Day 1,180: Monster meltdown: every American should be embarrassed by Trump’s childish behavior
The U.S. deserves better than it’s getting.
It seems like every day Donald Trump tries to hit rock bottom and fails. The following day or week or month is always worse.
Monday an irate Trump tried to trample on the Constitution in favor of authoritarianism, played propaganda at a press briefing, and lashed out so violently at the media that his face used more colors than a van Gogh painting.
On re-opening the country, Trump said he, not state governors, had the right to tell states what to do.
Trump doubled down at his press briefing, claiming his “authority is total” under the Constitution.
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution disagrees. It reads:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Under the principle of federalism, the Tenth Amendment used to mean a lot to Republicans who would scream “states’ rights!” from the rooftops whenever they could. So far, they’ve been quiet as a church mouse as Trump tries to trample it.
To be clear, there is nothing that gives Trump the right to tell the governors of New York and Texas that they must permit restaurants to open, allow buses to run or lift social distancing rules. Those are “police powers” reserved to individual states.
Even conservative experts were taken aback by Trump’s authoritarian-like claims.
Josh Blackman, a conservative legal expert at South Texas College of Law Houston, said, “I don’t know what it means for the president to ‘open up the states.’”
“The president does make certain declarations about critical infrastructure and other guidelines that states generally follow. But the president cannot order the governors to do anything. I don’t even think he could withhold funding from states, absent a congressional appropriation,” Blackman added.
In Trump’s briefing, he also played a propaganda video that would have made Kim Jong-un blush. The video was an attempt to try and tout his own success in fighting the coronavirus. While the video played, Trump stood in the corner preening and pointing like a child. He did this despite over a half million Americans testing positive for the virus and over 23,000 dying from it.
CBS’s Paula Reid noted that the video that Trump’s own team produced still didn’t include Trump saying anything or doing anything about the virus in February. (During February Trump could be found playing golf and attending campaign rallies where he called the virus a “new hoax”.)
Continuing the childish behavior, Trump worked himself into a lather and soon became totally unhinged as his feet were held to the fire.
While not answering the question about what he was doing in February, Trump randomly criticized Joe Biden and called Reid “disgraceful,” and “a fake“ for pointing out something that was patently factual from his own video.
Trump refused to admit he’s made even a single mistake since the outbreak began.
That’s impossible considering it took one month from the time Trump said the U.S. would be “close to zero” coronavirus cases until the U.S. had the most in the world.
Americans deserve a better president than one who exclusively blames others — governors, Barack Obama, the media — for everything.
Americans deserve a better president than one who is being unwilling to lead.
Americans deserve a better president than one who finds authoritarianism more appealing than democracy.
Americans deserve a better president than one who doesn’t understand the basics of the Constitution of the United States.
Americans deserve a better president than one who cannot answer simple questions about his actions and inaction.
Americans deserve a better president than Donald Trump.
1,180 days in, 282 to go
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