A person I like a lot sent me an impassioned e-mail to please, please, please for the good of America, stop bashing Trump and give the man a chance to do some good. "We need to be united because we're all in this together," my friend wrote. "And if he succeeds, we all succeed." I immediately thought of eight things to say in reply…
- Trump has never been reticent to bash others. He calls people losers, liars and idiots. He calls women "fat pigs" and other lovely terms designed to bring us all together. When he can, he hurls an insult that someone's business is failing because in Trumpworld, if your business isn't successful, no one should listen to you about anything — an odd position for a man who's had so many bankruptcies and failed enterprises. It would be different if the man was trying to reach out to others but he only expects others to reach out to him. So why exactly should anyone avoid divisive rhetoric when the guy with the gigantic bully pulpit doesn't?
- You way overestimate my power and influence. This blog reaches a microscopic fraction of the world. If Trump's efforts can somehow be harmed by me posting that I don't like the guy, those have to be the most feeble, fragile efforts in the history of politics. I'm not even a pundit with a following. I work on Groo the Wanderer, remember? I can't even get restaurants to stop serving cole slaw.
- You call what I do bashing? I have one of the more moderate anti-Trump voices out there. I don't compare him to zoo animals or presume sexual aberrations. Go to Google and enter any obscene thing you might call someone you loathed, then add the name "Trump" and run a search. See how many hits you get. See how much nicer I am than most of them.
- Most people in this country already don't like Trump. He has a 37% approval rating which is disastrous for a guy who's supposed to be enjoying his honeymoon period.
- I didn't do that to him. No blogger did. He did it to himself and he continues to do it to himself. People think he's a liar because he tries to convince them that he got a huge victory and that he can't release his tax forms because he's under audit and dozens of others. (Here's a partial list to help you out.) People think he treats women badly because there are tapes of him bragging about it. People think he's slippery and dodges questions because…well, watch yesterday's press conference. I don't blame him for attacking the press because his only defense is to try and get people to disbelieve the reports of what he's said and done.
- One of the reasons I don't like Trump is because I don't believe "if he succeeds, we all succeed." Nothing about Trump has ever made me think he cares if anyone succeeds but him. He strikes me as a guy who pays lip service uncomfortably to helping the poor and the needy and the sick and even the middle-class because he wants some of their votes and as much of their respect as he can get. But even his personal charity to aid others turned out to be a sham and not a particularly helpful sham.
- When Barack Obama took office, you had Rush Limbaugh declaring "I hope he fails" and Fox News declaring his presidency an irreparable disaster before it was a month old and you had G.O.P. leaders plotting to block every single action of his possible to try and make him a one-term president. I'll scratch this off the list if you can show me where and when you objected to that and wrote how we needed to not bash the incoming prez and to unite behind him.
- Lastly, at least for now: I don't think you want me to stop criticizing the guy for the good of America. Like I said, I don't mean that much. I think you just like the other things I post here and to get to them, you don't like having to scroll past me linking to articles about what he's actually saying and actually doing. You know he's lying left and right and that he's installing unqualified insiders in his cabinet, replenishing the swamp he promised to drain, plus he's flip-flopping daily on positions and running up a long list of conflicts of interest. That's got you even more worried than some of us are. We only have to worry about what he and his mob will do to the country. You have to worry about that and about how duped you'll feel if there's a disaster. Because you voted for this person.
I am probably going to cut back on the political stuff but not because my friend doesn't like it. It's because I don't want to think about this stuff as much as I do. I have to dial that back before I can dial it back on the blog…and work on that, I shall.