Trump’s young
administration is fraught with trouble, but we all knew that already.
Most of us probably
haven’t thought of just how to frame Trump’s behavior since assuming the White
House, but an enterprising writer at the Washington Post just
did.
Eugene Robinson, an
opinion writer for the Post, wrote an entire op-ed based around the following
question:
“Does Trump know he’s president?”
Well,
does he?
One of the things that Robinson points to as evidence that he doesn’t, or, at least, doesn’t know what he’s doing at all, is the fact that we had a bunch of government executives tell Europe, tell Iraq, even tell the U.N., not to listen to what Trump says.
For instance, he said we’re going to take Iraq’s oil. Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis told the press in Baghdad that we were absolutely not
there to do that.
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said that we absolutely support a
two-state solution after Trump said we didn’t.
Mike Pence told NATO that we’re fully devoted to them, after
Trump has said repeatedly that NATO is obsolete and wants to cozy up to Russia.
Trump
said that rounding up undocumented immigrants is “a military operation,” which
supposedly means a “non-military operation,” and he was just using “military”
as an adjective, according to Sean Spicer.
Not
mentioned in Robinson’s article is Trump’s neverending Twitter temper tantrum,
though he does mention Trump’s feud with the press.
There’s also the fact that Trump loves hobnobbing with his rich
buddies in Florida, to the point where he had a meeting on North Korea in plain
view of his VIPs, who pay him a ton of money.
He won’t divest from his businesses, which is creating massive conflicts of interest and may even be in violation of the
Constitution.
He
rushed out his Muslim ban and the courts promptly halted it, and we have to
wonder if he even consulted with anyone knowledgeable about the law with that.
The 9th Circuit just rejected the Justice Department’s request to
put that case on hold pending a new order.
So
when the Post has to ask if Trump even knows
he’s president, we have to wonder the same thing.
We also have to assume that Trump will be pissed if he hears
about this op-ed because it makes him look like the buffoon he is, and he
already hates the Post. Not as much as The New York Times or CNN, but he hates them
enough.
The answer to Robinson’s question is, “No, he doesn’t know he’s
president, especially not in the same way every other president we’ve had knew
they were president.”
Author Rika
Christensen is an
experienced writer and loves debating politics. Engage with her and see more of
her work by following her on Facebook and Twitter.