“The Debacle of a President”

May 29, 2017

Amazingly, President Trump was commended by one of our more conservative newspapers for “not making a major mistake on his first overseas trip.”(The Washington Times)  Since the bar was set so low in terms of expectations, then this is a truly praiseworthy moment!  Unfortunately, he has very few of these.  More of an embarrassment to the United States of America, our president has managed to assure the G7 that he will not support the consensus on global warming and he has great ambivalence towards Article 5 of the NATO charter which says that one country will support all in the event of war or national crisis!

Our poor, illiterate president who has never served in any armed services, never sacrificed in any way for his country, who is so poorly schooled in history he cannot even sort out the presidents who have proceeded him aims to lecture our NATO allies over their lack of commitment to NATO, when he cannot even endorse Article 5 unequivocally himself!  Talk about crisis of leadership for our nation!  The nation considered the second greatest contributor to pollution driving climate change has a president who calls this “a hoax invented by the Chinese.”  The country that rallied with Britain, France and others of the European Union to defeat Hitler now speaks of “the irrelevance of the NATO alliance.”  We all should be rightly horrified that we have elected such a president! Not only is he redefining the role of the United States in ways that are neither wise nor helpful to our allies.  He continues to attempt to cozy up to Russia, which is led by the world’s greatest dictator in the modern era!  Talk about driving the car backwards.  President Trump is off the road, driving the car backwards ploughing out the ditches!

I continue to predict disaster for this president and for any associated with his administration.  His own son in law is being investigated for collusion with Russia before and after the election.  He advocated a secret back line to Russia using the Russian embassy so the conversations could not be monitored by our own government agencies.  Thank God, he did not succeed in doing so!  This president’s Attorney General has committed perjury in his testimony before the House and Senate.  Will someone prosecute him? If so, who will that be? The Russian question of collusion with the Trump campaign and interference in the US election will continue to dog this president for as long as he remains in office, which we hope and pray will not be for very long!

We have already spoken about his changing our relationship within the NATO alliance.  President Trump, according to news reports, is poised to jettison the Climate Change accord which most of the world’s nations, including the US have already signed.  President Trump’s goal to “Put America First” involves a proposal for more jobs in coal and steel, which necessarily means more C02 pollution into the atmosphere.  The rest of the world pursues clean energy as a goal for the future.  We drive the car backwards into the past and ignore the clarion call of science to wake up before it is too late!

The administration has finally commented on the violent attacks in Portland in which two men gave their lives defending a young Moslem woman and her friend against religious intolerance.  The official White House account calls the violent attacks “unacceptable” and commends the two men for standing up to hate and intolerance.  A more vocal condemnation is needed, such as “hate crimes against Moslems and other minorities is never acceptable in the United States and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”  This president needs to unequivocally state his strong opposition to racial hatred.  Instead his ban on Moslems from 7 countries has been called by many as “a form of religious intolerance.”  Defending one minority group, whether LGBT, gay, black, Hispanic or Moslem is what it means to live in the United States of America.  As Americans, we oppose all forms of racial hatred, racial violence, and religious intolerance.  Whatever denigrates and lessens another human being, such a making fun of paraplegics and others with disabilities should not be tolerated, but such hate speech condemned in our great nation!

I label this president’s attempt at Presidency as a “debacle” and “an embarrassment to this country” for the reasons I have stated above.  We should, as patriotic Americans, be sorely concerned, worried and even disappointed with the performance of this president.  I for one am appalled!  I cannot believe that we sit by and allow such _____ to exist in our White House.  Bring in the vacuum cleaners, the carpet cleaners and those trained in dealing with toxic waste!  Let us cleanse the new policies contaminating our White House and clean it for a new President who represents us all and not a select few!  If the Republicans do not begin to address this president’s excesses, over reach and general sloppiness of governing, they will be forever tainted by the odor which is emanating from the Presidential suite.  The Republicans representatives who do nothing to limit the damage done by this president are just as complicit in his abuse of governing power as the President who issues his vindictive executive orders.

I am praying for them all, that God may enlighten the eyes of their heart to see what so many of us are seeing, a tragedy of serious proportions for our democracy!  We are in danger of becoming the kind of nation we have never espoused, one ruled by bigotry, hatred, religious intolerance and distrust of public institutions including the office of the Presidency.  When a president attacks the freedom of the press, calling them “false news”, he is taking the role of demagogue, playing the role of a new Caesar and attempting to manipulate our democratic process into a new form of dictatorship.  Thank God we still have the courts (Judiciary) which allow reasonable discourse and uphold challenges to intolerance and bigotry!  The greatest test of our democracy will come when these executive decrees dealing with religious intolerance land in the lap of the Supreme Court.  If the Supreme Court fails us in this hour, it will be a dark, dark day for our democracy.  However, if they speak truthfully and limit the worst abuses or our chief executive, there still may be hope for us all.  Trump has placed a conservative judge hoping he will receive needed support from him.  Hopefully, Neil Gorsuch is above such influence and will speak for the best possible rule of law for our nation.

I rest my case and commit my words, thoughts and prayers into the gracious hands and heart of the Living God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who loves all men and women equally, but defends the cause of the poor and disenfranchised, the minority, the persecuted and those reviled and down trodden before all others.  In so doing our God identifies first with the rights of the poor and the defenseless.  As long as Mr. Trump remembers this he will not find himself opposing the will and the work of the Living God!  I am afraid he had not encountered the Living God yet enough to know when he is opposing HIM.  I fully expect that is soon to change, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus Christ our Lord, Savior and Friend, in whose name I speak this message.  “Amen!”

“Amen! We praise you alone, Lord Jesus Christ!”

The voice of one calling out in this wilderness, “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!”