Voices Other Than My Own

A repeated theme of this blog is that Donald Trump sucks as president. He just doesn't seem to be have the rudimentary intelligence, wisdom or even simple decent human empathy to know how to do this job.  


Donald Trump is emphatically and empirically the worst person to ever be elected as president of the United States. 


Another repeated theme of this blog is my continual frustration that I feel alone in this regard. Can't anyone else see that his guy is a total moron and is completely incapable of being an effective president? 


Well, others can and today, we listen to voices other than my own. 


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“Trump Is Unwell and Unfit To Be President"  





Jeffrey Sachs calls Trump a delusional, psychopathic “threat to the nation and the world.”

Sachs speculates that Trump might be a “Manchurian Candidate” who is working as a “stooge” for some foreign power to destroy the U.S.. But, “much more likely, Trump is just mentally unstable and narcissistic." 

So who is this Jeffrey Sachs guy?  He's a renowned Columbia University professor and serves as a senior adviser at the United Nations.

Sachs says Europe has not expressed "a single word of respect for Trump” during his recent trip to Europe. Their question was: “How did America fall so far so fast?” 

Referring to Li'l Donnie's penchant for tariffs, Sachs says Trump’s “so-called policies are not really policies. Trade wars are on, off, on hold, on again, within the span of days. ... Foreign companies are sanctioned today and rescued the next. Global agreements and rules are ripped to shreds. Trump’s garbled syntax and disorganized thoughts are impossible to follow.” 


Earlier this year, Sachs observed that Trump’s tariffs prove he “flunked economics” and makes “primitive errors because he hasn’t a clue as to how the world economy works.” 


Regarding the steel tariffs, Sachs said, “whatever US steel producers might gain from a trade war would be offset by the losses to steel users and consumers, plus the social costs of protecting uncompetitive jobs.”


In the past, Sachs has hurled barbs at the massive tax cuts and budget deficit, which he has labeled part of the “war” of America’s rich on the poor. “We cannot afford tax cuts. The idea that somehow has gotten into our heads ... that ‘oh, $1.5 trillion, that we can give away,’ is unbelievable in any serious country,” He called the redistribution of wealth in the nation a “populism by the super rich” who “want more and more and more.” 




But Sachs more recent comments have been more pointed in their personal negative assessment of Trump's performance as president.  

"The U.S. has probably never before had a delusional president, one who speaks gibberish, insults those around him including his closest associates, and baffles the world. We strive to make sense of Trump’s nonsense, implicitly assuming some hidden strategy. There is none. Harming our closest allies, raising the prices on key intermediate products, and provoking retaliation cannot possibly deliver higher wages, better jobs, or an improved trade balance.”


Sachs suggests the “real answer” is to remove Trump from office using the 25th Amendment to replace him, Sachs concludes. "Trump is unwell and unfit to be president. He is a growing threat to the nation and the world. The emperor had no clothes. This president has no sense." 


What worries Sachs is what worries me, that the actions and statements by Trump are not those of a rational man. Is he being irrational on purpose? Is he a “Manchurian Candidate” looking to deliberately undermine America? Yes, that concept invites paranoia and conspiratorial thinking that, to be blunt, never pans out. But damn, if the intent is to purposely weaken America, virtually every step Trump has taken while in office has done exactly that.


But like Sachs, I have to conclude (but more bluntly than Sachs puts it) that more likely, Trump is just stupid and crazy.


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"Sullying the Dream That America Once Was"




Patti Davis, the daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, imagined what her father would think of current President Donald Trump. 

“He would be appalled and heartbroken at a Congress that refuses to stand up to a president who not only seems ignorant of the Constitution but who also attempts at every turn to dismantle and mock our system of checks and balances. He would plead with Americans to recognize that the caustic, destructive language emanating from our current president is sullying the dream that America once was. And in a time of increased tensions in the world, playing verbal Russian roulette is not leadership, it’s madness.”


Reagan was not immune to his own verbal missteps. He once joked into an open mike about how he was going to start bombing Russia in a few minutes. And Reagan's campaigns were laced with racially charged words and images to stoke the fears and concerns of some of the same types of white people that forms Trump's own base.


But for whatever Reagan's mistakes, I never doubted for a moment that he was President of the entire United States, not just that part that voted for him. I never once questioned if Reagan put his own status above that of the nation. Reagan's overall vision of America was a positive one. I never doubted that Reagan's priority was what was good for the nation, not what was good for him. 

Davis concedes that her father didn’t always like the press but he wouldn’t have “relentlessly” cast the media as the enemy. 


Reagan came to the presidency with a mission, much like Trump, to shake things up in Washington. Unlike Trump, Reagan understood the system enough to know what needed to be fixed and what needed to be destroyed.  Reagan approached Washington's problems armed with a knife and he knew when to use it; Trump comes armed with a hammer and he uses it all the time.