Washington, D.C.; welcome into the Oval Office a man who threatened to assassinate your predecessor, whom he called a “subhuman mongrel,” and who referred to your political opponent as a “worthless bitch”; grant temporary White House press credentials to a website that, among other things, claims that Sept. 11 was an “inside job” and that the massacre of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax; continue to repeat, with admiration, a false story about an American military general committing war crimes; run an administration whose ethical standards have, in the words of the federal government’s top ethics enforcer, made the United States “close to a laughingstock”; tell a lie, on average, more than five times a day
This is just nine of the 38 examples they catalog in their editorial. (These examples I’ve cite above are not in the bullet point format the Times used in their editorial. I’ve used semi-colons instead.)
And regarding that first example that I’ve listed, I think it’s utterly ridiculous to walk out of a football game or curse players that “take a knee” (as a mild form of protest and show of solidarity). The first African slave ships arrived in the North American colony of Jamesport, Virginia, in 1619. Slavery ended in 1863 (with the Emancipation Proclamation). If African-Americans had to endure 264 years of slavery (in what is now the United States), plus over 100 years of Jim Crow laws and such (plus what’s going on even to this very day — as this president’s actions attest to), I think spectators in football stadiums should be able to endure 90 seconds of silent, peaceful protest, without having a cow. Francis Scott Key himself — the man who composed our national anthem — owned slaves and defended the institution of slavery his entire life. In fact, just look at that third stanza of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — I think that might be reason enough to protest the song (regardless of whether those lines actually appear in our national anthem or not).
Finally, take a quick peek at the “Controversies” section of the Wikipedia article about Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump. Where was he on Memorial Day, 1927? And what was he wearing?