If it were not for President Trump’s comment instructing the police not to be “too nice” when taking suspects into custody, the hot item this week would be Trump helping his son draft a misleading statement about his involvement with the Russians.
While the father is quick to help a troubled son, providing even more intrigue to the Russian affair, Trump is less concerned about American citizens and their encounters with the nation’s law enforcement officers. His admonishment to officers advised, “When you guys put somebody in the car, and you’re protecting their head, you can take the hand away, OK”
Like his inflammatory rhetoric during the campaign in which he practically instructed the assault on protesters at his rallies, he now appears to be sanctioning more aggressive behavior from police who don’t really need any further provocation to their tendency to be overzealous.
We agree wholeheartedly with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who reprimanded the president for his apparent encouragement of police abuse. Sharpton said that Trump’s comments were “a reckless disregard for the law, and set a tone that is dangerous and bias in this country.”
Several keywords leap from the minister’s response—reckless, disregard for the law, dangerous and bias. These words sum up Trump’s actions since he entered the Oval Office a little more than six months ago.
He has perpetually put himself above the law, when he isn’t giving our law enforcement officers their marching orders. He has been absolutely reckless in his decisions when he should be seriously considering authoring some major legislation. We don’t have to say anything about the danger he represents and his bias nature, which may account for the increasing decline of his approval rating.
Even his Attorney General Jeff Sessions has smartly stepped away from his boss’s assertions on police behavior, and rightly so as he’s already been targeted for abuse himself by the president.
It’s difficult to determine the president’s mindset from moment to uncertain moment, and much of the current remonstrations are probably fallout from his anger with the GOP and the failure to kick the pillars from the Affordable Care Act.
After each setback, each wounding of his policy, Trump strikes back with even more egregious acts, more prejudice, more insults, more ways to demean and undermine our democracy.
His unsteady leadership is exacerbated by the teeming turmoil in the West Wing and his inability to render a fair and equitable judgment, to say nothing of his faulty selection process of folks to head the various agencies.
As things become more muddled with each passing day, we are at a lost to discern what catastrophe, what madness from the White House, is right around the corner. There’s a good chance that before this iteration of Make America Great Again—Trump Must Go! we will have another reason to repeat this charge we have been making since he tore a gaping, unwanted hole in our body politic.