"I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf."
Donald J. Trump, August, 2016
On May 5th, ABC’s David Muir, whom I greatly admire, had a one-on-one interview with President Trump after he’d toured a Honeywell facility in Arizona making Personal Protective Equipment for first responders. A vain president apparently did so without a mask, setting a poor example for Americans and showing disrespect for the masked employees.
Despite Muir’s direct questions, the president fudged on many answers, pointed fingers at others, offered several unsubstantiated claims.
Examining just one exchange, Muir asked, “What did you do when you became president to restock those cupboards that you say were bare?”
Trump continues to falsely claim the federal stockpile of emergency medicine and supplies he inherited from his predecessor was an “empty shelf.” Although the contents of the repository are not publicized, “the Strategic National Stockpile reportedly contained vast amounts of materials that state and local health officials could use during an emergency, including vaccines, antiviral drugs, ventilators and protective gear for doctors and nurses.”
President Trump: “Well, I'll be honest. I have a lot of things going on.”
Yes, he did! During his first three years in office, Trump managed to attend some 82 campaign-style rallies and reportedly played golf on his or other courses 264 times. Then, on a near-nightly basis, he spent untold hours Tweeting; recycling disproven conspiracy theories, dreaming up childish names for Democrats he doesn’t like, berating his perceived political enemies and former White Staff personnel who placed their loyalty to the constitution and doing what was right above blind loyalty to the president; while often praising the actions and words of autocrats like Putin, Xi, MBS and even Kim.
The President continued, “We had a lot of people that refused to allow the country to be successful.”
The president continues to believe and try to convince his base that his opponents hate America. Simply because someone dislikes or distrust the president doesn’t make them un-American; most are honorable people who, while they want American and Americans to succeed, have a different vision of how to achieve those goals.
Trump went on; “They wasted a lot of time on Russia, Russia, Russia. That turned out to be a total hoax,”
It seems the president and Putin are the only ones who echo the false rhetoric that Russian intervention in the 2016 elections is a hoax. Every U.S. intelligence agency and even the Republican-dominated Senate Committee on Intelligence’s concluded that the “Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the goal of putting Donald Trump in the Oval Office.”
He continued: “Then they did Ukraine, Ukraine and that was a total hoax,”
The jury is still out with the majority of Republicans supporting the president’s “hoax” claim while most Democrats believe Trump withheld Congressionally-approved military aid for a quid pro quo of an investigation into the Bidens.
Trump finally lamented: “then they impeached the president of the United States for absolutely no reason,” which he continues to label as a “coup”.
This was not a coup (a coup d'état is defined as “the forcible removal of an existing government from power through violent means.”). It was a constitutionally authorized process which, as with the two prior impeachments, was highly partisan in both the House and Senate.
Prior to March 2020, the president simply ignored warnings from the intelligence community, a number of infectious disease experts and even several senior members of the White House staff that a future pandemic posed a national threat and the coronavirus was coming to America.
