Trump Shouldn’t Be President

One of the standard bloviating points for Republicans is to talk about "supporting our troops" and "supporting our men in uniform."  When it comes to putting words into action, with a few exceptions Congressional Republicans never follow through.  Be it sending troops to war without proper equipment and armor as happened in Iraq and Afghanistan or cutting veterans' benefits (or somewhat similarly cutting funding to the State Department for security and then whining and throwing conniption fits over Benghazi), Republicans time and again confirm the old axiom that "talk is cheap."   Of course, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, has taken dishonesty and disrespect for our members of the military to new heights as he displayed utter callousness toward the widow of a young soldier, Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who was killed in an ambush in Niger - for Fox News viewers, Niger is a country in West Africa.  

Perhaps I take such things more personally than Der Trumpenführer who never served in the military (thanks to questionable deferments) or ever had family members in the military.  While, thankfully, I did not lose a family member, we came very, very close when one of my sons-in-law was badly wounded in Afghanistan on his THIRD deployment to that hell hole.   He languished for three days at Bagram Airbase before he was finally flown out to Germany (and then to Texas) to receive much needed medical care only after Democrat U.S. Senator from Virginia, Mark Warner's office got involved at my request.  Frankly, I am over the lying and dishonesty of the majority of Republicans when comes to supporting and respecting our men and women in uniform.  Der Trumpenführer could whine and tweet about NFL players "disrespecting our troops" yet his callousness and broken promises toward gold star families speaks volumes.  

A piece in the Washington Post looks at the situation of Sgt. Johnson after Trump lied about his unacceptable behavior.  Here are highlights: 

The mother of a soldier killed in an ambush in Africa said Wednesday that President Trump “did disrespect my son” with remarks in a condolence telephone call.

Sgt. La David T. Johnson’s mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, told The Washington Post that she was present during the call from the White House on Tuesday to Johnson’s widow, Myeshia Johnson. She also stood by an account of the call from Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) that Trump told Myeshia Johnson that her husband “must have known what he signed up for.”

“President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” Jones-Johnson said.  Trump lashed back at Wilson. He denied her account in a Twitter message Wednesday.

But as is always the case with Trump, the family of Sgt. Johnson are not alone in the disrespect and mistreatment they have received at the hands of the foul individual in the White House.  A piece Talking Points Memo looks at Trump's broken promise to Chris Baldridge, the father of Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge, killed in Afghanistan.  Here are excerpts:

Another simply bizarre new thread in the Trump bereavement call story. The Post called the families of service members who’ve died in the line of duty since Trump became President. There were some good stories, some bad; some had never heard from the President. There were a lot of what you might call Trumpian moments. But the really bizarre story was his conversation with Chris Baldridge, the father of Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge, killed in Afghanistan. 

Trump told him he’d send him a personal check for $25,000. Not standard and complicated, inasmuch as presumably the President isn’t going to cut everyone a check. But it’s not unprecedented. I believe I remember that there are records of President Obama sending sums of money to private citizens who were struggling.  But then Trump forgot about it.

Trump apparently told Baldridge he’d have the White House staff set up an online fundraiser for Baldridge too. But then nothing happened.

So it certainly sounds like the check was sent after the Post started asking questions, in other words, sort of like how the Niger calls shook out.

The bottom line is that Trump is unfit for his office in so many ways that it is difficult to count them all.  Worse yet, as these stories underscore, he doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself.  If working class whites who voted for Trump think he gives a rat's ass about them, they are utter and total fools.   When Trump attacked Khizr Khan before the 2016 presidential election, anyone decent and moral should have known all they needed to know about Trump and should have voted for anyone other than Trump.

Trump Camp: Khan Doesn't Deserve Title Of Gold Star Parent

Despite the polls that indicate that one of Donald Trump's biggest self-inflicted wounds has been his on going attacks on the Khan family, Trump's New York co-chair has launched a new attack claiming that Khizr Khan does not deserve the title of "Gold Star" parent.  The foulness, indecency and plain insanity of Trump and Carl Paladino, his New York co-chair is breathtaking. The simple facts are that Humanyun Khan was a U.S. Army Captain who died saving his men and civilians.  His parents lost their beloved son.  Anyone who questions the parents' right to be called "Gold Star" parents is not only morally bankrupt but also mentally unbalanced.  Talking Points Memo looks at this disgusting attack.  Here are excerpts:

The co-chair for Donald Trump’s campaign in New York is defending the Republican nominee's attacks against the Khan family, saying that Trump does not have to respect or refer to Khizr Khan as a "Gold Star parent" because he is "a member of the Muslim Brotherhood."

In an interview with "Imus in the Morning" interviewer Connell McShane, surfaced by BuzzFeed News, Carl Paladino said that focus in the election has unnecessarily shifted negatively to Trump, despite having an "un-indicted felon," presumably Hillary Clinton, in the race and a supporter of hers, Khan, being undeserving of the title of "Gold Star parent."

“We’ve got an un-indicted felon as his opponent and you’re talking about Khan, about him making a remark about this man,” he said.

“All right, I don’t care if he’s a Gold Star parent," he continued. "He certainly doesn’t deserve that title, OK, if he’s as anti-American as he’s illustrated in his speeches and in his discussion. I mean, if he’s a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or supporting, you know, the ISIS-type of attitude against America, there’s no reason for Donald Trump to have to honor this man.”

Paladino, who made a failed bid for governor of New York in 2010, went on to say that he does not feel that Trump should change his rhetoric in any way and that no one can be sure that President Obama is not a Muslim. 

I'm sorry, but Donald Trump is human sewage!!

Is Trump Alienating Military Communities?

Here in Virginia the key to carrying the state in state-wide elections is to win in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, the home of a huge military population.  Earlier in the Week the Virginian Pilot carried an editorial slamming Donald Trump's attacks on and slights to the military and individuals such as the Khan family who have lost loved ones in the line of duty.  Here are highlights:

[T]there comes a time when principle must take precedence over partisanship. That time is now.

Khizr and Ghazala Khan moved to the United States in the 1970s. He is a lawyer by trade, and they are now residents of Charlottesville. In 2004, their son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, a native of the United Arab Emirates and a graduate of the University of Virginia, was killed while serving in Iraq.

The family’s sacrifice, like those of other fallen soldiers, is incalculable and can never be repaid, even by a grateful nation. But it might have gone unnoticed by most Americans were it not for the Khans’ decision to speak on Thursday evening at the Democratic National Convention.

In a powerful address, Khizr Khan took aim at Donald Trump, assailing the candidate’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States and questioning what he has done in service to this nation.  They were pointed words. And they found their mark, drawing the ire of the notoriously thin-skinned Trump.

Finally, when asked by George Stephanopoulos about Khan’s charge that he has sacrificed nothing, Trump responded, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard.

It’s despicable to compare difficulties in business to the loss of a loved one on the battlefield. And it’s unconscionable for a politician to malign a Gold Star family in order to deflect criticism.

[T]hose who represent Hampton Roads, home to so many men and women who willingly march into harm’s way on our nation’s behalf, cannot be silent.

If he wins in November, Trump will be commander in chief of the armed forces. He will be entrusted with the power to send troops into danger.

To treat one family’s sacrifice so dismissively and cavalierly calls into question his fitness for that role. A man who cannot summon the humanity to empathize with the Khans has no place in the Oval Office.

A piece in the New York Times suggests that a growing number of military families and voters may be reaching the same conclusion about Trump's unfitness for office.  Imagine an impulsive man, with no empathy for others recklessly putting the lives of our military men and women at risk on a whim. It's terrifying.  Here are highlights from the Times:

Mr. Trump’s grating comments about the armed services have plainly become an obstacle to courting voters he must convert if he is to overtake Mrs. Clinton in the polls.

For some Republicans and independent voters intrigued by Mr. Trump, his conduct around the military remains a sticking point. In Colorado Springs, near the Air Force Academy and the headquarters of the United States Northern Command, Marianne Quast, the mother of an Air Force veteran, said she had been drawn to Mr. Trump’s bluntness earlier in the campaign. Now, Ms. Quast said, she resents Mr. Trump’s disrespectful language about the military, including his response to the Khans and his joke about the Purple Heart. She said she trembled at the thought of her son serving under such a volatile president.

“I’d honestly worry about a third world war. All those poor kids still serving. God forbid we elect Trump,” Ms. Quast said. She added, “Clearly Trump has no respect for veterans, no matter what he says.”

Mr. Trump has continued to face reproach from prominent veterans in elected office this week. Mr. McCain released a searing statement on Monday invoking his own family’s long history of military service to denounce Mr. Trump’s comments about the Khans. On Wednesday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he could not vote for Mr. Trump.

Advocates for veterans have spoken out against Mr. Trump. The Veterans of Foreign Wars called his comments about the Khans inexcusable.

In some pockets of the extended military community, Mr. Trump has become a source of disagreement among friends.

In Portsmouth, Bill Pierson, a V.F.W. and American Legion volunteer, said he believed strongly in Mr. Trump and would give him the benefit of the doubt on a handful of ill-advised remarks.

But Phil Young, a 27-year veteran of the Army and the Marines, walking alongside Mr. Pierson, was uneasier about the Republican nominee, sharing reservations that underscore the roadblocks confronting Mr. Trump. Mr. Young, 61, said he was a registered Republican but was still undecided about his vote. “The Purple Heart thing didn’t endear him with me, and also what he said about John McCain being a P.O.W.,” Mr. Young said. He added, “I find what he says about the military interesting, considering that he never served.”

Let's hope a majority of military families in Hampton Roads decide that they do not want to put their lives or the lives of family members in the hands of a narcissistic madman. 

Is Donald Trump Mentally Ill?

As the prior post noted, there is growing concern that Donald Trump is mentally ill.  At this point numerous clinicians have stated that Trump suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.  Now, the Toronto Star is running a piece that goes further and suggests that Trump may be mentally ill and, therefore, de facto unfit for the office of president of the United States.  A second piece in Talking Points Memo puts this increasingly obvious mental instability in the context of Trumps ongoing attacks on the Khan family.  First, these highlights from the Toronto Star:

There is an elephant in the election.  It was tiptoed around for a full year by Republicans and Democrats and the media alike. And then, on Wednesday, Michael Bloomberg hoisted it onto the stage of the Democratic National Convention.  His plea for Hillary Clinton: “Let’s elect a sane, competent person.”

The compliment barely disguised an extraordinary allegation. The billionaire former mayor of New York City was suggesting that Donald Trump is not sane himself.

Bloomberg’s remark was a sign of a quiet shift over the last month in the mainstream discussion of the Republican presidential nominee. Once unmentionable, questions about Trump’s mental health have started to bubble into respectable American forums as he has inched closer to the nuclear codes of the world’s mightiest military while behaving stranger than ever.

It’s a delicate thing to ask, but the fate of humankind is at stake. Is Donald Trump … OK?  “Donald Trump is not of sound mind,” conservative Stephen Hayes wrote two weeks ago in the Weekly Standard. “Have we stopped to appreciate how crazy Donald Trump has gotten recently?” liberal Ezra Klein wrote last week on Vox.   He “appears haunted by multiple personality disorders,” conservative David Brooks wrote last week in the New York Times.

“We can gloss over it, laugh about it, analyze it, but Donald Trump is not a well man,” Stuart Stevens, chief strategist to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, wrote last week on Twitter.

[T]he available evidence leads to two possible conclusions: either Trump has a substance abuse problem, which appears unlikely, or “there is something definitely off about him.”

He boasts of his own unparalleled magnificence. He creates and promotes wild conspiracy theories. He tells easily disprovable lies. He fails to finish sentences before he gets distracted by unrelated thoughts. He appears to fly into a wounded rage at mild criticism.

U.S. psychiatrists are now prohibited by their professional association from publicly assessing public figures. The most common amateur diagnosis of Trump is narcissistic personality disorder, a condition characterized by an “inflated sense of their own importance,” “a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others,” and “a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism,” the Mayo Clinic said. 

 As for Trump's self-inflicted injuries in the Trump v. Khan dust up and why his instability made the attacks on a gold star family almost inevitable, here are excerpts from Talking Points Memo:

There are smart terrible people and dumb terrible people. While they're both dangerous in positions of power, the dangers they represent are significantly different. We've been watching the now multi-day war between Donald Trump and the Khan family. Trump has managed the amazing feat of finding himself savaging the mother of a dead American soldier who literally had never said a word against him. What is most important about understanding what is happening here, however, is not the callousness or shamelessness of Trump's behavior. It is that it all could have been so easily avoided - not the damage to the Khan family but the damage to Trump himself. This may seem like a perverse way of looking at what has unfolded. But it's actually the most instructive for understanding Trump's actions, how his mind works and the sort of danger he represents.

Any political operative or communications professional, indeed anyone with some moral imagination and common sense would know how to handle this situation.

You will never win a fight savaging the parents of a dead soldier. So it's a fight you simply don't engage in. A smart terrible person would get this and say something along the lines of the quote I noted above. Trump doesn't seem terribly bright. But this isn't about intelligence as we test it with logic puzzles. Realizing that this would be the only way to respond requires a level of self-awareness a narcissist lacks and a degree of impulse control Trump simply does not have. Empathy or any moral consciousness would get you there too. But remember, we're focusing here on the difference between a smart terrible person and a dumb terrible person both of which lack those qualities.

For a narcissist like Trump, the rage and emotional disequilibrium of being dominated, humiliated is simply too much to bear. He must lash out. What he said in one of his tweets responding to the Khans is perhaps the most telling. "I was viciously attacked by Mr. Khan at the Democratic Convention. Am I not allowed to respond?" The use of the adverb "viciously" is a good tell that Trump is a narcissist. But setting that aside, most people would know that the answer is "No, you're not." Certainly you're not allowed to respond in the sense of attacking back. Their son died serving the country. You don't get to attack them. Someone with a moral consciousness who is capable to empathy would understand this through a moral prism.

[A] dumb terrible person is almost always dangerous. Trump's mix of rage and insecurity are so unbridled that it is not simply that he is unable to protect others from their impact. He cannot even protect himself from the damage they create.

How the DNC Did Religious Liberty Right

One thing that became clear from the two national party conventions is that Democrats understand the concept of religious freedom envisioned by the Founders while in contrast the Republican view is more like one would have found under the Puritans in early Massachusetts or the Spanish Inquisition. Under the Republican view, only one religion is acceptable - i.e., conservative/fundamentalist Christianity - and it and its adherents should enjoy special rights.  Both parties' views were on open display at their respective conventions.  A piece in Slate looks at how the DNC got the concept right. Here are highlights:

Khizr Khan, a Muslim immigrant whose son was killed while serving in Iraq, brought the Democratic National Convention to tears and raucous applause on Thursday when he held up his pocket Constitution and admonished Donald Trump: “Have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.” Khan’s rebuke was, of course, a profoundly moving and very necessary rejoinder to Trump’s rampant Islamophobia. But that powerful moment, as well as Khan’s entire address, also revealed that after years of surrendering the issue to the GOP, Democrats have finally learned how to talk about and present a progressive vision of religious liberty.

Indeed, that very phrase—religious liberty—has become so freighted with discriminatory overtones that I hesitate to use it. The fight for “religious liberty” has come to dominate the Republican Party in recent years, through a series of campaigns that aim to promote prejudiced Christians’ freedom over everybody else’s. . . . We’ve even seen laws that, under the banner of religious freedom, give mental health counselors and medical doctors the right to refuse to treat gay and trans patients.

In a clever act of doublespeak, Republicans have branded these measures “religious liberty”—but, as a federal judge recently pointed out, they really amount of Christian supremacy. (Or, more accurately, conservative Christian supremacy.) This attempt to legally elevate certain Christian beliefs above all others flatly contradicts the spirit and letter of the First Amendment.

Khan’s address didn’t just throw this hypocrisy into stark relief; it demonstrated exactly how Democrats can seize true religious liberty as a winning issue for progressives. Consider Khan’s precise phrasing. “In this document,” he said, holding up his pocket Constitution, “look for the words liberty and equal protection of law.” Liberty and equality: Two constitutional guarantees that are intertwined and interdependent, each building on the other, each a critical component of freedom in a democracy. “Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?” Khan continued. “Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities.”

An entire cemetery of soldiers—Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists—who devoted their lives to protecting a country that dispenses justice evenhandedly, with preference for none and tolerance for all. Khan might as well have been paraphrasing U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who blocked Mississippi’s anti-LGBTQ “religious liberty” law on both Establishment Clause and Equal Protection grounds, holding that it violated both “the guarantee of religious neutrality and the promise of equal protection of the laws.” In America, Reeves explained, religious freedom does not, cannot mean limiting the freedom of those who don’t share your beliefs.

Muslims’ best hope for liberty lies in this preservation of equality—the continued insistence that the government can neither discriminate against certain religions (as Trump would) nor license certain religions to discriminate against others (as Mississippi would). That is the Constitution’s vision of liberty as well, and it is precisely how Democrats should explain their own conception of religious freedom.