In Trump’s State of the Union speech the most divisive president we have ever had in this country gave lip service to unity and working together. He faced a much diminished number of lawmakers on the Republican side of the aisle as the result of his divisive approach to governing and his unrelenting fantasies about a nonexistent crisis of immigrants at the southern border that is a thin facade covering the racism he and his base embrace. This is a man who looked like he was surrounded by friends last night, but was not. The Republicans cheered him and acted chummy but they are forced to do that if they want to stay on the right side of his twitter feed. There was no mention on his part of the shutdown pain he caused for Americans. He might just shut down the government again if, on February 15th, he does not get the money for the racist border wall he still insists on. The State of the Union is Disunity. And that is because of Donald Trump. No one should be fooled by his scripted call to work together.
A lot of Americans have consciously turned their backs on Donald Trump. They turn off their TVs when he is on. They mute their sets when he talks. They have unsubscribed from his Tweets and the close to 9,000 lies he has uttered and his White House has amplified in the past two years. Many Americans are doing their best to ignore him at this point in his presidency. But it is hard to ignore the gorilla in the room taking a dump on the floor and smashing your favorite, hard won Obama era legislative victories to smithereens, After a State of the Union address, where Trump says everything he can to sound reasonable and get applause, it may take time, but give him a few hours or days and he will tweet some awful thing, and people will remember how many promises he has failed to keep. More people will be turning away from him as he continues to unravel. Trump is a weak president and he is going to get weaker.
You know you are not succeeding at the job of being commander-in-chief when your hand-picked intelligence officers tell Time Magazine that you are “willfully ignorant” and express their deep concern that even when they show you picture books and dumbed down charts to help you understand and mention your name frequently to try to keep your attention, you refuse to listen and reject what they are telling you about the real world.
You know you are not succeeding at the job of being president when your own party has used you to get their agenda done- tax breaks for the rich, and Federalist Society judges on the bench- but refuses to fund the wall you so desperately need to keep Ann Coulter and your racist base from ripping you to shreds.
You know you are not an admirable person when someone in your own White House leaks information about your 60% so-called “executive time” that you spend lolling around the White House residence alone in your jammies watching TV and talking with your pals on your unsecured cell phone instead of doing anything useful for the American people.
You know you are a failing president when your approval ratings have started out in the dumper and have stayed in the dumper for your entire presidency, malingering around 35-40%.
You know you should not make it to a second term when the SDNY issues yet another sweeping subpoena- this time to investigate criminal activity engaged in by your inaugural committee which raised a shocking $107 million dollars despite having fewer events and fewer expenses than past presidents. Your inauguration committee is going to have trouble accounting for what happened with that huge amount of money and we are eventually going to learn which foreign nationals paid to play, and what they got for their bribes.
Let’s see, that brings the total number of investigations of your enterprises to… ALL OF THEM. Your Foundation, your Organization, your campaign, your transition, your presidency… The list is long. There are at least 18 investigations going on into everything you have ever been involved in: money laundering, tax evasion, election fraud, FEC filing violations, emoluments violations, foreign nationals paying to play. You have lived your life like a Mafia don. When you leave office, the rest of your life will be lived fighting subpoenas and attending your trials for racketeering and fraud.
You know you are doing a terrible job of protecting our country when both the House and Senate band together to resoundingly reject your foreign policy positions on NATO, Syria, Iran and North Korea, not to mention your trade war, and General Mattis resigns amid strong hints that you probably really truly are a Russian asset owned and operated by Vladimir Putin.
You know you are alone when your former fixer lawyer, Michael Cohen, your campaign chair, Rick Gates, Alan Weisselberg, your accountant, and the head of the National Enquirer who did your catch and kill dirty work, and so many others- are working with Mueller to tell him and his team the truth about you. You call them rats. They are only rats because they are ratting you out. And just like the nursery rhyme, The Farmer in the Dell, the rats take the cheese and the cheese stands alone.
Donald Trump, you are a terrible, horrible, no good president. Most people have given up trying to work with you because you are impossible. Come to think of it, that is the most likely reason you have so much executive time. No one wants to hear your opinion or have you in the room. You mess everything up.
People might listen to your state of the union speech; they might cheer and clap during your speech, but what they are really thinking is that you are a horrible person and an imbecile and they can’t wait until you are out of office. Ann Coulter was right about the imbecile part. When the time comes, these people who were clapping and cheering for you will gladly throw you under the bus. Why? Because they know full well that you would have thrown them under if you had the chance to do it first. That is just one of many reasons that you, surrounded by many people, looking like the big cheese, are, in reality, the cheese who stands alone.