Our angry president

Our angry president

The president is perpetually p—-ed off and it is wearing me down. All the threats. All the CAPITALIZED TWEETS! All the bellicosity. All the name calling. All the demeaning comments. All the saber ratting. All the tariffs. All the me, me, me. The misguided industrial policy. All the lashing out. All the bruised ego. All the turning against supporters. “Activist judges”, “RINOs”, traitors and petulant whinings that sound more like a loser than a winner. Doesn’t it seem like as we go through time that the president’s attacks are getting worse and more vengeful? Is that even possible? Or is it just me exhibiting TRFS (Trump Related Fatigue Syndrome)?

But it feels like I am being hammered to death. The president doesn’t seem to be content with being a winner but instead sounds like a loser despite all his successes. His attacks on everyone, democrats, fellow republicans, journalists, judges, universities, allies – everyone it seems but Putin and Xi. All this has rolled over to members of his administrations who hit back a those who dare question the president. Press secretaries, cabinet members, “Justice” department attorneys and other Trump apologists have gotten snippy at those who question the president’s actions and policies. It has gotten to be hand-to-hand warfare. Members of the administration engage in shouting matches and trade insults with members of congress at hearings in confrontations that we have never seen before in DC. Open hostility is now de rigueur in the nation’s capitol. 

Charges and accusations keep escalating. Remember the six members of congress who released that stupid video calling on active duty servicemembers to refuse “illegal orders”? The president’s reaction was classic Trump: off-with-their heads! He called their message “seditious behavior at the highest level” and said the Democratic lawmakers should be punished “by death”. I would think that the president’s advisors would tell him to cool it down a bit and that his tanking poll numbers might be related to his escalating fury. I have written before that he at times seems to be out of control and many are calling into question his mental stability. Yet, every time that happens, his reaction is to go off the rails even more. 

Polls say that many of the president’s policies are doing more harm than good. Democrats are winning elections in republican districts and there is a general lack of confidence in the president. Affordably – which the president calls a “hoax” – food, rent, mortgage rates, insurance, healthcare, domestic policy, foreign policy, fights with allies, ICE, and now the Iran War have all hurt the president who persists in blaming Biden for all his problems. His allies haven’t helped either. Pam (Blondie) Bondi is acting like Trump’s personal lawyer rather than the country’s attorney general. Scott Bessant is always on the defensive translating what Trump really meant. Kristi (ex-Border Barbie) Noem was a disaster. Stephen Miller comes across as pure evil. Robert Kennedy Jr looks like he is intent on destroying the public’s confidence in the government’s health apparatus. 

It is as if they have gotten their marching orders to attack and seek to destroy any who question any action taken by the president. Domestic policy seems incoherent. Americans are uneasy with the attacks on the boats in the Caribbean and with the president’s seeming to favor Putin over Zelenskyy in Ukraine. The president asking our allies for help in the Straits of Hormuz looks like a miscalculation and his lashing out at them for failing to get involved sounds petulant. He even blasted the Supreme Court calling it “a weaponized, and unjust Political Organization” tweeting “This completely inept and embarrassing Court was not what the Supreme Court of the United States was set up by our wonderful Founders to be. They are hurting our Country, and will continue to do so.” Pardon me but this is outrageous and the president has sunk to a new low – if that is even possible.

Here is what Peter Baker – certainly no fan of the president has written:

Anger defines Mr. Trump’s decade on the political stage. Anger at foreigners who come to this country and change its nature. Anger at allies who take advantage of America. Anger at Democrats who cross him. Anger at Republicans who cross him. Anger at appointees he deems insufficiently loyal. Anger at prosecutors, F.B.I. agents, judges, journalists, law firms, elite universities, cultural figures, corporate leaders, pollsters, central bankers and the Norwegian Nobel Committee. – Peter Baker

Baker is correct. Donald Trump is just another president who is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He was elected for three distinct reasons: stop the open border policy of Joe Biden, curb Biden’s inflation and stop Biden’s wokeness from tearing the country apart. He has essentially succeeded. The border is secure, inflation is down from the Biden years and wokeness has been dismantled. But then in every instance he has gone overboard. ICE now looks like a terrorist organization, legal immigration has been curtailed, Trump keeps yelling at Jay Powell and siccing his “Justice” department on him with trumped up charges, and vital research has been ended on the pretense that it is DEI.

I know that the Trump apologists will say that its only tit-for-tat. That the president is lashing out at those who hate him. But that is not true as he turns on his own supporters like Majorie Taylor Greene who only wanted the Epstein files to be released. Trump tweeted “The only reason Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown (Green turns Brown under stress!) went BAD is that she was JILTED by the President of the United States (Certainly not the first time she has been jilted!). He then called her “a low IQ traitor.” As to others who wanted release of the files he said “And my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bulls***,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will,” Trump then called them “weaklings” and said “I don’t want their support anymore!” Good grief.

The president acts like an insecure brat. He wants his name on everything. He loves to be flattered with gifts and trinkets that look awfully like bribes. He wants to control everything. He also is dramatically increasing his wealth while questioning that of Nancy Pelosi, Iilan Oman are other members of congress. Then there is his hatred of trade and love of tariffs. All in all this is a volatile mix stirred by a volatile president. And it has only been one year. By year four we will all be an emotional wreak – if we are not already.