Why should anybody care about the rantings of a daddy financed playboy, turned bankruptcy prone real estate developer, turned television celebrity, turned insurrection inciting, convicted felon, President Elect. He has reshaped a respectable Republican party into his mirror image. As most elected officials soon learn, the moment they enter office the public becomes disillusioned with them. Every unsettling issue becomes their fault. He should have learned this from his first failed Presidency. Learning though, does not come easily to this omniscient father of all things.
I understand that he appealed to the angry people who felt that their concerns were being disregarded by the current administration. The Democrats did a terrible job in not sufficiently addressing the disaffected and dissatisfied. His campaign of anger, spewing hate, was disgusting. I have heard people say that they do not like the man, but they like his policies. They seem not to appreciate that sweeping generalizations are not policies. They are merely a fantastical wish list of unrealizable magnitude. I wonder if his supporters remember who was going to pay for the border wall with Mexico?
In Trump’s world he is the chairman of the board, CEO, and the supreme leader. He believes that this country is merely Trump Enterprise write large. As in his family business everyone must be differential to everything he says and does. He fired people in his first administration; not because they were not good at their jobs (they were often good, perhaps too good for Trump) but because they were insufficiently sycophantic, they refused to kiss his ring. They dared to question his unstudied and nonchalant approach to serious matters.
Trump is currently choosing his cabinet. The only requirement is celebrity and fealty. Some of these people are successful in their chosen fields. However, those skills are not transferable to leading government agencies. A cardiothoracic surgeon who promotes quack remedies, an executive of World Wide Wrestling (Entertainment), an ex-serviceman who is now a Fox personality, a man who resigned from Congress to avoid an ethics committees rebuke, an anti-vaxxer with a brain worm, a person who could not train her puppy so she killed it, (if she cannot keep people safe from her puppy, how will she keep Americans safe) the list goes on.
Why would supposedly thoughtful and respectable members of Congress support these utterly unqualified nominees? What do they hope to gain? What do they fear? I am sure that some of them like his general “concepts (Make things better). Everybody want that. It is the way that he wants to fix things. He plans to use a sledgehammer. Some people still believe that they can tame the beast. That did not turn out well the first time.
Trump will not run for anything again. In four years, he will slink out of Washington in disgrace. He will have increased the national debt exponentially. He will have created terrible inflation. He will have alienated our allies and strengthened our foes. These are not wild speculations. They are echoes from the past. Unfortunately, Americans have short memories.
He will take his golden escalator and board Trump Force One, his private 757 and never look back. He will return to his palace at Mira-Lago. He will have enriched his friends and himself while the country will be poorer and less safe. He will think to himself, “Job well done”.