The Gadfly: Give Trump more of a chance? Seriously

by Pete Giannini

Oh, joy. Thank you, Jane Chaney, for giving me something to do on this fine Tuesday morning before heading out to our well-covered slopes for some pre-shift recreational sideways sliding.

Give Trump a chance, you say? Out of town, you were? Perhaps there you should stay, for this issue has done a fairly good job of uniting the residents at the north end of this valley. Let’s review the actions of your hero during his first month or so in office, shall we?

• Paid $25 million to settle claims of fraud against his private “university.”
• Appointed as his secretary of education someone who has no qualifications whatsoever to hold said position, except for being a major campaign contributor to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars—and who wants to dismantle the department of education.
• Appointed as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency a man who has sued the EPA 14 times on behalf of his oil industry lobbyists and donors, who is a denier of climate change research, and who is tasked with dismantling the same agency over which he is presiding.
• Appointed as secretary of state the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, who has extensive business ties to Russia, a nation that is quite obviously very interested in the election and subsequent “success” of the Trump agenda. (Where is your proof that the alleged Russian dossier on Trump has been proven to be false? And calling John McCain, a former POW, a patsy? Disgraceful.)
• Nominated as labor secretary someone who broke labor laws, opposed the minimum wage, wanted to automate jobs out of existence, and used an undocumented immigrant as his housekeeper, neglecting to pay taxes for her services.
• Declared the free press to be “the enemy of the American people,” and has barred certain news agencies whose coverage he has found to be not quite as fawning as he would like, from White House press briefings, an act in obvious disregard to the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
• Labeled any unfavorable coverage of himself as “fake news.”
• Caused the creation of numerous rogue twitter accounts (USFS, NASA, EPA, USDA, CDC, USFWS, NOAA, Dept. of Ed., Dept. of Labor, Treasury, FBI, and more) from governmental agencies in response to his attempt to silence them (gag order) and remove references of climate change and other information from official government websites.
• Enlisted incompetent liars such as Kelly Anne Conway (alternative facts, Bowling Green Massacre, deliberate media non-coverage of terror attacks) and Sean Spicer (most watched inauguration, illegal voters, intelligence agency feud, most electoral votes, Iran has committed an act of war against the United States, etc.) to serve as his official mouthpieces (fitting, really).
• Has already spent numerous weekends, to the tune of over $10 million of taxpayer money, at his Florida golf resort, where he is fond of holding nuclear strategy sessions and ordering botched military raids that see the deaths of not only numerous civilian women and children (they’re tan and wear funny hats, so they don’t matter), but also a Navy SEAL (okay, he might matter).
• Allowed his (third, immigrant) wife to continue living in New York City, costing the American taxpayers millions more for additional security detail away from the White House.
• Refused to release his tax returns, despite promising so on the campaign trail, an action that would surely call to light his numerous conflicts of interest in holding public office.
• Stacked his cabinet with billionaire campaign donors and former Goldman Sachs executives, after bragging on the campaign trail about his ability to stand up to Wall Street corruption, a system in which he is quite obviously firmly entrenched.
• Enacted an unconstitutional “travel ban,” a ban that suspiciously exempts Middle Eastern nations from which the perpetrators of 9/11 originated, presumably because he does personal business with those countries.
• Neglected to publicly condemn acts of terrorism committed by white supporters of his, namely the Quebec Mosque shooting, the Kansas shooting of two Indian men, one fatally, the Seattle shooting of a Sikh man, and numerous acts of anti-Semitism, anti-LBGT crimes, and a general rise in the number of white supremacist hate crimes against minorities, people of color, and people of non-Christian faiths.
• Asked the FBI to leak “favorable information,” in violation of rules protecting the independence of the Justice Department.
• Declared the United States court system to be a threat to national security.
• Publicly condemned a private company for dropping his daughter’s fashion line.
• Insulted the leaders of Australia and Mexico, both important allies of the United States.
• Continued to maintain that building a multi-billion dollar wall (technology from 200 B.C.) between Mexico and the U.S. will somehow solve the problem of undocumented immigration.
• Made numerous completely baseless claims, including massive voter fraud and Obama-ordered wiretapping of his personal residence.
• Reneges on pledge to mandate using U.S. steel for the ill-advised Keystone XL pipeline.
• Wants to increase military spending by $54 billion dollars a year, in a country that already spends more on its military than the next eight highest spending countries of the world, combined, and desires to reignite the nuclear arms race.
• The alleged impending crackdown on state legal marijuana by attorney general Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration, despite an otherwise overzealous desire for complete and total lack of federal oversight, and a purported respect for states’ rights, because good people don’t smoke marijuana, despite the huge successes realized by every state where legalization has been enacted, including the great state of Colorado, where curious conservatives stream every day to partake of the devil’s lettuce.
• And the list goes on. I can’t even bear to make any more bullet points. I could spend all day on this common sense lecture. It makes me want to tear my hair out that I have to actually explain this to anyone. Steven Bannon. Reince Priebus. Breitbart. Leveraging the presidency to benefit his personal business empire. Drastic cuts to United Nations funding. Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. A vow to drill for oil on federal lands. Stream dumping. Elimination of arts funding. Repeal of Dodd-Frank. Undoing emissions regulations. Insulting American intelligence agencies. The constant stream of immature, ignorant tweets. Sally Yates. Michael Flynn. Frederick Douglass. Ben Carson. Sweden. Israel. Russia. China. Wealth disparity. Favoritism. Nepotism. Misogyny. Racism. Religious intolerance. Misplaced blame. Lies. IGNORANCE.

You want me to give Trump a chance? F**k that. He’s had his chance, and has done a fabulous job revealing himself to be a narcissistic, xenophobic, racist, spoiled, wasteful, ranting, childish idiot with no policy or plans other than making the rich, including himself, richer, on the backs of the poor, the environment, and our relations with the rest of the world. He has no business being anywhere near the White House, and possesses no qualifications to lead anything other than a discussion on improper business ethics.

And what of this “liberal agenda” you bemoan? What is the “liberal agenda,” exactly? Equal rights? Renewable energy? Environmental stewardship? Universal health care? Leaving a better, kinder world for our children, grandchildren, and beyond? F**k all that, right?

What the hell are you defending? And where did this come from? “…turning over cars, burning buildings, and killing policemen…just take a break and enjoy the rest of our glorious winter.” Seriously? It’s not hard to see why you support the insipidly childish führer that our reality TV inspired society has created. You seem lost. I vowed to not waste time arguing with the likes of you and your misguided sympathizers. But here I am, once again, attempting in vain to spit some common sense in your general direction. I’m sure it will fall on deaf ears. But I also know that in the United States of America, while ignorance, fear, baseless propaganda, and idiocracy have established a strong foothold, all is not lost, and by adhering to the values upon which this country was founded, we may emerge from this terrible darkness and shine once again as a beacon, the rightful and just leaders of the free world.

Get involved, citizens. It’s time to take our country back.