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Pierce: A Day Late and a Dollar Short: The Trump Presidency*
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a57000/trump-kkk/Apparently, sometime since Saturday's bloodletting in Virginia, the White House staff managed to put electrodes in the president*'s pants and adjust the voltage sufficiently as to get him to mention the KKK, the neo-Nazis, and the white supremacists. I assume White House employees Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and the ludicrous Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D. were all having their lunch and would not take offense in any case. Democratic Senator Mark Warner leaped onto MSNBC to declare this part of the speech to be "presidential." I know Warner's in a tough spot and all but, my Lord above, that was approximately as presidential as a dribble glass...
You knew things were going sideways when the president* opened the speech by reminding the country of the economic glories his administration already has brought about. Nevertheless, this is still a president* who needed almost three days to decide how to condemn Nazi violence and he still needed to clear his throat by extolling his own greatness before he got around to it....
Certainly, the Virginia state police are as militarized as are most state police these days. But the firepower that popped up around the park in which the Nazi bastards were going to have their rally was probably the most frightening thing about the events besides the murderous automobile rampage. For years, police have been warning us that the militia right and their adherents are much better armed than we think they are, and that some of them are too well-armed for local police to handle. (In 1991, I was working on a story in eastern Washington, near the Idaho border, and I talked to a local cop who told me he was terrified at every traffic stop, Idaho then being Crazy Central for rightwing terrorists.)
This is the country the president* purports to lead today. To say he's not up to that job is beside the point. He doesn't think it is his job and so, rudderless, without human hand on the wheel, the republic sails on toward an uncertain horizon.
You knew things were going sideways when the president* opened the speech by reminding the country of the economic glories his administration already has brought about. Nevertheless, this is still a president* who needed almost three days to decide how to condemn Nazi violence and he still needed to clear his throat by extolling his own greatness before he got around to it....
Certainly, the Virginia state police are as militarized as are most state police these days. But the firepower that popped up around the park in which the Nazi bastards were going to have their rally was probably the most frightening thing about the events besides the murderous automobile rampage. For years, police have been warning us that the militia right and their adherents are much better armed than we think they are, and that some of them are too well-armed for local police to handle. (In 1991, I was working on a story in eastern Washington, near the Idaho border, and I talked to a local cop who told me he was terrified at every traffic stop, Idaho then being Crazy Central for rightwing terrorists.)
This is the country the president* purports to lead today. To say he's not up to that job is beside the point. He doesn't think it is his job and so, rudderless, without human hand on the wheel, the republic sails on toward an uncertain horizon.
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