Whether pro or con, I enjoy hearing from readers. I joke, without reader feedback, writing feels like I’m just talking to myself, which I do enough of as it is. Fortunately, I have readers who email.
To name but two, there’s Jackie in Philadelphia and Emily in Tampa. Jackie agrees with my lampooning Donald Trump but she’s often funnier than I am. Emily, an avid Trump supporter, rates my columns with 1 to 5 stars and when I write about Trump I always get 1 star along with, “Can’t you ever say anything nice?” It’s near impossible.
We now have 100,000 Americans dead and 40 million unemployed due to Covid-19. Instead of consoling the nation’s grief as every president in my lifetime, Republican and Democratic, would do, Trump tweets insane and baseless conspiracy theories. (Were he a CEO, he’d be fired for or institutionalized.)
On Memorial Day, once again, Trump enriched his coffers by playing golf at his own course, bringing the total taxpayer expense for his golf to $138 million. “I needed the exercise,” Trump said of his outing. Exercise, driving a golf cart?
Trump has actually driven a cart onto the green, perhaps to protect against inflaming his bogus “bone spurs.” Meanwhile, candidate Trump relentlessly chastised Obama’s golfing but as POTUS Trump has played a whopping 270% more than Obama.
Emily might be pleased as I just thought of kind words for Trump. He’s possibly the best golfer to occupy the White House, but, of course, he ruins it because he’s such a pathological cheater he’s the subject of the best-selling book, “Commander in Cheat,” by Rick Reilly.
“Trump thinks playing by the rules is for losers,” Reilly writes. “He cheats at everything, and sees other people only as marks.” Just like the rest of his life, Trump’s cheating at golf is so brazen caddies nicknamed him “Pele,” because he constantly kicks his ball from the rough back onto the fairway.
Memorial Day is a sacred holiday honoring those who gave their lives for an idea bigger than themselves. Sadly, Trump demonstrates he considers nothing to be bigger than himself. Disturbingly, after he laid the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Trump, who will be 74 in June, swayed, as if having difficulty keeping his balance.
Later, however, he sent off a series of vile rage tweets against women. He suggested Nancy Pelosi “drinks on the job,” called Hillary Clinton a “skank,” and said of Stacey Abrams, “She’s visited every buffet restaurant in Georgia.” This from the most obese POTUS in 100 years!
Undeniably, Trump lacks basic human empathy. He’s vengefully mocked the disabled, minorities, two Gold Star families, a teenage climate activist and disparages John McCain even after he’s dead. (During the pandemic, not only does Trump not wear a mask, he belittles those who do.)
Trump’s callousness reminds many of Senator Joe McCarthy who, in a hearing in 1954, was famously asked, “Have you no sense of decency?” Coincidentally, his diabolical hatchet man, Roy Cohn, would become Trump’s “mentor.” A Republican, McCarthy was censured by the majority GOP Senate and drank himself to death within three years.
Speaking of censure, there are absolutely no kind words for Trump’s abysmal mishandling of Covid-19. Ever the victim, he denies any responsibility whining, “Nobody knew there would be a pandemic of this proportion.” Nobody?
In December, 2014, President Obama predicted perhaps in five years, “We will have an airborne disease that will be deadly. We have to put into place an infrastructure that allows us to see it quickly, isolate it quickly and respond to it quickly.”
In March, Trump predicted Covid-19 would “disappear like a miracle.” (If he would disappear it would be a miracle.) Clearly, when Trump lies, people can die as evidenced on March 6 when he insisted, “Anybody who wants a test can get one.” That’s not even true today. (Trump’s puppet master, Putin, must just love all the tragedy and chaos in America.)
Pulitzer-Prize columnist Thomas Friedman called Trump “President Breaking Bad.” He cites Trump’s “Touting ultraviolet light colonoscopies, Lysol enemas and Hydroxychloroquine, rejected by his own FDA.”
To the horror of his medical experts, Trump infamously suggested injecting disinfectants to fight the virus. Lysol and Clorox had to warn Americans not to do it. (In 1978, Kool-Aid didn’t get a chance to warn Jim Jones’ 900 devotees not to poison themselves with the cyanide-laced drink.)
As Howard Stern noted, ironically, Trump despises his followers, as is true of almost every cult leader throughout history. The question is what can we do about him? (#Remember November 3.)
As for Jackie and Emily, tomorrow Jackie celebrates her 50th wedding anniversary. And Emily recently moved into a new apartment she loves. After today’s column, however, obviously I’m only getting 1 star.
For proof, Google “Hear what Obama said in 2014 about Pandemic” For laughs, Google “Sarah Cooper Trump videos.” Jack is at: jackdailypress@aol.com
