End This Nightmare

When will this long nightmare end! If only President Gerald Ford could come back and terminate it, as he did immediately after Nixon fell off the cliff.

We should fly a flag with Edvard Munch’s Scream to show our feelings.

His latest bow to Russia was to end CIA support of moderate rebels fighting against the Syrian despotic president, something Vladimir Putin had long desired. It is another step in ceding control of Syra to Russia.

Study Trump’s diatribes and look at his body language. The only figure of note that he shows subservience to is the Russian dictator. Only with him does Trump offer a handshake palm side up. Not once did he domineeringly yank Putin’s hand towards him, as he does with other world leaders.

Only with Putin did he indulge in a tete-a-tete without another American present. No one knows what was said. It could have been the Russian laying down the law as a quid pro quo for collusion in helping elect Trump. He could have threatened blackmail. We will never know.

Trump has raged against our close ally, Germany’s Angela Merkel, targeting the huge sales of German cars in America, even though those European autos employ thousands here.

He belittled the Australian Prime Minister in a coarse telephone call, even though that nation joined forces in every major war led by the United States.

He crudely pushed aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro to secure a front row spot for a photo-op in Europe.

Trump grasped the hand of the Japanese Prime Minister for so long that the unwilling victim grimaced in disbelief. And the French President turned the tables by prolonging a public handshake.

Here at home Trump swipes and slashes, no matter whether the target is his illustrious predecessor, or the head of the FBI, or the Attorney General, or the former FBI chief investigating allegations of electoral collusion, or the Mayor of London trying to soothe public distress in the wake of a conflagration incinerating scores of residents.

His unremitting assault on the mainstream media, whom he incessantly lambastes for “fake news,” has now escalated disturbingly into curbs on its coverage. Cameras are randomly banned from press briefings, questions are blunted with platitudes, and right-wing propagandists are given preference for interviews.

This modus vivendi may have terrorized those doing business with the tycoon but it has no place in the person seated atop the pile in the White House.

Trump is, after all, the president of ALL Americans. From the weakest poor to the mightiest rich, all are equal under the Constitution. All enjoy protection under the rule of law. The framers took wary note of those who might lust for power and arrogate to themselves the levers of dictatorships.

Boldly and emphatically, they guarded against such tendencies by agreeing on a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that guaranteed free speech, the right to assemble and dissent, due process of law, and other ironclad safeguards against tyrannies.

That is why those fearful of gulags in the United States should not tremble. It will not, and cannot happen here.

Trump can rave and rant in misspelled tweets. He can lash out at the media and the majority of voters who opposed him last November. He can even conveniently shunt aside his lewd comments that more than anything exposed him as an emperor without any clothes.

But the stark reality is that the constitutional checks and balances to his power are working.

Not a single brick has been laid for the wall he thundered would keep out illegal immigrants. Congress has yet to fund it.

Not a single change has been made to “Obamacare” even though Trump assured his followers he would tell Congress to scrub it the day he took office.

Not a single Bill has been considered by Congress to re-write the tax laws, or plow millions into restoring the country’s decaying infrastructure.

Judges have blocked, stymied, and disapproved of Trump’s executive orders on immigration.

This unlearned president, handicapped by a limited vocabulary, is coming face to face with realities. It is a far cry from the days when he was the unchecked star of The Apprentice.

Those Founding Fathers must be rejoicing in the great unknown.

——————-

Anthony Pitch is a former journalist in America, England, Israel, and Africa, with 17 appearances on national television.