Trump: King of kings
by Tom Sullivan
Rather than having President Donald Trump take the witness stand and asking what he knew and when he knew it, we ought to ask the same of the people who voted for him. Instead of court, maybe they ought to go to confession, and his party with them.
Trump’s un-presidency already recalls a B. Kliban cartoon of people standing around the “Nixon Monument” staring into a hole in the ground.
Responding to this week’s controversies, the usually mild-mannered E.J. Dionne has sharpened his pen and is already calling for a select committee to investigate Trump’s loyalties:
The Michael Flynn fiasco was the entirely predictable product of the indiscipline, deceit, incompetence and moral indifference that characterize Donald Trump’s approach to leadership.
Even worse, Trump’s loyalties are now in doubt. Questions about his relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia will not go away, even if congressional Republicans try to slow-walk a transparent investigation into what ties Trump has with Putin’s Russia — and who on his campaign did what, and when, with Russian intelligence officials and diplomats.
People voted for Trump because they liked his style. He would shake up Washington and wrest control from career politicians. He would run it like his business. Indeed he is: he’s being sued from coast to coast.
One month into his presidency, his chief of staff is scrambling “to bring order to a White House that looks to be spiraling out of control.”
One month into his presidency, the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is inching (albeit reluctantly) towards investigating Michael Flynn’s and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and “serious concerns about the potential protection of classified information.”
One month into his presidency, acting on those concerns and to protect sources and methods, intelligence agencies are keeping some sensitive information from the president of the United States.
Dionne asks whether the so-recently-elected Trump deserves some benefit of the doubt:
The answer is no, because the Trump we are seeing now is fully consistent with the vindictive, self-involved and scattered man we saw during the 17 months of his campaign. In one of the primary debates, Jeb Bush said of Trump: “He’s a chaos candidate and he’d be a chaos president.” Rarely has a politician been so prophetic.
Ozymandias, king of kings.