Bearing Witness to Trump Week 30

August 13 – 19, 2017

It takes Trump over two days to condemn white nationalism, supremacists, and Nazi wannabes marching thru American streets with shields, clubs, and arms. Many of them were chanting his rally song “make America great again”, and even as far as yelling out “Heil Trump” as if we were back in Nazi Germany. But when he is criticized for a slow response, it takes him only hours on Twitter to rant back at his attackers just fueling the hate. God save us from this man.

Trump finally condemns the white supremacists in a wild, unbelievable hastily arranged press conference in Trump Tower. Then he continued to blame everybody for everything and take no responsibility for anything.  In following days he doubles down on moral equivalency between the white nationalists and the counter-protesters, claiming incorrectly that there was equal violence from both sides. The nation is suffering from whiplash. David Duke and other crazies come out praising Trump’s rhetoric.

Protests erupt all over the country around confederate statues, fueled by the President’s comments.

Finally, American CEOs show some moral leadership by leaving the President’s advisory councils. So many have left that Trump did the only thing he could to save face, which was to disband the group all together and call most of them losers. Then to demonstrate why there is so much vitriol and hatred being fueled he goes on a mean-spirited twitter rant lashing out and berating those who left the council only months after calling them great American business people.

A few GOP leaders also finally put distance between themselves and the President. One says the President has yet to demonstrate the stability or competency demanded by the office. Some deal with the devil that these fine mostly Christian family men previously made and are now having to rationalize. Even some Fox news pundits criticized the President calling him cowardly and dangerous. Trump does what Trump does: attack, blame, bully, and threaten. What an example for our people, and how many potential great leader servants are we turning off from looking at a political career serving people instead of themselves like Trump displays.

Not to miss a week where the environment and climate do not take a blow, Trump orders a rollback on environment rules to supposedly speed construction of infrastructure projects that have yet to be funded or approved. Some of these rules Obama put into place required that climate change, rising sea levels, and more frequent flooding from extreme weather events be taken into account.

Not to miss another week to bash and hurt immigrants, Trump rolled back Obama rules that allowed a path of citizenship for Central American migrants fleeing violence.

Trump’s Justice Dept. was reported to be seeking data of all visitors to some websites used to organize protests during Trump’s inauguration. We are no longer surprised by anything. The country at times feels like a tinder box ready to burn.

The above news has been taken from a number of international, national, regional, and local news media sources, both print and digital. Additional editorial opinions and comments about these news items are those of this author.