It is time to tell the truth about Donald Trump: He is betraying his oath of office by putting his own interests before those of the American people.
That is an unavoidable conclusion based on the way he conducted himself at the G-7 Summit last week. In one day he managed to fracture a Western alliance that had held for 75 years, and Vladimir Putin could not have been more pleased.
Among the many things most Americans have had to admit about this President, that he is betraying our trust to put the nation first is the most difficult of all, yet more shocking is the fact that we had already been warned that this could happen by none other than Senator John McCain only a month into the Trump presidency.
In February of 2017 McCain spoke to the Munich Security Conference in Germany in which he made the following remarks that explain why Trump’s behavior at the G-7 represented a fundamental betrayal of his oath of office:
“My friends: In the four decades I have attended this conference, I cannot recall a year where its purpose was more necessary or more important…If ever there were a time to treat this question with a deadly seriousness, it is now. The unprecedented period of security and prosperity that we have enjoyed for the past seven decades did not happen by accident. It happened not only because of the appeal of our values, but because we backed them with our power and persevered in their defense.”
He spoke of things happening that would alarm the founders of the Conference were they alive today, such as an increasing turn away from universal values and toward old ties of blood, and race, and sectarianism…by the hardening resentment we see toward immigrants, and refugees, and minority groups, especially Muslims…by the growing inability, and even unwillingness, to separate truth from lies, and then he said:
“But what would alarm them most, is a sense that many of our peoples, including in my own country, are giving up on the West … that they see it as a bad deal that we may be better off without … and that while Western nations still have the power to maintain our world order, it is unclear whether we have the will.”
Our own President does not have that will.
Before the summit started Trump called for Russia to be allowed back into the group, as if annexing Crimea and attacking the Ukraine, a European ally didn’t matter, as if shooting down a passenger jet didn’t matter, and then he arrived at the meeting late and left early, falling asleep during the session, and essentially threatened our oldest allies with a trade war.
I am sure it brought a smile to Putin’s face to see Donald Trump serving Russia interests instead of America’s.
Even if you don’t believe Trump was intentionally siding with Russia against our allies, the results were the same. Wittingly or unwittingly Trump managed to do what Putin has been trying to do unsuccessfully for years.
But I happen to believe those who insist Trump knew exactly what he was doing. You see, they followed the money trail from Russia to Trump and back to Russia, and the influence that money now has over Trump’s presidency.
You can read the story for yourself (“Donald Trump’s Many, Many, Many, Many Ties to Russia,” http://time.com/4433880/donald-trump-ties-to-russia/), but what it says is that because of all his bankruptcies, American banks stopped loaning Trump money years ago. He then turned to sources anywhere and everywhere, and Putin and his inner circle of Russian oligarchs readily responded.
When Trump unexpectedly became President, it was a windfall Putin and friends never anticipated, but are taking advantage of every way they can. And it is an educated guess that the reason Trump has refused to release his tax returns is because they will show his financial debt to Putin et al. that he doesn’t want American voters to know about.
What we saw at the G-7 Summit, then, was an American President who is Putin’s man first, all because of what matters most to Trump – money, in truth an impeachable offense except that it will never happen because of a pusillanimous Congress that is compliant in his reign of self-interest over the nation’s well being.
So it is time those of us who see what is happening bring Trump’s presidency to an end, and the way to do that is clear.
We vote him out, beginning with this year’s mid-term elections.
By defeating Republicans in November, we will defeat Trump. Once they no longer have control of the Senate and the House, Trump’s presidency is for all practical purposes over.
In other words, defeating Republicans in November is the first giant step toward a post-Trump America.
In the process we also take a major step toward saving our country from the Trump/Putin alliance.
This fall it doesn’t matter who the Democratic candidate is because this is not about trusting power to the Democrats. It is about taking power away from Republicans and Trump.
That is all that matters at this point. Only then can we start cleaning up the mess we will face, and I predict we will be dumbfounded when we find out how bad it really is.
So for anyone wondering what can be done about Trump, it cannot be said enough. November 6 is the answer.
That will make November 7, 2018, the first day of a post-Trump America, the details of which will be our subject next time.
Well said Jan. Absolutely gut wrenching the damage he, and the Republican Party is doing to this country.
Yes, Wilbur, and the answer is us!
In the forthcoming mid-term elections, one candidate for the House of Representativesh who caught my eye is Ms Debra Haaland of New Mexico. Having won the Democratic primaries in that State last week, Ms Haaland is expected to win one of three seats in the House of Representatives that New Mexico is allowed – and possibly the first native American lady to sit in that body. As a British citizen, I couldn’t give her any money, but she’s a lady to be reckoned with.
In Britain, the disaster at Grenfell Tower in the London Borough of Kensington, which we’ll commemorate tomorrow, saw complete strangers give succour to those suddenly made homeless, or who’d lost their entire families when the Tower caught fire. The attitude of ‘me first’ has been weighed, and woefully found wanting. Both on your side of the ocean as well as mine, I get a sense that the moral tide is on the turn!
Nigel, I hope you are right about that, but our President is the embodiment of “me first,” and that gives permission for others like him to hold the same attitude. That is what we have to defeat in November, and Haaland is an example of how we can.