So many questions, too few answers, but this one seems appropriate: Because he can. President Trump went off again in a post-midnight Tweet that will go down as a great presidential non-sequitur not just of our time, but of all time. Covfefe is now the official asterisk of this chapter in American political history.
Perhaps the president was just nodding off as he tried to Tweet about negative press coverage, or negative press covens (as in witch hunts). Some have even suggested that covfefe is just java for El Jefe. Who really knows? But it did provide for a day filled with jibes, jabs, barbs, cleverness, and general internet levity.
Some news heads suggested the president was simply trying to divert the media and the public from one more day of Russia-24/7. If that was his intent, it didn’t work.
What covfefe also didn’t quash is the seriousness of something Mr. Trump is poised to do, which is pull America’s endorsement of the Paris Climate Agreement and double down on his misbegotten and dangerous endorsement of coal as the palliative to the nation’s energy needs. How bold of the president to take a position held only by Nicaragua and Syria (and, even then, the only reason Nicaragua has not signed on to the Agreement is that the accord doesn’t go far enough, in which case, America stands alone with Syria in opposition to the rest of the world community’s joint mission to rein in humanity’s effects on global warming).
Trump’s logic (now there’s an oxymoron) behind his anti-Paris Agreement stance is that he made a campaign promise to America’s coal miners that he would bring back coal and put them all to work again. Back in May, 2016, as the Trump campaign was gaining steam, Trump responded to a question about his support for coal with this: "The market forces are going to be what they are…To me a market force is a beautiful force."
Talk about fake news! It was a thoughtless and cruel promise then, and it is even more thoughtless and cruel now. A week after his election, Time Magazine ran this headline, “Donald Trump Says He'll Bring Back Coal. Here's Why He Can't”
Coal is not coming back, and, to add injury to insult, miners and their families who are holding out hope for their industry’s resurgence are also suffering, in large numbers from preexisting health conditions that will be dropped by Trump in his version of the revised health care legislation. And older miners—those in their 60s but not yet eligible for Medicare (also in Trump budget jeopardy)—who are still working somewhere if not in the mines—are going to get hit by insurance costs so steep they will eat up nearly 50-percent of their income just in premiums. That ain’t just covfefe leaking out of the White House, that’s demagoguery, duplicity, and disrespect.
But Trump doesn’t care. His demagoguery, duplicity, and disrespect extend to our closest allies who were hoping—in vain as it turned out last week in Brussels—for a solid U.S. commitment to NATO and the mutual defense pact that has defined NATO’s operating philosophy for almost 70 years. While Trump parades his affection for dictators and tyrants like the Philippines’ Duterte, Turkey’s Erdogan, and Egypt’s el-Sisi, and embraces the oil emirates who, in all likelihood, snicker behind the President’s back, he bulls his way through NATO, chastises our friends, hits them up for cash, and presumes to know more about that sacred alliance than they do.
We are living in one of the most uneasy, unsettled, unnerving times in my memory. On the far side of the Pacific, a young leader will soon have his finger on a nuclear-warhead-tipped-missile launch button, and so far, there is no evidence he is giving any real thought to the consequences of his desires. One nation—China—could be our only hope of dissuading Kim Jong-un from his insane plan by squeezing Kim’s economy so tightly that Kim must relinquish his mad dream. I suppose the second option China could afford the U.S. is overt, hands-off, support for an American preemptive strike on Pyongyang’s military assets, but that’s highly unlikely, and fraught with its own unintended consequences.
But why would China care to help Trump at this point, when what Xi Jinping sees is a weak, unpredictable leader who respects no national principle of value, who turns from his allies with brutish disdain, who dissembles in front of his own citizens, and who rambles on his phone in the midnight hours, calling out witches where there are none, and who is content to play footsies in the dark with Russian spies and their palace intrigues?
And, as if all that were not enough to cause historians to take notes in pencil, Mr. Trump is badgering the United States Senate, via Twitter, to change its rules in order to circumvent the two-thirds voting rule and adopt a permanent nuclear option 51-vote majority rule to cram through his legislative agenda—such as it is.
"The U.S. Senate should switch to 51 votes, immediately, and get Healthcare and TAX CUTS approved, fast and easy. Dems would do it, no doubt!"
For some reason, Mr. Trump sees only Democrats in his way, when, in reality, his impulsive, ill-informed actions are beginning to turn even Republicans against him.
Slowly but surely, Donald Trump is isolating America from our friends and our foes (never a good thing to do, no matter how much you don’t like them), and, most distressing, isolating Americans from each other, in what should be a time of shared, vigorous, and productive national discourse on the matters of great importance to us and the world. Mr. Trump needs to put down that midnight can of Diet Covfefe, and get on with learning to be presidential.
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