We Will Not Be Trumped

I watched the “60 Minutes” interview of Donald Trump by Lesley Stahl last night in between the football games.  Did you?   It was interesting.  The interview ranged from climate change to the healing of the nation.  The president responded to climate change by saying it wasn’t a hoax…but we don’t know the cause.  Stahl suggested that scientists’ know the change is man-made—but the president said, “You’d have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda, Lesley.”  As for the healing of the nation, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think they (Democrats) want to heal yet, I’ll be honest.”  But I don’t believe he was being honest here.  It is Mr. Trump who has failed to reach out since his inaugural to bring the country together and who continues to divide it further apart with every political rally he holds!

The one thing that the president always brings up in any interview and at every opportunity is his penchant about the media treating him unfairly.  This is a mantra his supporters use constantly.  I’ve read and heard their claim over and over again.  They claim that the 45th president is the most maligned of any president ever.  The claim is a falsehood. The hypocrisy of this claim is absolutely ludicrous!  Both Mr. Trump and his followers have expressed an open hostility toward anyone who is at all critical of him and to those who are opposed to him.  They pay little attention to their own denigration of everyone and everything that does not fit into their political bent.  They cannot abide criticism of themselves, but they sure can and do dish it out.  

“With me,” Trump said during his campaign, “they’re [the Press] not protected.”  He was referring specifically to the First Amendment freedoms given to the press and the people (whom he and his supporters now call the “mobs.”)  He also meant anyone else who is critical of him as he has openly demonstrated over and over again.  “With me, they’re not protected,” he said, “because I’m not like other people…”   Well, Mr. President, this is precisely the problem.  The United States Constitution says you are exactly like other people, because under that Constitution, we are all equal before the law.  As one writer put it, “There is no Donald Trump Exception clause anywhere to be found.”  Every president from our earliest days  has received harsh criticism, but none have assumed that as president they have the power to simply negate parts of the Constitution (like the First Amendment) because they don’t want to be criticized.  

No, Mr. Trump,  the people, the press, not even America is under your thumb, nor is our Constitution.  You do not trump all just because you think you’re “not like other people.”