To the People Who Care about Trump
Just to be clear, I despise Donald Trump. Everything I have seen of his conduct suggests that he is an ugly person who cares nothing for his country or anything outside of himself, whom I am delighted never to have met, and wish I didn’t have to think about. But the motto of this blog is “Because everyone needs someone who cares.” My compassion for Trump is limited by the harm he does and by what I see of his character, but everyone should have someone who cares. Trump’s people are failing him.
Trump’s vindictiveness, hypersensitivity, and self-absorption were obvious and much commented on before he became president. The problems this would cause in a presidency were also widely discussed, although they were ignored by enough voters to push him past the finish line. It is not the job of the voters, or the press, to protect the president’s feelings. It is the job of a candidate’s family and friends to discourage him from taking on a position that will so obviously strain his mental health.
Trump has been in office for three weeks and we have already heard multiple stories about how upset he is by the meanness of the press and the courts, the small turnout at his inauguration, the vast turnout at events to protest him, and other evidence of the lack of the universal adulation he obviously craves. I was concerned during the campaign by Trump’s evident desire to be a dictator, or even better a god-emperor, rather than a president. I cannot imagine why it did not concern his staff, his wife, his adult children, and the doctor who signed that preposterous endorsement letter. These are the people who should have protected Trump from a position which could only strain what appears to my non-mental-health-expert eyes to be his precarious mental stability. In my opinion they should also have been concerned for the effects of this dangerous situation on the country, but even if, as is obviously the case, they weren’t, they bear a responsibility to Trump himself to help him avoid making himself an international laughingstock or worse.
The presidency of the United States is not only the toughest job in the world, it is also an invitation to criticism. The last president I don’t remember criticizing was John Kennedy, and that was because I was too young. Even the best of them make mistakes. It is a patriotic duty for Americans to push their officials, and most especially their presidents, in the direction of doing the right thing by criticism among other means. That is a foundation of our democracy.
As many people as possible should criticize Trump every time he does, or says, anything that threatens to harm people or diminish our country.
I’m sure that none of those other presidents particularly appreciated my criticism, if they knew about it, or that of more prominent critics, but no matter how much they hated it they knew that it went with the job. I agree emphatically with those who say that criticism of Barron Trump should be off-limits. He is a child who did not make an adult decision to participate in the political fray, and his welfare and privacy should be respected by adult society. Trump’s adult children and children-in-law have adult responsibilities, both to him and to their country. By choosing to participate in his campaign and government they have opened themselves to scrutiny, and boy, do they look bad. Not only are they transparently hoping to enrich themselves by using their proximity to the White House to promote their businesses, they have encouraged someone who is obviously unsuited to the rough-and-tumble of the presidency to put himself in a position where he will be repeatedly assailed by criticism and mockery that he obviously cannot tolerate.
The administration’s propaganda machine is already trying to tell the American people that they are responsible for protecting the president’s feelings by offering only praise and adulation. This is not how the United States of America is supposed to work. It is how a dictatorship works. If members of the administration and the Trump family actually want to protect the president, they should sacrifice their ambitions for a change and protect his welfare by persuading him to resign.
By the way, I consider Mike Pence a detestable fanatic theocrat whose major virtue is that he appears to understand that the president of the United States is subject to criticism. If he becomes president I will criticize and mock him to the best of my ability. I hope you will join me.
