Check-mating Trump

Imagine President Trump waking up every morning and asking his reflection in the full-length mirror, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is supremo of us all?” The reply is suitably deferential: “You.” Trump raises his chin and struts away before the mirror whispers, “with constitutional checks and balances – dummy.”

Such is the delusion of all infatuated by themselves. Oscar Wilde said it best: “To be in love with oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

Here are a few words of warning for the leaders of Israel and other friends, lukewarm allies, and uninformed sympathizers around the globe.

The politically untutored novice who barged into the White House has yet to learn how Congress and the Judiciary can build a wall between his fantasies and reality. No amount of apprenticeship can strip away their co-equal power to snuff out his mirages.

To date not a dime has been approved by Congress for The Wall to block infiltration from the Southern border.

Congress has yet to repeal and replace Obama’s health care laws, though Trump promised to do so the minute he entered the White House.

He is still struggling to ban immigration from six predominantly Muslim nations after the independent judiciary put its foot down. Now we await the justices final say as he gears up to have his last say in the Supreme Court.

So, after five months in office, what exactly has this hallucinating president achieved?

Well, pandering to the thirty six percent who rate him the best thing to come along since sliced bread, Trump has aimed his sights at unraveling much of President Obama’s legacy. This follows years of unapologetic questioning of Obama’s birth in the United States, and doubting the former chief executive’s academic results.

By executive orders, Trump has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency as a prelude to giving the finger to the rest of the world by withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In a love-fest with coal miners, Trump has sworn to redeem them and their impure product.

He has given the green light to laying oil pipelines that might endanger the environment and sacred Native-American lands on their route south from Canada.

He has taken steps to defang civil rights enforcement in the Justice Department.

Not content with stuffing his cabinet with billionaires and multi-millionaires, he has vowed unwavering assurance that the wealthy will have their tax cuts. But somehow Congress has yet to see any tax bill. And billionaire Warren Buffett said he and other rich people don’t need it.

Trump managed to rile the Germans by lambasting them for a trade imbalance in their favor, and for selling too many of their cars to Americans.

What was the reaction of the little guy, the working class base that propelled him into office? Those assembly people employed by the tens of thousands in the South?

Workers busy churning out German autos in South Carolina told him to go down there and see for himself how well off they are, in pay, employment, and benefits.

Of course, our head of state stayed put, tone deaf to any voice of dissent.

If this were not enough to cut Trump down to pygmy size, consider how he is now the laughing stock of much of the world.

First he joshed with medieval Saudi Arabians, then stood by a mournful-looking Pope for a photo op, and finally chastised NATO leaders, in their faces, triggering a flight to China for leadership.

His coup de grace followed back home in the White House Rose Garden when he testily withdrew from the Paris Agreement to curb ruinous climate change.

A German newspaper could not stem the backlash any longer. Splashed over the entire front page was the response that spoke for billions in 190 countries that had signed on to the Paris accord: TRUMP TO EARTH – F*@! YOU!

Already he has smeared the media as “the enemy of the American people” and threatened to dismember, or end the traditional White House press briefings.

He has undermined his communications staff so regularly and with so many contradictions, that they no longer have credibility, let alone dignity.

To those millions who cannot stomach much more of these inanities and twitter outbursts, there is hope that Congress and the Judiciary will come to the rescue and halt the slide to absolutism.

If they fail to dislodge him from office the final straw may depend on the findings of the special counsel, now investigating allegations that Trump aides cut corners in sneak contacts with top Russians, before Obama left office.

Are the Russians holding incriminating evidence that would explain these shrouded contacts? Do they hold the Trump card?

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Anthony S. Pitch is a former journalist in America, England, Israel, and Africa, and author of 12 non-fiction books including, Our Crime Was Being Jewish.