Rearing an ugly head again during a #TrumpSh*tdown
The White House officially cancelled Trump's trip to Florida that was scheduled for Friday afternoon, and he spent the day attempting to help congressional leaders reach a deal to forestall a shutdown.
Administration officials who briefed reporters on the logistics of the impending shutdown on Friday said the expiration of government funding would not necessarily impede the president's travel plans to Mar-a-Lago or elsewhere. In particular, one official said, Trump will still be free to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, though the White House did not say whether the shutdown would affect Trump's plans to attend the glamorous gathering of globalists.
But sources didn't report Davos coming up on Friday. For the president, it seems, the weekend's party at his Florida estate was the more pressing engagement.
Trump’s tweets offer a cyber-billboard for his narcissism and ignorance. But the tweeting alone, along with other displays of emotional incontinence, does not get to the essence of the Trump problem.
Which is two-fold, a short-term threat and a long-term one. The immediate risk is to national security: Will Trump provoke or instigate war with North Korea, or dangerously mishandle some other international crisis? It is little comfort to conclude that our best hope lies in the rationality of North Korean leader Kim Jung Un and the steadying influence of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
The longer-term and greater danger is that Trump does not believe in American ideals and institutions. He does not believe in a free press or free speech; unconstrained, he would crack down on both. He does not believe in the rule of law, a Justice Department free of political interference, the separation of powers or an independent judiciary. He does not believe in the United States as a beacon and example to the world. My continuing confidence remains that our institutions can withstand this assault and that our national reputation has been so well-earned that others will understand: Trump does not reflect who we are.
“Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny,” Bruce Springsteen sang. No, we won’t, not with Trump. What we can hope — and what we must pray — is that we will look back on his presidency as a blot on our nation’s honor, an aberration from our history and a moment from which we emerged, not unscathed, but more resolute for having endured it.