Trump: The New Teflon Don?

They called him “Honest Abe”, and Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said, “I cannot tell a lie”. The country loved him and history still reveres him. According to Wikipedia, he is listed as being among the top three presidents in United States history.  The other two top spots belong to Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Washington.  Lincoln presided over our nation during the Civil War, a very dark period in our history. Folks never doubted Abe’s honesty. As a store clerk, he walked several miles to return six cents to a customer he mistakenly overcharged. Trump will never be like Lincoln. He is the opposite.

Trust is something deeply embedded within the high ideals of truth and honesty. When a leader is known to tell the truth, the leader becomes “believable”. American citizens often rally to the cause of leaders that they believe in, whether they voted for that particular leader, or not.

If “the truth is the light”, then lies must result in “abject darkness”. That is where we are today with Donald J. Trump. Though it is (in my estimation) a dark period in our history, many Americans do not see it that way.  At least a third of our population is still being led to the gallows by a domineering personality with a gift-of-gab, who offers promises of better days ahead, but hardly ever delivers.  He fools people right before their eyes, just like the guy who fools us and takes our money as he manipulates the cards in “five-card-Monte”.  We always think the hidden object is under “this card” but after he suckers you in, it’s always under the “other card”. He always swindles you out of your money. If you keep playing, you’ll likely lose all of your money, because at Monte, the house always wins! Trump always wants to win, regardless of who he hurts. To him the win is the thing. It strokes his ego and drives him to win more. When he is down, he holds a rally. His supporters stroke him with cheers and handclaps and he emerges reenergized, stronger, and ready to fight again!  That’s Donald Trump. That’s who he is.

Trump’s cadre of ardent enablers and supporters somehow manage to still believe in him, despite his failures to deliver for them on many occasions.  However, the majority of Americans deliberately stiffen their backs in order to stand tall and put up with him one more day! 

Many responsible citizens continue to linger in silence, hoping that soon, Mr. Mueller will discover the real reasons behind Trump’s continual efforts to stop his investigation and demean its purpose.  A whole lot of folks have taken to the streets of America to protest Trump and his policies.  However, we’re still in a bad place, and too many of us have yet to acknowledge that. Mr. Trump’s continual pathological lies have sunk America to a truth deficit unprecedented in American history.

If we resign ourselves to waiting it out until 2020, we will do ourselves a great disservice. Our duty as citizens is to challenge the “status quo” of the Trump Administration by whatever legal means necessary.

Before Trump was elected, former Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, called him a “con man”. History has proven, to many of us, that this is true.

n referring to the White House, in today’s Fox News Online, Bloomberg stated that “Americans are facing an ‘epidemic of dishonesty’ that poses a greater threat to U.S. democracy than terrorism or communism”. He stated these powerful words at a Rice University commencement in Texas.

Both Bloomberg and Trump have lived and worked in New York City for many years. Bloomberg is a man of good character who made his money the old fashion way-by “earning it”. The “jury is still out” on how Trump amassed his reported billions, despite his four Chapter 11 business bankruptcies. He has yet to reveal his tax returns as he has promised on several occasions. People still wonder why he didn’t win Manhattan in the General Election in 2016, even though he had lived and worked in Manhattan for several decades. Perhaps New Yorkers knew what Bloomberg knew.

Integrity is a crucial quality for an American president.  If America cannot be believed at home and abroad we put ourselves in serious, or perhaps, grave danger. If our word cannot be perceived as our bond anymore, then we’re doing much of Putin’s work for him, as he continues to feverishly work to undermine America.

On the issue of presidential trust, how in the world can we trust a president who has charted over 3,000 verifiable lies over the course of his short presidency? Is he a lying wannabe dictator, or our American President?

American presidents cannot play loose with the truth because valuable American lives are at stake. This is not a reality show. This is reality! Our allies must be able to trust what we say. We can’t vacillate on important issues, and the truth must prevail! In my article entitled “Trump: The Innocent Man of Capitol Hill-Part VI-(Guilty!)” I stated this with reference to Trump’s honesty: “Mr. Trump’s lying, ducking, and dodging has not ceased. Instead of sitting before Mueller and steadfastly proclaiming his innocence, he is trying to smear the image of Mueller, the Department of Justice, and all other authorities committed to finding the truth, and possibly bringing charges against him. This shows you something. It shows that a key person looked at as a subject of the Mueller investigation ‘cannot prove his innocence’-because his innocence does not exist! His only recourse, as he apparently sees it, is to besmirch the images of the authorities doing the investigation and plant doubt in the public’s mind about the integrity of the investigation.” Trump’s manipulation of the truth and his falsifying of facts through the media are not acceptable and not normal. However, too many Americans have begun to normalize Trump’s behavior and treat it as just another day in “Trump Country”. They look at it as Trump-era normal. This is a mistake. Historically Americans have proven themselves on the world stage to be honest, well-meaning, and noble. However, Trump has trashed all of that. He has systematically demeaned our “tried-and-true” values and seems to be acting more like a Kremlin plant than the president of the USA. 

As I stated in “Rejecting the Trump-era Normal”, “The Trump-era normal may be good for Trump’s questionable agenda, but it is not good for America.  It diminishes our status in the eyes of the world, and decreases our respect abroad. We must reject the Trump-era normal and return to the values that have historically made America great.”

Bloomberg was right to criticize Trump’s continual dishonesty. He has avoided the long arms of the law for so long that I have dubbed him, the new Teflon Don. I believe he sees his unorthodox style and actions as being successful, largely unpunished, and rewarded. In this light, I’m sure he does see himself as the new Teflon Don. In one episode exhibits his cockiness, Trump bragged he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and there would be no repercussions!

We cannot continue to tolerate the actions of a man who seeks to hijack the very soul of America in order to derail legitimate legal inquiry. His attempts to publicly undermine authority are not some masterful Trump strokes of public relations genius. They are acts of apparent desperation by a man who tends to demonstrate his guilt on a daily basis. His emissaries (who are sent out to clarify the White House position on relevant issues) end up reinforcing his guilty image by continually dodging questions by an inquisitive media that is guilty only of seeking actual answers and truth.  Trump and his cronies are guilty of generating fake news, not the media! The daily White House Press Briefing ends up being nothing but a sham, and the public sees it for what it is. Sad!

With the help of Mueller and his staff, we may soon discover what Trump has been trying so desperately hard to hide from the special counsel and the American people. Perhaps then, the new Teflon Don will realize that “Teflon doesn’t last forever”!