Column By John Young
By now, only the Thirders are clapping for him.
The Thirders — and the trained seals on the right side of the House chamber, and on Faux News.
The Thirders, you ask? I introduced them in this column back when President Obama had approval ratings in the mid-70s. I identified the fury of a calcified third of Americans who could be sold any whacked-out right-wing claim about Obama whatsoever, particularly a racist one.
Thirders would believe Obama was a Sudanese fire hydrant if they heard it through their grapevine.
Then in 2016, along came the Thirders’ savior in bogosity and race-baiting: a reality star from the East.
Across his career in elected office, based on his on-the-job approval ratings, the president we now have has never been able to sway more than half of us with his non-stop falsehoods and nativist prattle.
Increasing numbers of those voters (and non-voters) are regretting it.
His 36 percent approval rating in multiple polls reflects, at last, a national wising-up about him. Ask his flaxen-pated mouthpiece, however, and you’ll hear that a scooch over one-third support amounts to a massive, nation-shaking, war-making mandate.
No, mandate, ma’am. That is evident in how many shunned or unplugged your guy’s 107-minute State of the Tantrum. Viewership was down 11 percent. And to the preener-in-chief, few things mean more than what Nielsen says.
Stephen Colbert, whose ratings have soared lately, had the best reaction: This guy “is really dragging down broadcast television. I mean, if I were CBS, I’d cancel him.”
He’s right. America’s disgust meter is fit to burst.
Every week, they are dismayed by grocery bills artificially ramped up by his illegal tariffs.
If this administration has done nothing else for education, it has at least taught Americans what tariffs are: a sales tax.
Meanwhile, more Americans have come to understand that rather than revealing the truth contained in the Epstein files, this administration will bob and deceive until the final bell.
Indeed, many have read or heard what major news outlets now report: that among the files missing or hidden are those related to a claim that the president-to-be sexually assaulted a minor.
Put that aside, and we have a man living by falsehood, and not about to stop.
In his speech, he promoted the federal takeover of elections and pointed an accusing finger at the Democrats, saying, “their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat.”
That’s an odd claim from the only person in attendance who was twice indicted for conspiracy to commit election fraud.
And now: more war-making from the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize.
Iran’s nuclear arsenal was “obliterated” in June by American munitions, he said, but the same threat has shown up again on his Wheel of Pretexts.
He pledged no more “regime change” gambits when seeking office. He’s sent our fighting forces to conduct two in as many months.
A report by The New York Times compared claims made about the threat posed by Iran to those made to justify, falsely, rolling tanks into Iraq in 2003. Among those criticizing that war loudly was you-know-who.
With our Iraq incursion as a model, the real threat to this nation is making war, not because we need to, but because we can – or think we can.
With midterms approaching, voters who are in a not-trusting mode with this president must make a statement through a new Congress that checks his brazen and unbalanced impulses, and won’t clap like circus seals to the next tantrum.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
