Jerry Chandler here doing a Freak Out Friday fill-in to cover for Peter’s rather hectic schedule this weekend. Let’s go ahead and dive in.
1) “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
I think many of us wanted to ask that of Trump this week. Sadly, we already know the answer. If Trump did nothing else in the last week, he definitively answered that question by making it clear that he has none.
Services were held for Sgt. La David Johnson Saturday. Trump took to Twitter first thing in the morning not to comment on the Sgt.’s service to his country or his sacrifice, but rather to launch more attacks on Rep. Frederica Wilson and by extension the family. He continued to insult Wilson and the family throughout the week, repeatedly claiming their version of the call and their stating that they found it offensive at the time were lies despite multiple witnesses to their end of the call as well as John Kelly’s comments last week basically confirming Wilson’s description of the call with regards to Trump’s wording.
I have made no secret over the years of my disdain for Trump, but I would have been more than happy to have given him all the credit in the world for doing the right thing this week. All he would have had to do was apologize. All he would have had to do was say that he spoke in an inartful manner during the call, meant no offense by it, but realized after the initial criticism of his call that his choice of words could indeed have inadvertently caused greater pain to a widow so soon after the loss of her husband and then let the issue go.
It would not only have been the decent thing to do, but it would have been the politically intelligent thing to do. Had Donald Trump come out early in the week and made such a statement, you can’t attack him over the matter after that without looking like a partisan hack. But he didn’t, and he’s gone well past the point where any such apology would be effective. He didn’t do it because to do this, to show this simple act of decency, intelligence, and class, would require Donald Trump to make the admission that he made a mistake or got something wrong in this even if only by sincerely but poorly chosen wording. That’s not something his ego will allow. So what we got was another week of watching the man who sits in the single most powerful elected office in our country attacking a Gold Star family and their longtime family friend in their time of grief.
We know the answer. You have no sense of decency, sir.
2) He knew him before he didn’t know him.
Tuesday saw the Senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake, give a blistering speech on the chamber floor, pointedly attacking what the Republican party and politics have become in the age of Trump. In many ways it was reminiscent of another speech given by Sen. Margaret Chase Smith on June 1, 1950. Her “Declaration of Conscience” address, given in the same chamber, was a powerful denouncement and indictment of what her Republican party was seemingly becoming and the man behind the change, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.
Trump’s response was to claim the first time he saw Flake on TV he thought he was a Democrat and to claim that Flake was against him and had come out with his book, Conscious of a Conservative, long before Flake got to know him; even before the campaign. Mind you, this was in the same press scrum where Trump had claimed to have one of the great memories of all time to support attacking a Gold Star family.
That claim becomes particularly hilarious when you look at two facts. Flake’s book was published in August of 2017, and Jeff Flake very publicly questioned and criticized Trump in front of other Republicans when the two met in July of 2016. This was covered by the media back when it happened. Additionally, Trump’s documented comments at that time also showed that he knew who Jeff Flake was even back then.
On some level, it seems a small thing, but it becomes yet another example that Donald Trump will lie about anything no matter how foolish it makes him look. Whatever comes into his mind in the moment, Donald Trump will say it regardless of whether or not he and everyone else listening knows it to be untrue. In the guy down the street, it’s an annoying if perhaps comical character flaw. In the President of the United States, it is a character trait that more and more undercuts the ability of anyone, from the average man or woman on the street to other world leaders, to be able trust anything Donald Trump says.
Did he do anything right? Yes, to a degree.
Thursday, Trump attempted to put the opioid abuse crisis in this country in the spotlight. He came out and declared a nationwide public health emergency to combat the opioid crisis at a White House event.
He took criticism from some quarters for not issuing a national disaster declaration, an act that would allow a greater scope of funding to address the issue. A declaration of a nationwide public health emergency will not automatically be followed by the additional federal funding for the crisis that some see as needed. While his action will not allow the federal government to immediately tap into funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund to combat the opioid crisis, his order will still expand needed access to telemedicine in rural areas, instruct agencies to curb unnecessary bureaucratic delays for dispensing grant money, and allow agencies to shift some federal grants towards fighting the crisis.
There will always be- sometimes quite valid -complaints that actions like this are not enough. But the fact is that this is at least a good start. In taking this step, Trump did the right thing this week. Hopefully, it will be the right first step of many by the administration to help the country combat this problem.
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