Trump could reach out to his political opponents but he seems to be interested only in retribution and divisiveness
By Michael O’Looney
Some may agree that our chief executive has had some good intentions. Hard to find fault with the idea of returning criminal migrants back to their native countries, of trimming fat from the federal budget and working with our trading partners to make tariffs more fair.
And yet, things don’t seem quite right somehow about the way he’s gone about trying to make America great. Some of his actions seem unnecessarily mean-spirited. Petty. Vindictive. Questionable. Worthy of more thought. Disrespectful of the Constitution.
Perhaps it’s the way he goes about, well, governing. Once elected to his second term as president, Donald Trump said there would be some retribution. In terms of petty vindictiveness, few if any presidents are Trump’s equal. He’s still throwing sucker punches at Joe Biden and Barack Obama, accusing them of treasonous conspiracies. In his first week as president he fired 220 Department of Justice staffers assigned to former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigative team. He’s suing CBS because he disagrees with their news coverage. He defunded NPR because he perceived it as a woke conspiracy to undermine his power.
The pettiness
Then there’s the pettiness that comes with a fragile ego. We only shake our heads when we recall how Trump encouraged people to boycott Goodyear tires when the company asked its employees to refrain from wearing MAGA hats. And when he accused House Democrats of treason for not applauding his 2018 State of the Union speech. And just recently when he willy-nilly decided to fire his commissioner of labor statistics because he did not like her agency’s unemployment figures.
Then there were all those terminations, seemingly done without rhyme or reason — over 120,000 federal workers indiscriminately fired. We wished that the president had taken a harder look at the data before so many lives, careers and services had been impacted. Neither did it sit well with many of us when, to celebrate these massive firings, we saw Elon Musk gleefully wielding his chainsaw before a cheering MAGA audience. A gesture that made many of us cringe.
Denigrate adversaries and drill, baby drill
Many of Trump’s executive actions seem to intentionally antagonize his political adversaries. In a way, the man has only deepened the divide with his childish slurs and name-calling (Crooked Hillary, Crooked Joe, Pencil Neck Schiff). Environmentalists, mostly on the left, are still fuming about his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. To make matters worse, he continues to deny the threat of global warming. Rather, his priority is to deregulate the oil industry (“Drill, baby, drill”) as a way to pay back the petroleum giants for the millions they donated to get him elected.
Now immune from censure, prosecution, probably even impeachment, Trump knows he can do whatever he wants — and says as much. This kind of power has made him arrogant, careless and fickle in his actions, always ready to belittle his rivals, to insult, to intimidate, to brazenly suggest Canada could be our 51st state, that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America.
He would never consider crossing the aisle, of working with and respecting his political rivals, of recognizing that his countrymen would like to see, as their leader, a man who understands how to mend fences. What we have, however, is apparently a man who doesn’t see the need to unite the country.
Can Trump mend the divide?
Which makes me think of another man who came to the office during a time of divisiveness. His words and actions were markedly different than those of our current president. Abraham Lincoln sought to mend the nation’s wounds, to end the division.
To begin the healing process after the Civil War, Lincoln offered only conciliatory words to bring the country together — “With malice toward none, charity for all.”
Lincoln refrained from blaming anyone or rejoicing in the North’s victory. There was no anger, no agenda of retribution, only a heartfelt attempt at forgiveness and reconciliation. He urged Americans to act in accordance with “their better angels” rather than “surrender to the fate of dividing the nation irreparably.”
It seems, however, our president has made little effort to unite America, to respect and work with his rivals, to refrain from intensifying the bitterness that remains in the hearts of those who cannot forget watching the assault on the capitol while a sitting president did nothing but urge his followers to overturn a fair election he did not win.
If only our current president could reflect on our history; if only he could govern with malice toward none. If only he would try to govern all of America instead of only those who voted for him.
Perhaps then we wouldn’t feel so unsettled about what lies ahead for us in the next 3½ years.
Michael O’Looney lives in Talent.
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