Donald Trump to Iran’s leaders who are cracking down on protesters: “You better not start shooting, because we’ll start shooting, too.” Iran’s leaders say the protests are the result of foreign meddling.
On the other hand, when Trump was asked about the shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, he said he’d always protect ICE agents and that protesters there were paid.
Apparently, the theocratic dictators in Iran and the white Christian nationalists in the White House are using similar narrative playbooks.
Trump routinely accuses Democrats of improper funding of their campaigns, and congressional member Gerald E. Connolly, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, finally issued a blunt call-out of that hypocrisy:
“If Donald Trump was at all serious about cracking down on foreign corruption of U.S. elections, he would start by taking the For Sale sign off his own back. Selling access and influence is the defining feature of the Trump White House.”
Do MAGA voters care if their man claims that he is commander-in-chief bombing another sovereign nation to stop drugs from coming into our country, even as he pardons a former leader of another country convicted of overseeing literally tons of illegal drugs smuggled into the U.S.?
Donald J. Trump is the epitome of hypocrisy, proven on an ongoing basis by the gulf between what he says one day and does the next. The examples are so numerous, they will fill entire books.
This is not leadership; this is a man who conned his way into controlling the most powerful military in world history, and who bullies friend and foe until they vote how he demands they vote. His ego is so fragile and yet so easily inflamed that even a Nobel Peace Award recipient frames her award and presents it to him in an obvious obsequious and ingratiating gesture, which he comes to expect.
Donald Trump is not an appropriate role model nor leader. His vision is nothing but greed and domination over others, exactly the opposite of what we need now. Impeach, convict, remove.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is coördinator of conflict resolution BA/BS degree programs at Portland State University.
