You’ve seen it. You know his tweets. Donald Trump’s late-night tweets are getting more and more disgusting each time. He’s been vulgar, he’s been racist, he’s hurt immigrants, and he doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Even some of his supporters have begged him to stop. However, he’s even said that he’ll never stop. He’s admitted he’s his tweets are not presidential, but don’t get excited because, in the same tweet, he had enough characters left to call his tweets “modern day presidential.” He’s arrogant as ever, and he doesn’t seem to be stopping.
I mean, is it really a problem, though?! So, he’s a racist person who doesn’t think truth exists unless what someone says is positive about him. So he’s encouraging gun violence and telling us we’ll finally be safe from immigrants, and he’s only calling out women who he thinks aren’t attractive. I mean, is that really so bad? He’s not calling out all the women. Just the ones that don’t fit his description of a perfect woman. I mean, he should know. He’s been critiquing his daughter Tiffany’s breasts since before she could walk! He’s also been walking in on Miss America contestants while they’re changing so he probably has a good idea of what a woman should look like. So is it really a problem that he’s so critical of everyone else?!
YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!
He needs to shut up. He needs to stop tweeting. That just has to happen. Like, now.
Okay, so, back on Earth where victimization, emotional abuse, and lies are real, let’s see exactly what Trump has been saying!
Most recently, Donald Trump has victimized Mika Brzezinski from Morning Joe. He said she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” He felt the need to express why he turned down her request to come to Mar-a-Lago. Wow., well, he’s already talked about Megyn Kelly bleeding from “wherever,” and he’s certainly not been kind to other women, as well.
Let’s see, what else? Ah, yes, he’s praised Putin. Of course, because it’s not enough to just disparage people. He has to thank people who have been insulting us for decades. Trump said how pathetic it is that the Democrats are blaming Putin for their losing the 2016 Election. He’s also been constantly attacking the media whenever they say something he doesn’t like, calling them “fake news” exactly 66 times according to Trump Twitter Archive. He’s also recently reposted a video of him beating someone up in a wrestling match, punching him in the face repeatedly. He superimposed the CNN logo on top of the person’s face and called them out once again.
He’s said that he thinks ISIS is laughing at us over what he called our incompetence in trying to stop them. He blamed that on Hillary during his campaign, and he blamed that on Obama earlier before and during his campaign. Also, he’s totally destroyed Obama by saying “everything he touches turns to garbage.” He said that about the President of the United States. What that teaches us is so damaging.
He’s also totally lied about healthcare. Yes, he’s a liar. No surprise there. But if you take a look, you’ll see that, on May 5th, he called the Republicans’ healthcare bill a “victory” and then he called it “mean” in June, BUT whenever the media said the healthcare bill was going to hurt many Americans, Trump called those words “fake news.” Therefore, he’s claiming it’s a lie to say the bill is bad…unless he says that, and then it’s true! He went from “victory” to “mean” while the media was calling it “bad” the whole time, and he continues to claim that they were lying.
What else? Ah, yes, climate change is obviously “garbage,” too, right? Trump said it, so it must be true! He said, in multiple tweets, that climate change is a “fictional,” “bullshit” “hoax.” The Trump Twitter Archives shows a list of all of his tweets that include “global warming.”
Thanks to Trump Twitter Archive for archiving all of his tweets. They ARE official statements from the Office of the Presidency. SOMEONE should be keeping track of them.
Let’s give him some credit, though. At least he didn’t tweet during the Comey hearing. However, that would’ve been fine since D.C. bars were prepared with free shots every time he tweeted during the hearing. Seriously, I was downtown and I saw the bars FILLED during the hearing on that fateful day when Trump’s tweets turned into a drinking game.
These tweets are having a huge effect.
First, recklessness can make it hard for your enemies to predict your next movies, and Trump is brash and unpredictable. However, Putin and China haven’t really missed a step so that takes care of any benefits his recklessness might have had, if even accidentally. Now, his unpresidential nature has made is making it hard to work with our allies. That’s a negative effect that’s undebatable.
He’s also clearly shown that he doesn’t care about anyone but himself, and that mirrors his domestic policies. He’s also making it look like this country is not a good place to immigrate. That’s on top of his actually making it impossible whether someone wants to immigrate here or not because of the immigration ban, the new immigration ban, and whatever comes next.
Finally, he’s basically marketing to the world that the leader of this country is going to teach their kids at the very least bad words and bad values and that, at most, he might even take away their freedoms if he doesn’t like what they say about him. He may take away these freedoms individually or summarily take away freedoms from everyone in that person’s ‘group,’ like a minority, country, race or religion. He’s also teaching kids who are already here that it’s okay to treat people that way, and we need to counter that at every turn.
He is also limiting our projection of morality and that which we try to impress upon the world. For years, we’ve encouraged inclusiveness, democracy, human rights, equal rights, and so on. For example, we’ve guaranteed bank loans in developing countries when a small bank in a small town doesn’t want to lend to someone who is from a different tribe. We do that through USAID. Since the bank doesn’t want to take the risk because they are prejudiced toward that tribe, the United States steps in and helps that tribe by protecting the bank from default. Then, when the person or company almost always pay their debts on time (98.1% of the time to be exact), the United States tells that bank that, just because they’re from a different tribe, doesn’t mean they’re all bad, and then we encourage both tribes to come together and form a united community.
BUT NOW, Trump is making it clear he doesn’t care about any of that by almost saying exactly that in his tweets! Honestly?
Additionally, by the way, Trump has slashed the USAID budget. So that’s pretty much done. That agency and others have said they’d have to cut their operations more than thirty percent.
That’s going to hurt even more ways in which we partner with other countries. We’ve already seen countries question their loyalty to partnerships with us because of Trump’s refusal to sign on to the Paris Accord, and more will come from that that we haven’t yet seen.
Domestically, he’s ensuring that Americans don’t trust the government. You can’t have partnerships with local communities if they don’t trust you. You can’t get them to galvanize around an issue if they hate you. In short, you can’t get anything done if you live on an island all by yourself and nobody wants to talk to you.
On the upside, he will have a very hard time getting reelected. In 2018, if we get enough Democrats in both houses, which is going to be quite difficult to do, then we can block him, even override his vetoes, and even discuss whether or not to bring a vote to the floor to discuss whether we should move forward with impeachment.
To clear, impeachment will take time, and as I discussed in my piece on Obstruction of Justice, it probably won’t happen, but I think it’s important that Democrats voice our opinions in a House debate on whether to impeach or not. This will be a step in the right direction even if we don’t get far enough. Moreover, I think we should try to beat him instead of Pence in 2020, but it’ll help so many people feel good about their government again if there’s even talk of impeachment.
So what are we going to do about all this? How can WE help? There’s a couple long-term plans and several short-term plans.
The long-term plan is what Congress can do. They can make a deal with Trump in which we give him something in exchange for closing his Twitter account. In one such deal, if we think we won’t get enough votes in 2018 for impeachment before 2020 anyway, we could promise to back off from impeachment talks because we wouldn’t really be losing anything because we wouldn’t have the votes anyway. We can also work with him on term limits in exchange for stipulating that he can tweet but that he has to do it more appropriately. I don’t think term limits in Congress is really a bad thing, but I do think Trump might save that for one of his last executive orders because he might be afraid he won’t get support from anyone he’s not allowing to run for reelection. So, I think allowing him to push that through Congress now instead of later might be enough to get him to tweet in a way that doesn’t emotionally abuse people, entities, other countries, and the fabric of our entire nation and what we stand for.
Now, here’s the short-term plan…something we all can do RIGHT NOW.
First and foremost, respond to Trump’s tweets. I strongly encourage you to write to him. I write to Trump on Twitter all the time. In the short-run, you can do many things. Tell your kids and your friends and anyone who will listen that Trump’s tweets are not appropriate and that they are having measurable effects that are seriously hurting this country, our standing around the world, and the trust necessary to form partnerships between the federal government and communities and small towns right here in America. Also, look out for any behavior supported by Trump, such as increases is racism, wage inequality, and hatred directed at immigrants, and counter that. You will be alone in protecting those people. They are alone as victims. The administration will not step in to help them. So, in even small ways, you can help anyone that you see being victimized either by Trump, the administration, or anyone who feels emboldened to do so because of Trump’s tweets.
We are not united or galvanized around the Trump’s calls to action, and as such, we are becoming more and more separate from the administration, causing a rift, and it’s important that you inform as many people as you can about as many issues as you can so that we can recover as quickly as possible when this administration is over.
This administration WILL be over. It WILL end at some point. Remember that. Everyday, we’re one day closer to November 3, 2020. Think about the fact that Election Day 2020 is November THIRD! Not the 8th. The earliest a presidential election can ever be, by law, is November 2nd so we’re pretty lucky. Okay, to be real, I know it’s a long time from now.
So until then, make your voice heard. Please remember that you have the power to do that and that your voice WILL be heard. As I said, you can show your power in little ways, and you’ll find out they are actually not so little after all. By standing up for someone oppressed, physically harmed or threatened, economically held back, or just someone who has fears, you’re doing a lot. Just tap them on the shoulder and tell them you’re with them. They could use a friend, and many of them will tell you that you have no idea how much of a positive impact that will have on them. It’s immeasurable. So, do it.