Oddjob wrote:
What "damage" to "our form of government" has Trump managed to accomplish in two short years? Be specific and cite credible references, please.
Okay Oddjob, how about Donald Trump, head of the Trump crime family, thumbing his nose at custom and the Constitution. He is setting precedent for future presidents and elected representatives to refuse to resolve conflicts of interest. He uses his Twitter account (bully pulpit) to divide rather than unify Americans and to settle personal scores in a sustained assault on freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Trump is fostering creeping authoritarianism. As he did on the campaign trail, he has continued to do violence to both America’s political norms and its constitutional values, striking an authoritarian tone and railing against his many enemies. He embraces and claims he “loves” various dictators while alienating and distancing us from our allies.
When Trump isn’t trashing the First Amendment, he’s busy building an inner circle of ideologues who are hostile to large segments of the American public and to the idea of government itself. Trump always picks the worst person for any position in his failed and corrupt administration.
Trump’s first pick to enforce civil rights and the rule of law at the Justice Department was Jeff Sessions. Jeff Sessions was notoriously denied a federal judgeship in the 1980s over his racism as well as his prosecution of voting rights activists who had been close to Martin Luther King. On King’s birthday Trump chose to bash Rep. John Lewis, civil rights icon and King confidant.
Trump’s anti-government group of cronies was led by EPA Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general who had repeatedly sued the agency he was appointed to lead. Pruitt attempted to strike down limits on emissions of neurotoxic mercury while attorney general. When even his Republican enablers couldn’t take Pruitt’s stealing from the taxpayers any longer, Trump appointed Andrew Wheeler, a fossil fuel lobbyist, to head the EPA. Wheeler is busy stripping regulation to control mercury and air toxins. Perhaps even worse, Wheeler has removed regulations protecting millions of acres of water ways.
How about his appointing Energy secretary Rick Perry who famously wanted to eliminate the department he was picked to lead. Then there is Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who profited from both the housing bubble and its aftermath. Mnuchin pivoted from his mortgage desk at Goldman Sachs to running a bank described as a foreclosure machine. This bank tossed veterans and military service members out of their homes. Mnuchin’s “number one priority” is to “strip back” the Dodd Frank financial reforms that Congress passed in 2010 to prevent another housing-market crash.
While Oddjob embraces Trump and his crime family, a majority in this country has had its fill of Trump.
