I just heard someone on CNN say ... [View all]

[NanceGreggs]

... with respect to Yates’ refusal to defend Trump’s Muslim Ban, that – paraphrasing here – “When the president decides that a group of people pose a threat to the nation’s security, he should be taken seriously.” In other words, if Trump has decided that Muslims should be banned from entering the country, Yates was obligated to take his word for it and act accordingly.

That raises a myriad of obvious questions that the Republicans don’t seem to have any answers for.

How “seriously” is a president’s word to be taken when that president, along with many of his closest advisors, are under investigation for possibly colluding with an adversarial foreign power in order to undermine our election process?

What weight is to be given to the “word” of a president who has repeatedly lied about everything from the size of his inauguration crowds, to insisting that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton, to accusations that a former president AND our allies allegedly spied on him – all without proof, and often in spite of proof to the contrary?

How much trust is to be placed in a president whose only response to the serious allegations against his administration has been inane Tweets about “fake news”, baseless accusations levelled at anyone who so much as raises questions about his conduct, and has engaged in an endless attempt to shut down all efforts to get at the underlying facts?

How much credence is to be given to any decision made by a president who, by his own admission, signs executive orders drafted by others without reading them himself? How much credence is to be given to a president who backs legislation (e.g. the AHCA bill) apparently without knowing what that proposed legislation contains, or what its impact will be?

How seriously is a president to be taken when that president has demonstrated, over and over again, that he is ignorant of how our government operates, and is reliant on the very people under investigation for direction and advice?

There has not been a single day since Trump’s swearing-in that he and his administration have not been steeped in scandal – from his choice of advisors, to his placing of inexperienced and incompetent people in Cabinet positions, to his reliance on family members who are clearly more interested in enriching the Trump empire than they are promoting the interests of the citizenry.

To say that any president’s determination of who should be barred from entering the country must be taken seriously is to wilfully turn a blind eye to the obvious: Trump is NOT “any president”. The evidence is overwhelming that his decision-making is based on advice from people who are currently under investigation for possible collusion with Russia. The evidence is overwhelming that his own family members are advising him on how to use his office to line his pockets and theirs.

Yet again, this another attempt by Republicans to “normalize” a president who is far from normal. Normal presidents don’t act like Donald Trump. Normal presidents don’t repeatedly dismiss investigations into their administration as “fake news”. Normal presidents don’t accuse their predecessor of criminal activity without a scintilla of proof. Normal presidents don’t incessantly “Tweet” ludicrous nonsense in response to serious questions about their actions.

If you believe – as I do, and as most people with a functioning brain do – that Trump is completely abnormal by virtue of his own conduct, his own (often incoherent) words, his own bizarre statements, then you cannot point to what “a president” should or should not be taken seriously about.

It is bad enough that we, the citizenry, are being admonished by Republicans to accept a lying, self-serving Idiot as our POTUS and C-in-C. It is quite another to be told that he is “normal”, despite all evidence to the contrary, and should be given the same credence that a “normal” president would be given.

Donald Trump is going down. It may take months, it may take longer. That is the nature of investigations into those who wield political power. Just as it was with Nixon/Watergate, corruption at the highest levels of our government is not something that is proven overnight.

In the meantime, we Americans would be wise to take note of the political party that is intent on saying there’s nothing to see here, and still supports a so-called president whose every action, every decision, every statement has been crafted to distract us from the realities of what’s really going on.

I am trying to wrap my head around the idea that a major US political party is far more willing to protect a proven liar than it is willing to protect the nation, and the citizens whose interests they have sworn to serve.