You’d have to be living in a cave, eating canned food for the past month not to see that we are headed right back into a lockdown situation. We tried to open up the bars in Los Angeles County and the barbershops and nail salons and most other businesses throughout the state. Almost immediately people began to congregate and ignore the pleadings of the healthcare leaders who have been begging for more social distancing, wearing of masks and for people to stay home.
Nationally, we’d be better off if we had an absent President, perhaps one who was incapacitated and hiding in his White House bunker, but we’re not that lucky. What we have is an active and engaged individual who claims that the numbers are going down, that we don’t have a coronavirus problem and his stalking horse in a Vice President just parrots whatever the President wants put out there. I realize that this is all just a show for them to pander to their base and attempt to be re-elected. Most of the thinking world recognize that, yes, the United States of America has a major outbreak of a potentially deadly disease and we are doing jack-all on the federal level to end it.
I think that history will treat Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence quite poorly when those survivors look back and see the grave disservice they have done to the country and the world by their conscious ignoring of indisputable facts.
But, that seems to be Mr. Trump’s operating plan. He’s doing the same with allegations that the Russians paid Afghanis to target and kill American soldiers. He states that he was not briefed on this, and that neither was Mr. Pence. Which is pretty much the presidential equivalent of ‘the dog ate my homework, and the cat will confirm it.’ For the President of the United States to come out and say that the American Intelligence Community failed to inform the top two leaders of the country of something this significant is not only a stinging accusation of our intelligence community (one that I’m sure they won’t forget) but also a huge glaring leadership deficit in his own administration.
If in fact the Intelligence Community didn’t brief him, that would be a treasonous act in itself. And frankly, when it comes to a question of who has more of a sense of duty, the IC or the President, my money is on the IC. Granted these are people who are specialists at mind games and deception, but I’m pretty sure they’d bring something like this to the attention of the administration. I think the more likely truth is that they put it in a Presidential Daily Briefing that he failed to read.
Lastly, the country is in the midst of yet another pivot point on race relations and Mr. Trump’s position is to ignore it, and to post inflammatory videos on his Twitter feed as he did this weekend with the “white power” video from The Villages in Florida. Again he claims he “didn’t hear it” when asked about the “white power” cry. Yet another claim of ignorance by the President as a cover for his actions. Either Mr. Trump is racist and doing these ‘dog-whistles’ to his fellow racist base, or he is criminally incompetent and lazy as the President.
If we were to give him the benefit of the doubt, he would be the victim of a treasonous ‘deep-state’ that is actively working against him, and he just posts things on the internet without paying attention. Both of those are very scary options.
More likely is that he is lazy, ignorant, not doing his job in reading his PDBs and is quite aware of the dog-whistles to his base.
He needs to be replaced. By vote or by the 25th Amendment.
David Pisarra is a Los Angeles Divorce and Child Custody Lawyer specializing in Father’s and Men’s Rights with the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He welcomes your questions and comments. He can be reached at dpisarra@pisarra.com or 310/664-9969.You can follow him on Twitter @davidpisarra
