Day 98 of Nat'l Emergency: Provocateur-in-Chief Could Turn Into Cable TV Agent-Provocateur

It was a busy week for the provocateur-in-chief even by his grotesque standards. Pick your offended targets:

Blacks and supporters of Black Lives Matter protesting police brutality and systemic discrimination; 

An elderly, injured-by-Buffalo-police protester accused of being a member of Antifa; 

Military leaders who criticized his use of troops to clear constitutionally permitted protest across from the White House so he could have his picture taken in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church; 

Episcopalians and Catholics vexed by his photo op performance holding a Bible;

Anyone who believed military bases named for traitorous Confederate generals should be renamed; 

Professional football and soccer leagues for permitting athletes to express political dissent; 

Nascar for banning Confederate flags;

LGBTQ community for being denied Obama-era health patient protections; 

The media for questioning his many actions; 

Abraham Lincoln for not doing enough; 

And of course Joe Biden and Democrats for everything they do. 

Donald Trump did, however, try to put to rest the fear among his detractors that he would barricade himself in the White House should he lose the election November 3. 

“Certainly, if I don’t win, I don’t win,” Trump declared on Fox News in an interview with Harris Faulkner. “You go on, do other things” (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/12/trump-says-will-leave-office-peacefully-if-he-loses-315736?cid=apn).

Of course, given his footloose and fancy free track record with the truth the liar-in-chief cannot be trusted on his word. Skepticism is called for. 

Removed from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by force or tradition January 20, the provocateur-in-chief will not go gently into the night. 

He will turn into an agent-provocateur unrestrained by any protocols of office (as if he ever was) to dispense bilious dissent and conspiracy theories as the featured anchor of a cable television network. 

Probably not Fox. Either one of his own creation or OAN, One America News Network, a far-right pro-Trump cable channel founded by Robert Herring, Sr., owned by Herring Networks, Inc. of San Diego. OAN is well-liked and often cited by Trump for its conspiracy theory stories. OAN is not considered to be reliably truthful. 

A deposed Trump will seek to keep the divisions in our country red hot, thwarting any chance Biden might have to forge harmony among the citizenry and our traditional international allies. Trump will act not as a dedicated, doctrinaire Conservative Republican but rather as a vindictive egotist seeking revenge for his ultimate humiliation. 

A chair in front of a cable TV camera would stoke his goal of recapturing the seat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. As a one term president the 74-year-old would be eligible to run again in 2024. Biden has shown a candidate who would be 78 years old when taking the presidential oath is not disqualified by voters.  

Neither would a conviction for tax fraud or any other felony bar Trump from holding federal office again. Even if in prison he could run. Aside from his cable gig Trump could also try for the U.S. Senate from his new state of residence, Florida. 

Sadly, the cult of Trump will linger as long as The Donald and his three henchmen eldest children stay in the public eye. Trump has sucked the soul out of the GOP. 

Short of a cataclysmic election debacle the Republican Party has cast its foreseeable future with a modern day Dracula and his offspring, both biological and ideological. 

Day 86 Nat'l Emergency: Religion and Politics Don't Mix

I wonder, exactly what type of Bible did Ivanka Trump pull out of her $1,540 MaxMara handbag for her father to use in his photo-op appearance Monday before St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street from the White House?

Was it an Old Testament edition? Ivanka is, after all, Jewish. Presumably if she were bringing a Bible from her home or White House office it would be of the Old Testament variety, a volume where God is mostly demanding and judicious though often quick to exact punishment on transgressors. A real “law and order” deity full of fire and brimstone (God had not yet formulated tear gas, though there were plenty of times Israelites were awash in tears). 

An Old Testament god would kinda fit Donald Trump’s makeup. Well, maybe not so judicious. But surely demanding and quick to seek retribution for real or perceived offenses.

The cover and spine of the Bible he held offered no clues. The cover said “Holy Bible.” The spine read, “Revised Standard Version.”

If I had to guess, I’d say it contained the New Testament as well as the Old Testament. The New Testament is the one in which God is said to be merciful and compassionate. Calls for brotherly love (which also is in the Old Testament but doesn’t get as much play as when it is attributed to Jesus). 

For Trump to walk unmolested to St. John’s across Lafayette Park, protesters exercising their constitutional right of peaceful assembly were teargassed and driven away by law enforcement. Perhaps Trump’s brandishing of the Bible in front of the church partially damaged in rioting the night before was intended to convey reconciliation with those demonstrating against repeated police brutality, even murder, of unarmed Black Americans. 

If so, the message from on high was not well received by those beyond Trump’s evangelical base. He brandished the Bible like a trophy to be hawked to his audience. He neither carried the Bible like a holy book nor did he read a comforting passage from it. The Bible was simply a prop for a photo op. 

Not all evangelicals found his actions appropriate. Televangelist Pat Robertson repudiated Trump’s actions. Leaders of other Christian denominations did, as well, including the bishop of the church where Trump made his stand. 

Jewish clergy criticized him, too. The editor of The Jewish Week/Times of Israel, Andrew Silow-Carroll, wrote, “And then that photo-op, a futile gesture that said nothing so much as: ‘Here I stand, in front of a building I seldom enter, holding a book I rarely read, playing a role I’ll never fully understand.’”  

Trump has placed the military in an uncomfortable, rarely assigned, mission—policing American citizens. Past and present leaders of the military said it was uncalled for and that Trump was a threat to the Constitution.

The Internet has exploded in mocking Trump. My nephew Ari reposted the following from Military Veterans Against Fascism: 

“Why did the chicken cross the road?

“To pose for a blasphemous photo op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.”

Father Edward Beck, a Roman Catholic priest, asked on Twitter, “Has the Bible ever been used in a more disingenuous and exploitative way?”

Make America Great Again has been Trump’s rallying cry for more than five years. At home and abroad, sadly, we have stepped back further from that ideal. 

For those who do not watch CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell, take two minutes to view the attached clip, a reading of Langston Hughes’ poem, “Let America Be America Again.” Written more than eight decades ago, its message is still current and relevant: https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs_evening_news/video/ralH4AZFpevjFk_pN_PiHsx_hGKqSxA0/langston-hughes-let-america-be-america-again-shows-the-nation-s-continued-struggle-of-freedom-and-equality/.