For the last month, I have “given Trump a chance.”
I have waited for him and his administration to do anything encouraging.
I am still waiting. And I have no more patience.
He has proven his administration to be corrupt: White House Chief of Staff Priebus interfered with FBI action, the White House told the DHS to write a report that concluded a seven-country Muslim travel and immigration ban would be beneficial to national security, Trump appointed and then fired crackpot National Security Advisor (NSA) Flynn for having illegal conversations with the Russian Foreign Minister before being appointed NSA and before January 20, while the Obama administration was in control — I could go on, but these examples are just for starters.
What has he succeeded in during his first month in office?
He has succeeded in further alienating and angering many of us who thought he would be a really horrible president, but who decided we would “give Trump a chance” and see what he might do.
Would he win us over, would he succeed in uniting the people who did not vote for him with those who did?
No. And it got even worse last week at the CPAC event.
In his speech at CPAC, Trump made it abundantly clear that he has absolutely no intention of uniting anybody and no intention of being the president of anyone who didn’t vote for him.
He said this:
“And now people are starting to develop a little warm heart, but the people that you’re watching, they’re not you. They’re, largely, many of them, on the side that lost. You know, they lost the election. It’s like, how many elections do we have to have? [crowd laughs] They lost the election.”
(End Trump quote.)
“They’re not you. They’re the side that lost.”
This is profoundly divisive language. He could not have more clearly put forth a case of “us” versus “them.”
It is all the more insulting when one remembers that 7 million people voted for Stein and Johnson and 2.8 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Trump. That means Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 10 million votes. He barely won the Electoral College, winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by about 100,000 votes, less than 1% in each state.
This language came from someone — no, not just “someone,” the President of this country — who has said more than once that he was going to work to “unite” the American people, someone who is being paid to be the chief executive of a government that is supposed to work for and represent everyone in the United States, not only those people who voted for him.
As long as he continues to show me no respect, and demonstrate that he doesn’t care at all about winning me over or even working with me and people like me, then he deserves no respect from me.
He has not earned it.