Donald Trump is disqualified from being president
On Facebook, I’ve been posting a series of reasons why Donald Trump is disqualified from being president. I decided to gather them here for reference. Additions will be made to this post as I write new reasons.
Note that any one of these is reason enough for him not to be considered for president. The fact that there are so many of them is appalling.
Reason 1: Covid response. I could go on for pages, but let’s do it this way: If the US had the same per capita death rate from Covid as France (where many mistakes were made), then we would have saved 50,000 lives. If we had the same per capita rate as Canada, we would have saved about 100,000 lives. If we had the same per capita rate as Germany, we would have saved more than 180,000 lives.
That’s inexcusable, but all the Trump administration has are excuses and denial of responsibility. They don’t understand the role of testing, contact tracing, and masks in this whole thing, so they’ve never pursued an adequate strategy. Disasters like this are a major reason to have a federal government in the first place. The Trump administration proved to be entirely not up to the task. We shouldn’t give them a chance to keep dealing with this disaster–and heaven forbid they get a chance to respond to another one.
Reason 2: Donald Trump is disqualified from being president: Treatment of marginalized people.
Honestly, this could be three or four items on the list, but I’m trying to be compact. From his nods, winks, and re-tweets of white supremacists to his abysmal words and actions related to immigration to his chopping away of LGBTQ+ rights and on and on, Trump has shown that if you’re not part of his base, he doesn’t have to care about you.
When we have a crisis like we dealt with over the summer as the nation’s legacy of racism once again became plain, there are several harmful actions that can be taken in response, including ignoring the harm, minimizing the harm, blaming the victims, and amplifying the words and actions of oppressors. Trump did all of that. That’s the last thing we need if we want to work to become the country we have imagined ourselves to be.
Reason 3: Donald Trump is disqualified from being president: Self-dealing.
In case you’re not familiar with the term, here’s the definition: “engagement in a transaction for the benefit of oneself rather than for the benefits of someone to whom one owes a fiduciary duty.”
I’m expanding this beyond fiduciary duty to the whole range of powers the president is supposed to use in the public interest. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has done a lot of the spade work on this issue, and they sum it up with this stunning headline: “President Trump’s 3,400 Conflicts of Interest.” That’s a huge number. Sampling from the list, we find things like:
* 88 political events and 130 special-interest-group events held at Trump properties.
* Spending a third of his time at properties he owns, which directs government money to those properties.
* Using the office of the president to promote his own business interests, as well as those of family members and supporters.
* During Trump’s time in office, 67 patents have been issued by foreign governments to the Trump Organization.
Clearly, the list goes on. And this focuses on conflicts of interest, not other times when he has attempted to turn the government to his interest and his alone. He thinks the Justice Department should be prosecuting his enemies and personally defending him. That’s outrageous. Trump has shown that he knows nothing other than how to use the tools of government for his personal interest. We need better officials.
It also doesn’t cover things like former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who resigned as the investigations against him for misuse of government funds piled up. (Zinke’s best line, when accused of incurring large expenses flying a private jet for his duties, was that the private planes he used had propellers, and thus could not be properly classified as “jets.”)
And one final note about the nonpartisan nature of CREW: Ever since their founding in 2003, they have regularly filed lawsuits against conflicts of interest in the government. They filed 41 such lawsuits in the George W. Bush administration and 37 during the Obama administration.
They have filed 180 lawsuits during the Trump administration, on their way to labeling it as the most unethical presidency in US history.
Reason 4: Dishonesty
I’m not going to say I’ve never seen someone as brazenly dishonest as Donald Trump, but all the other ones are children. His dishonesty is so bad that the Washington Post created a whole new category for him, which they call “Bottomless Pinocchios.” These are verifiably false statements that he has repeated 20 or more times. How many Bottomless Pinocchios are there? 48. Not only does he lie, but he does so repeatedly, even after correction.
The Post further says he is at about the 25,000 lies mark for his presidency. He has been president for around 1,400 days. That’s almost 18 lies _per day_.
I hope I don’t need to explain why that’s a problem. I hope I don’t see whataboutism or claims that “everyone does it.” This is reality distortion on a scale I’ve never seen in an important position, and I hope I never see it again. It makes it tough to deal with any problems, including hugely serious ones like Covid, because a basic agreed-on set of facts can’t be established. This continued dishonesty is a national disgrace, and we should put an end to it.
[CW: Sexual assault]
Reason 5: Sexual assault.
If you’re still struggling with the concept of rape culture, consider this: Let’s say a man graphically describes his preferred way to sexually assault women. Then let’s say that description is caught on tape and released to the public. The man defends himself by saying, “That’s not something I’d do! I just sometimes talk about assaulting women for fun! Like people do!” And that defense works.
That’s bad. Conversations centered around enjoyable ways to sexually assault women are not the things of good-time fun talk. Someone who does so habitually should not lead the nation.
But, of course, this is worse. Much worse. Remember how Trump himself described his actions: “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful… I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”
There are at least 19 accusations of sexual misconduct against Donald Trump. As this news story shows, “Thirteen of the 19 women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or non-consensual physical contact said he kissed them without consent, often out of the blue, sometimes holding them firmly in place.”
Donald Trump’s happy-fun sexual assault fantasy matches what most of the women accusing him of sexual assault said he did. What a coincidence!
Trump was not fantasizing to Billy Bush. He was describing how he works. And many women have come forward to verify that yes, this is what he does. But we’ve brushed that all aside, just so some people could have the tax cuts and Supreme Court justices they want.
That’s rape culture.
Reason 6: Impeachment and the Mueller report
The Trump administration has been a cavalcade of astonishments, but these are two of the largest. First, a well-respected law enforcement official issues a comprehensively detailed report saying that while standing interpretations of the law says the president can’t be charged with obstruction of justice, he can’t be cleared of that crime, so Congress should look into it. Second, clear evidence emerges that the president has improperly bent foreign policy around an effort to get dirt on a political opponent—that is, he has been using foreign policy to directly serve his campaign.
And both times, the Senate says, “Meh.”
Trump was impeached for the second one, and properly so. Congress didn’t do anything about the first—they decided their best approach to obstruction of justice was to punt and hope Trump learned his lesson.
Robert Mueller testified to Congress on July 22, with no new bombshells beyond his report. Trump made his Ukraine phone call on July 25.
Time after time, Trump has shown that he thinks the government exists to serve him personally. And every time he gets away with it, he reaches for more. He wants the Justice Department to prosecute his enemies and represent him when he is sued for defamation. He wants foreign policy and campaign research to be one in the same. He interleaves his foreign policy with his business interests. The actual interests of the country may be in there somewhere. But it’s very hard to see.
Reason 7: He hates governing and is bad at it.
Let’s say you had some money in the bank, and the bank appointed a new president, and the president said, “I think banking institutions are a blight on our national landscape and all should be driven into bankruptcy.
Would you keep your money in that bank?
Or the new manager of a restaurant thought it was okay to let people come in and sit, but making food for other people was a silly waste of time. Or the new president of a computer company thought their products should break more often so that people could spend more time outside.
The point is, it’s best to have someone lead an organization who has at least some conception of how that organization can do good things, and then has the skill and knowledge to make that happen. When it comes to governing, Donald Trump has none of that. He filled his cabinet with people bent on destroying what government can do. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry wanted to eliminate the Department of Energy. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has little use for public education. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar administers the ACA and is also strongly opposed to the ACA. Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke opposed many environmental regulations while in the House of Representatives. And on and on.
But even if all you want to do is destroy government, there comes a time when you have to actually make policy. Trump is terrible at it. He’s been promising a health plan for four years; it never materialized. He made some executive orders, but either he’s unclear on how they work or he’s lying about them. Or both. His website has no policy statements. His only policy on immigration tends to be “hurt them.” He picked up gun policy briefly as massacres peaked, then dropped it without displaying any leadership on it. And his COVID policy has been a disaster.
At bare minimum, government should be led by someone who has a clear idea of the role government can play in society. Even if they think government should be smaller, they should be able to articulate what it can do and why. A nihilist who just wants to destroy government has no place leading it.