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OPINION: Americans are now faced with two critical emergencies: the COVID-19 pandemic, and Donald Trump

Last Updated on Tuesday, 21 April 2020, 21:59 by Writer

by Paul Sanders, New York

Had you watched Trump’s press briefing on Monday you’d conclude by now that the man occupying the White House should be in an inpatient mental-facility. His manic, gibbering ragefest was a complete meltdown shitshow of a failed man who has long ago passed the limits of his competence and knowledge.

It was an angry, needy man not interested in looking outward to the ravages of a pandemic; a man with a desperate desire for more stroking of his delicate feels, a man who has an overwhelming need to brag and burnish his reputation, a man unbound by facts, reason, logic, and the petty bitching with reporters, a storyteller of his own grievance and anger.

That’s not all; there’s more. He’s a desperate, day-trading gambler whose mistakes are measured in lives. His greed and self-interest are measured in stacks of body bags, and a daily death count that staggers our capacity for grief and belief.

That is Donald Trump.

“When someone is president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s gotta be.” That’s Trump performance on Monday when questioned what authority he had to command states to re-open. And, oh yeah, that’s from the man who said he cherishes the Constitution.

….. the authority is total!

Now that’s absolute, total, extra strong, bigly executive power. And when that authority is total, so too is the madness of the man who declares it. And the potential for abuse of power. No wonder he’s trying to grab the damn Constitution by the pussy.

Yeah baby. That’s some kind of power. But it’s total bullshit.

The kind that fetishes royalty, strongmen, dictators, kings, warlords, and hooligans who don’t give a damn about representative democracy or a republican form of government bound by a constitution and laws.

Trump is out of his damn mind, even crazier than a shithouse rat, wrong on the law, wrong on the Constitution, ignorant of the 10th Amendment which warns about “total authority,” wrong on the intent of the Founding Fathers. This man is hellbent on disregarding expertise, medical science, epidemiology, virology, and fucking common sense. Period.

And guess what? The president’s autocratic assertions are received with silence and assent for the most part by his White House enablers, GOP leaders, right wingers and Nazi sympathizers who wanted a sociopath to inflict so much pain for twice electing a black man as president.

What we now know is that Trump was never a conservative. He’s a narcissistic authoritarian statist whose dream is to seize absolute power and make it a reality. The president wants all the power, all the credit, none of the responsibility.

What was once a fundamental tenet of conservatism — that executive power must be bounded, limited, and prevented — will of course now be thrown into the shitter of history by the Trump propaganda machine, like Fox News and the right wing media, for example.

All of that is expected.

Is there any remedy for Trump’s behavior? Is there any redeeming quality in this president? Hell no.

But voters in the upcoming November election should remember not just that he botched up the response to this deadly pandemic, but that his own behavior is a crisis in its own right.

November. We shall see.

Paul Sanders is a former writer for Caribbean Daylight, NY. He currently writes mostly on American issues.