Hurricane Katrina was a defining disaster for George Bush because it revealed two fatal flaws: his administration’s incompetence and its callous disregard for the safety of people of color. Trump’s response to the calamity in Puerto Rico makes it clear that his White House is similarly afflicted.
But Trump has done what no other failed President ever did publicly: enthusiastically embrace--in language so plain that it is not subject to interpretation—naked, vicious cruelty.
Cruelty is the defining aspect of his tenure in the White House, and it has put a bleak, nasty public face on this country.
Trump is a wartime President. To this point Trump has not declared war on a foreign adversary--not, certainly with the Russians who interfered in our election--but on most Americans: everyone who voted against him last year, women, the press, his own party, the opposition party, his own Cabinet, his own White House staff, Congress, the judiciary, the U.S. military, every U.S. intelligence agency, Hispanics, African Americans, American Muslims, disabled people, government employees, Puerto Ricans, Californians, New Yorkers, the residents of Washington D.C., Facebook users who disagree with him, the National Football League--the list grows daily.
Anyone or anything that does not obsequiously kiss that increasingly vast, pale Trumpian ass is quickly subjected to shaming, bullying, obscenities, character assassination, slurs on their parentage, and attacks on their patriotism. Trump’s tweets this morning sneering at and blaming the victims in Puerto Rico are particularly cruel, but they are just the latest in the never-ending, daily stream of proofs that our President is not only a disaster but a truly mean, vile bastard.
