The debate as to whether a president can obstruct justice intensified this week. What is apparently not debatable is the reduction of national monuments, and Trump, as he promised earlier this year, delivered on that measure—some 2 million acres are no longer protected federal land.
Many environmentalists and Native Americans were angered by this action and claimed that it was little more than Trump’s gift to oil and gas companies, which matches the one he will soon give to major corporations and billionaires once he signs the GOP tax bill.
In the first instance he has exercised his insensitive political authority to spoil our natural resources and in the second he has delivered a vital economic blow to the nation’s middle class. Both moves, like his approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, are just more examples of his determination to do away with President Obama’s legacy.
And it’s particularly ironic that it was Obama who warned Trump about the risk of tapping Michael Flynn, the retired general, to be his national security adviser. While Obama, as outgoing president, felt obligated to inform Trump of the danger ahead, Trump ignored him and chose Flynn anyway, refusing to accept any advice from a man he charged was foreign-born and thus not qualified to be president.
Now, with each passing day of lies, false accusations and a barrage of insults, the American people ought to have a good idea who’s qualified and who is not. When the nation’s leader can unequivocally endorse a senatorial candidate accused of child predation and sexual misconduct, as Trump did for Roy Moore, it is time to distance ourselves even further from his immorality.
This endorsement made it patently clear that Trump is a captain of our ship of state without a compass, moral or otherwise.
He is on a path of self-destruction and seems to care less about the millions of Americans who will be devastated by his decisions. Worst yet are the millions who refuse to resist his authoritarian rule. After all these months in office his base continues to uphold his indifference to their plight; it’s as though to dump him now is to admit their own folly.
Well, thankfully, for what it’s worth, there are millions in the country who are not willing to be silent, not willing to abide his dictatorial rule, who are persistent in their rage that to Make America Great Again—Trump Must Go!