Is there any subject that Trump won’t try to turn into a competition with President Obama’s legacy?
He has withdrawn from the Paris Accords concerning climate change that was negotiated on Obama’s watch.
He is trying to tear up the six party nuclear arms deal negotiated with Iran, while at the same time playing a dangerous game of nuclear chicken with the North Koreans.
He is trashing the health care provided to Americans under the Affordable Care Act.
He has ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and put the burden on Congress to find a solution.
He reminds me of a petulant child who breaks his toys on Christmas morning because he doesn’t like the gift giver.
His attempted obliteration of anything that President Obama accomplished is reminiscent of the random destruction that the Taliban and Islamic State engaged in to any cultural artifacts they encountered during their occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
It has become the mission of his Administration.
His Attorney General rolls back legal protections for LGBT citizens.
That’s what you expect when you appoint a cracker to run the Justice Department.
His EPA Director nullifies any clean air or climate regulations designed to prevent pollution.
That’s what you get when you designate a shill for the oil and gas industry for that position.
It makes no difference what the prior administration produced or accomplished.
It makes no difference whether it is health care for the vulnerable, clean air and water safeguards, consumer and banking protection, or anti-nuclear proliferation treaties .If it bears Obama’s signature, it must be destroyed.
Although painful to watch, I’ve become somewhat numb to the anger it used to produce.
That was, until Trump declared that he has done more to comfort the families and honor the sacrifice of soldiers killed on his watch than Presidents Bush and Obama did during their terms.
I didn’t serve in the military.
Neither did Donald Trump.
We both would have been draft eligible during the Vietnam War.
We both had student deferments and he was additionally deferred because he suffered from “heel spurs.”
Fifty years later I can vividly recall the body bags that were coming home from Vietnam with guys my age in them, at the rate of five-hundred per week.
I can still feel the agonizing pain and loss I witnessed attending the funerals of friends and classmates who were sacrificed during that war.
So, despite being jaded at the daily diatribes Trump launches on Twitter as he degrades and demeans those he decides to target, I must confess to being stunned at his politicization of honoring the dead of war.
Like most of his claims, this one is untrue.
Alternative facts, fake news, call it what you will.
Aides to both President Bush and Obama have recounted the emotional toll that both men endured in their trips to Dover Air force base to meet the caskets of those that were killed, of visiting the wounded at Walter Reed Hospital and the private meetings they held with their families.
Trump’s lack of empathy for anyone is exemplified by his claim that President Obama did not reach out to General John Kelly, his current chief of staff, after Kelly’s son was killed in Afghanistan.
Never mind the fact that Michelle Obama was seated with the General and his wife at a luncheon that the Obamas hosted to honor Gold Star families in the wake of their son’s death.
Ripping the scab off of General Kelly’s painful wound is of little moment to him if it serves as a defense of his own fake news and alternative facts.
Kelly is being badly used by a White House that is repeatedly sending him to the podium in the White House Press Room to defend the indefensible.
If it continues, it will damage his good reputation, tarnish the General’s legacy and turn him into another broken toy.
In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t be surprised by this after witnessing his attack on the Gold Star parents of Captain Kahn who was killed in Iraq or his denigration of John McCain’s torture as a prisoner of war that lasted seven years.
This latest revelatory glimpse that we get into Trump’s soul resulted from his being questioned about why it took him twelve days to comment on the death of four green berets in Niger.
The New York Post reports that the four green berets were ambushed and killed on October 4th.
Their bodies arrived at Dover Air force base on October 7th.
Instead of being there to meet the caskets, Trump was playing golf.
The explanation for the twelve day silence about the killings has yet to be forthcoming, a period when Trump was burning up his twitter feed on a host of other topics.
When he did reach out to the family of Sergeant La David T. Johnson, he offered the touching observation that, “He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.”
Maybe we’re better off that he plays golf rather than consoling the families fallen heroes.
Maybe we would all be better off, if those that voted for him, had known what we were signing up for too.