Not presidential after all
Richard Fulton
Last week my article was entitled “A presidential Trump?.” It referred to his speech before congress that followed the well worn outline of such speeches by earlier presidents. A turnaround? I gave him some benefit of doubt.
But as it turns out, President Trump is nothing like previous presidents. And the answer to the question turns out, as Trump demonstrated rather swiftly, to be “no.”
Within days Trump tweets that President Obama had illegally wire tapped his phones. There was no evidence presented. There has been no evidence presented since.
Trump’s aides have been strangely mum on the topic as well. Even the official spokesman for the president, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, could only plead that any knowledge of evidence is “above my pay grade.”
This guy speaks for the president. No one is above his pay grade in speaking for the president except the president. He is the president’s voice.
No other aide could give a straight answer either. What they did was advise the president to use an old conman’s trick. State a lie then say that others would have to find the proof of the lie. Congress in this case.
As it happens, a few congressional committees are already looking into allegations that members of Trump’s campaign and later transition team had multiple contacts with Russian intelligence agents. Some have had to resign because they lied about meeting Russians. This “tapping” would be added to their list.
The new Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to excuse himself from any investigations of the Trump White House because of his inability to remember his contact with the Russian Ambassador when testifying before his confirmation hearing.
Back to the Trump lie: he seems to have gotten his information from an online site of a notorious conspiracy theorist who also had no evidence to support the claim. He is well acquainted with conspiracy theories since he harbored one for eight years, claiming Obama was not a U.S. citizen.
But tapping claims could have been dealt with reasonably if Donald Trump would have just simply remembered that he is the President of the United States. In this role he can simply call the heads of the CIA and FBI and ask them for a meeting to discuss if these were credible claims.
Later, James Comey, the head of the FBI asked the Justice Department to discredit the Trump claims since they implied the FBI broke the law. They refused, of course.
This president does not engage his brain before talking or, in this and other cases, tweeting. Facts mean nothing to him. He claims whatever sounds good to him.
He responds to every national problem presented to him by simply stating “it is going to stop.”
Dana Wilbank of The Washington Post did a database search of all the proclamations by Trump that “it is going to stop.” Terrorism, all crime, illegal immigration, corruption, heroin deaths, bullying, lobbying, anti-Semitism, the list goes on and on. A hint, President Trump, nothing stops just because you say it is going to stop.
I guess he thinks by saying it will stop then naturally it will. What does this say about his governing problem solving abilities? “We are going to stop all the silliness, all of the games, all of the dishonesty.” He might start with himself.
Why does Trump continue to attack Obama? It is unprecedented for a sitting president to accuse his predecessor of criminal activity. Is all this because Obama remains more popular than Trump, even now? Yes a fact, look it up.
Richard Fulton is an emeritus professor of political science.
