Trump, the Un-American President
WASHINGTON -- It's a truism that American presidents change in office. The youthful Barack Obama grew gray. Put another way, the office changes presidents.
Stepping off the train from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln was no abolitionist. Within two years of the Civil War, he had a revolution within and became the greatest abolitionist of all time.
A century later, John F. Kennedy was sworn in, full of bright promise. A few mistakes later (the Bay of Pigs and a Soviet summit) he was a sober, visionary statesman.
Now here's just the opposite: a president who profoundly changed and broke the office of the presidency. Donald Trump is the same greedy blowhard he ever was, with a double dose of rage and revenge.
No president of the United States abuses immigrants, with a vengeance, in a country of immigrants.
No president of the United States invites a war criminal to come to our country, complete with a red carpet and warm handshake.
No president of the United States sends hundreds of standing soldiers with tanks into the peaceful capital for no reason, along with federal agents who tackle civilians to the ground.
No president of the United States takes a butcher knife to the expert federal workforce -- such as Justice Department career lawyers and National Institutes of Health research scientists.
No president is a convicted felon.
No president buries collective memory by browbeating and whitewashing history in national museums -- when he's never cracked a history book.
No president brazenly enriches himself in office to the tune of $3.4 billion, The New Yorker noted, in just over six months.
No president stays up late insulting and threatening others on "social" media. (Richard Nixon kept his enemies list private.)
No president shows disdain for the academy by preying on top universities and stealing their money.
No president twists the press to his will.
No president turns his back on foreign aid and human rights.
No president incites a violent mob on Congress to undo an election he lost.
No president speaks with scorn about some of our great cities.
No president says he "hates" the other political party.
No president builds and adds a gaudy, tawdry ballroom to the simple and elegant design of the White House. Harry Truman built a balcony, but that's about it.
No president openly belittles women and Blacks.
No president uses vulgar language in public. Next to the soaring speech of Lincoln, Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- whoa, Nellie.
No president sets half the American people against the other half to tear us apart. Usually they try to unify.
No president treats the world like a real estate deal on his own Monopoly board.
No president loves coal in a climate crisis.
No president takes away health care from millions of people.
No president accepts a Boeing 747 as a gift from the emir of Qatar, or any head of state.
No president plays golf so much as his only outside interest. (Except perhaps Dwight Eisenhower, and he was supreme allied commander at Normandy.)
No president has the nerve to campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize. Teddy Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter deserved theirs.
No president makes us wish for problems like Monica Lewinsky.
No president tries to trip up the Census, which the Constitution says shall count ("enumerate") every person in the United States every decade. That is how representation in Congress is determined. Thomas Jefferson directed the first Census in 1790.
No president tries to change the congressional maps of a state midway between one Census and the next in order to cheat in a House election. Hello, Texas.
No president -- and this made George Washington and me weep -- considers hosting a UFC fight at the White House. I am not making this up.
Three of these presidents laid down their lives for the nation. Lincoln was the final casualty of the Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt led us through victory in World War II -- and the New Deal during the Depression -- to his dying day. Kennedy was murdered young.
How far and fast we've fallen. This beautiful city is beleaguered by Trump's malice and military. Others may not be far behind.
Trump is the un-American president.
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The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.
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