He has distanced us from our friends and placated our enemies -- and in the process has abdicated this nation's leadership among nations. He has shown he will not respect treaties and agreements, even when they are advantageous to the United States.
But his total incompetence has been starkly revealed by the current global pandemic. While most other nations act to protect their own citizens, Trump cares only about his own re-election. He's demanding the reopening of the economy in spite of what public health officials say -- and in doing so, he will be killing many thousands more American citizens.
His incompetence and unfitness for the office he holds is no secret. It is even known by Republican officials. But they back him anyway. They care only about trying to hold on to power.
The following is part of an article in The Washington Post by Paul Waldman:
The truth is that Trump is not much more despicable of a human being than he has always been; it’s just that standard Trumpian behavior becomes more horrifying when it occurs during an ongoing national crisis. It is reality that changed around him, and he was incapable of responding to it.
We all know this. In public, Republicans may say that the real villain in the pandemic is China, or that all those deaths — and the tens of thousands yet to come — were inevitable, or that it is essential to get the economy moving. But they know as well as the rest of us do what a catastrophic failure Trump has been.
They must own the moral choice they now make. In 2016, they said Trump would grow serious and sober once he was faced with the awesome responsibilities of the office. There was little reason at the time to think it would happen, but it was at least possible.
No one can say that now. Not only do we know who Trump is, we know who he will always be. And we know that reelecting him will be disastrous in a hundred ways.
If you gave many Republicans in Washington truth serum, they’d say, “Of course he’s unfit to be president. Of course he’s corrupt, of course he’s incompetent, of course he’s the most dishonest person ever to step into the Oval Office. But I can live with that, because him being reelected means Republicans keep power, we get more conservative judges and we get all the policies we favor.”
That is the choice they’re making. We all know it, even if they’ll never say it out loud. . . .
And as we approach another election, they’ll tell themselves that Trump isn’t as bad as he looks, or that Joe Biden is a monster, or that all that matters is winning.
In the future, when we look back on this dark period, we should resist the temptation to focus solely on Trump himself. To do so would be to excuse those who know exactly what he is but pretend they can work to keep him in office and remain unsullied. They cannot, and their moral culpability becomes clearer every day.
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