Column By John Young
When a whistle-blower reported that then-President Trump had dangled military aid to Ukraine like a cat toy in an extortive bid to get President Zelensky to launch a probe of Joe Biden, Trump denied it. My first reaction in this column:
“Sounds to me like something he’d do. How about you?”
He did it. He got impeached for it.
Fast-forward through a disreputable presidency, a raft of criminal indictments, and a return-to-power campaign that has broken all records for unconscionable demeanor. What else can we assume now was completely in this man’s character?
Saying good things about Adolph Hitler.
No way! He protested. What do you think?
Trump, he of the “poisoning our blood”? He of the “enemy within”? He of mass deportation dreams? Him?
Oh, and don’t forget his Mr. Fascist Pageant staged at Madison Square Garden. Heil Him.
Per his reputed expressions of admiration for the monster of all monsters, we must trust the word of a four-star Marine general — then-chief of staff John Kelly– or that of a serial prevaricator who risks imprisonment based on the results of this election.
Kelly also said Trump called war dead “suckers” and “losers.” Sounds like someone taking his cues from the New York Times not-at-all-seller, “You Too Can Act Like a Cretin.”
Disrespecting those who gave the ultimate sacrifice: Does that sound like Trump? Ask John McCain’s family.
Running for president in 2016, Trump made the kind of comment about McCain that once upon a time would have ended a candidacy.
Of the latter’s grueling and crippling five-plus years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, Trump – who dodged service by the weaselly-est of means – said McCain was no war hero.
“I like people who weren’t captured.”
To understate: Trump’s remark took nincompoopery to a new stratum.
This was the Republican Party’s man to lead our nation.
Tragically, he would thread the Electoral College needle to share such wisdom from America’s loftiest perch.
Now he wants his perch back. For the last word before the election, voters need reminding of what kind of person this man is.
We turn to Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s insightful look at the Trump presidency, “The Divider.”
The book is full of insider accounts about the man whom a goodly sampling of historians has pronounced the worst president in history.
Relative to this assessment, Baker and Glasser report on Trump’s efforts to not honor John McCain in death.
“We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” Trump told advisers while so many mourned.
John Kelly didn’t get the hint. He had White House flags flown half-staff.
“What the f— are we doing that for?” Trump snorted. “The guy’s a f–ing loser.”
After the Department of Homeland Security advised all its offices to fly the flag at half-staff, a Trump aide told top officials to reverse the directive.
This caused Kelly to march in and confront Trump:
“If you don’t support John McCain’s funeral when you die, the public will come to your grave and piss on it.”
Trump gave in “unhappily,” the authors report. “I don’t know why you think all these people who get shot down are heroes.”
Knowing this, I gotta say, if I were a veteran or in the military, I wouldn’t support Trump if I were strapped to a pile of ants.
So, McCain is gone, but not until after he bravely spiked Trump’s heinous effort to abolish the Affordable Care Act.
And McCain had this to say about the man who debased the office the Arizona senator sought and who played footsie with dictators who would harm this nation:
“The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.”
Period.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
