Why Not?: "The Best People"

This is the seventh in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

"If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you."

Isaac Jaffe (character from Sports Night TV show, written by Aaron Sorkin)

This is not the first (or last) instinct in the world of Donald J. Trump.

John Dickerson wrote in his thoughtful book, The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency:

“Donald Trump repeatedly promised he would hire "the best people." He did not. That is not my opinion; it is President Trump's, which he expresses frequently. Trump has said that his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, was "dumb as a rock" and "lazy as hell." His attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was "scared stiff and Missing in Action," "didn't have a clue," and "should be ashamed of himself." Trump described one of his assistants, Omarosa Manigault Newman, as "wacky," "deranged," "vicious, but not smart," a "crazed, crying lowlife," and finally a "dog." After lasting only eleven days as communications director, Anthony Scaramucci "was quickly terminated 'from' a position that he was totally incapable of handling" and was called "very much out of control." An anonymous adviser to the president was called "a drunk/drugged-up loser." Chief strategist Steve Bannon was "sloppy," a "leaker," and "dumped like a dog by almost everyone." His longtime lawyer Michael Cohen was "TERRIBLE," "hostile," "a convicted liar & fraudster," and a "failed lawyer." The president was "Never a big fan!" of his White House counsel Don McGahn and "not even a little bit happy" with Jerome Powell, his selection to head the Federal Reserve, whom he called an "enemy." His third national security advisor, John Bolton, was mocked as a "tough guy [who] got us into Iraq." When the president was irritated with his former chief of staff, John Kelly, the president's press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, declared that Kelly "was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president." 

First Time Around

A number of former staff members have clearly stated their opinion about the former president's return to the White House:

Mike Pence (former Vice President)

“I cannot endorse President Trump’s continuing assertion that I should have set aside my oath to support and defend the Constitution and acted in a way that would have overturned the election in January of 2021."

 John Kelly (retired Marine general, former White House chief of staff)

“What can I add that has not already been said?... A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women... A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more that can be said... God help us.”

Mark Esper (former Secretary of Defense)

"In my view, any elected leader needs to meet some basic criteria: they need to be able to put country over self, they need to have a certain amount of integrity and principle, they need to be able to reach across the aisle and bring people together and unite the country. Look, Donald Trump doesn’t meet those marks for me."

Mark Milley (former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)

“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country... A fascist to the core.”

John Bolton (former U.S. National Security Advisor)

"Trump is unfit to be president... If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse... Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term."

In fact, the list of the Republicans who oppose Donald Trump is pretty extensive.

Second Time Around

I hesitate to speculate on who Mr. Trump will pick to be on his cabinet and in his administration - but I would not be surprised to see:

• Jeffrey Clark -  who played a key role in Trump administration's attempts to use the Department of Justice to keep the former president in office
• Stephen Miller - the chief architect of the Muslim travel ban and family separation policy during the former president's first administration... and was exposed to have white nationalist leanings
• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. - political candidate and environmental lawyer whose love for espousing conspiracy theories (vaccines cause autism, COVID targeting minorities, HIV not connected to AIDS, chemicals in the water causing transgenderism, etc.)
• Ken Paxton - current Attorney General of Texas... who was impeached by the Texas state House of Representatives in 2023 for alleged inappropriate favors done for donors, interference in federal investigations and retaliation against whistleblowers. He is also awaiting a much delayed trial on state securities fraud.
• Elon Musk - current owner of X/Twitter... and promoter of numerous conspiracy theories through his own X account, including some anti-Semitic posts. There are serious questions about his workplace ethics, particularly in the issues of sexual relationships with direct reports, drug use, and toxic work environments.

If you're interested in a deeper dive, Politico published a more extensive piece on this just a few days ago.

What's the Big Deal?

“Donald Trump believes he will be immune for anything he does once he’s in office. He will not respect the rulings of our courts, and people have to realize our courts can’t enforce their own rulings. So if a president refuses to carry out his obligation to do so, then we are no longer a nation of laws. The people that stopped him from his worst desires last time around won’t serve again."

(Liz Cheney, former chair of the House Republican Conference)

Important reminder: I am not attempting to defend the Biden administration or the Harris candidacy. I am simply pointing out that Donald Trump quickly gets rid of people who tell him the truth and is drawn to those who simply do his bidding - and that behavior does not deserve and will not receive my support.

The first post in this series focuses on tariff policy - at this point, Mr. Trump's belief that tariffs are a "magic wand" that can cure all sorts of problems - child care, grocery prices, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., etc. They're not.

The second post in this series focuses on immigration policy - the dehumanizing language, the abject lies, and the unbelievably foolish promises of mass deportation.

The third post in this series focuses on Mr. Trump's narcissism and potential cognitive decline.

The fourth post in this series focuses on the unbelievable record of lying by Mr. Trump.

The fifth post in this series focuses on the former president's support for those who brutally attacked police officers during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The sixth post in this series focuses on the extraordinarily odd decisions on the part of so many voters to support Mr. Trump despite his obvious disdain for their opinions and needs.

Why Not?: Things That Are Not Normal

This is the sixth in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

Things that are not normal:

Evangelical Christians who rail against sexual promiscuity and the decline of marriage supporting a guy who said (on tape):

"I did try and f*** her. She was married. I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. … I moved on her like a b***, but I couldn’t get there and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony t**s and everything... I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p***y. You can do anything.” 

U.S. military veterans voting for a man who dodged military service with bone spurs and made unbelievably tone-deaf comments about honor & sacrifice:

• “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” (speaking of Aisne-Marne American Cemetery with WWI dead)
• “suckers” (referring to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood)
• "Trump, after a separate trip to France in 2017, tells [John] Kelly he wants no wounded veterans in a military parade he’s trying to have planned in his honor. Inspired by the Bastille Day parade, except for the section of the parade featuring wounded French veterans in wheelchairs, Trump tells Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.” “Those are the heroes,” Kelly said. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are – and they are buried over in Arlington.” “I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”" (CNN reporting on John Kelly - former Trump chief of staff - statement)

Republican leaders who lived through the Cold War and the threat of the Soviet Union excusing the President of the United States when he stands next to the former KGB agent/leader of Russia and answers a question about Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election: 

"My people came to me. Dan Coats [Director of National Intelligence] came to me, and some others. They said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be." 

In other words, I am willing to believe the demagogic leader of a country over U.S. intelligence services.

And this admiration & excusing for Putin continues - on October 15th, the former president was asked about reporting by Bob Woodward that he had spoken with Putin multiple times since leaving office. His reply is... revealing.

"Well, I don't comment on that, but I will tell you that, if I did, it's a smart thing. If I'm friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that's a good thing, not a bad thing, in terms of a country. He's got 2,000 nuclear weapons, and so do we. China has a lot less, but they'll catch us within five years. If I have a relationship, I don't talk about... No, I don't talk about that. I don't ever say it, but I can tell you what, Russia has never had a president that they respect so much."

On October 17th, Mr. Trump opined that...

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him [President Zelensky of Ukraine], because I feel very badly for those people, but he should never have let that war start."

Reminder: the war was started by a full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine (following the annexation of Crimea 8 years earlier.)

Union workers backing Mr. Trump despite his complete disdain for their work and/or their livelihood:

“They get away with murder because they say, ‘Oh yes, we’re building cars.’ They don’t build cars. They take ’em out of a box, and they assemble ’em. We could have our child do it." (interview - Oct. 15, 2024)

“I know a lot about overtime. I hated to give overtime, I hated it. I’d get other people—I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay." (rally - Sept. 29, 2024)

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Here's the deal - there is no limit to the number of these kind of statements and behaviors by the former president that clearly indicate his lack of fitness to serve again. In just the last week, he's managed to:

• talk about the size of a dead golf legend's genitalia during a rally
• “When he took the showers with other pros, they came out of there. They said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable.’”
• stop answering questions at a town hall and have his staff play songs off his Spotify playlist for over 35 minutes
• "Let's not do any more questions. Let's just listen to music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?"
• referred to his supporters as "fat pigs"
• Tell them, ‘Jill, get your fat husband off the couch, get that fat pig off the couch. Tell him to go and vote for Trump, he’s going to save our country. Get him up, Jill, slap him around, get him up!'”
• called himself "the father of IVF" in a Fox News town hall
• "I'm the father of IVF. We really are the party for IVF. We want fertilization, and it's all the way and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and were out there on IVF, even more than them. So, we're totally in favor."
• suggested that Abraham Lincoln should have negotiated to keep the Civil War from happening
• “Lincoln was probably a great president although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled?”
• reframed the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as a "day of love"... in addition to putting himself on the side of the rioters
• "There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns. And when I say “we” these are people that walk down, this was a tiny percentage of the overall, which nobody sees and nobody shows. But that was a day of love from the standpoint of the millions, it’s like hundreds of thousands."

This is not normal... and you don't have to normalize it by voting for the former president.

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Important reminder: I am not attempting to defend the Biden administration or the Harris candidacy. I am simply pointing out that the obvious issues of cognitive decline and narcissism by Donald Trump do not deserve and will not receive my support.

The first post in this series focuses on tariff policy - at this point, Mr. Trump's belief that tariffs are a "magic wand" that can cure all sorts of problems - child care, grocery prices, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., etc. They're not.

The second post in this series focuses on immigration policy - the dehumanizing language, the abject lies, and the unbelievably foolish promises of mass deportation.

The third post in this series focuses on Mr. Trump's narcissism and potential cognitive decline.

The fourth post in this series focuses on the unbelievable record of lying by Mr. Trump.

The fifth post in this series focuses on the former president's support for those who brutally attacked police officers during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Why Not?: "Hostages"

This is the fifth in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

Just watch.

And the former president's response:

The moment we win, we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime. And I will sign their pardons on Day One.

Donald Trump (rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin - transcript) 

A reminder from NBC News:

Jan. 6 defendants were caught on tape brandishing or using firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive “Trump” billboard, “Trump” flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device during the brutal attack.

 And the pardon power the former president would yield is formidable (from NPR):

Trump would have wide latitude to issue pardons. Scholars have called that presidential power a "near-blank check," unrestrained by other branches of government.

"Legally, there's not much that Congress or the courts can do to stop the president from granting clemency," said Jeffrey Crouch, an assistant professor at American University and author of The Presidential Pardon Power.

Once again, the former president:

Yes, after playing a version of the national anthem sung by the J6 Prison Choir, Mr. Trump did use the words:

"You see the spirit from the hostages—and that’s what they are, is hostages... They’ve been treated terribly, and very unfairly... unbelievable patriots.” 

If you'd like to know more about those "heroes", The Bulwark published an excellent piece detailing some of their convictions entitled "Just Who Are Trump's January 6th Heroes?" And for a really deep dive, you can look at the searchable database of Capitol Breach Cases. (There are currently over 1,200 cases in the database.)

Returning the former president to the Oval Office invites a colossal injustice to the law enforcement officers involved (from CNN):

The Justice Department believes more police officers were injured in the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack than have been officially reported, a top prosecutor said Thursday.

In a news conference commemorating the third anniversary of the insurrection, Matthew Graves, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said it was “likely the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.”

“One hundred and forty officers guarding the Capitol that day reported physical injury, but we know from talking to the hundreds of officers guarding the Capitol that day that this 140 number undercounts the number of officers who were physically injured, let alone those who have suffered trauma as a result of the day’s events,” Graves said.

It is not "law & order" to pardon those who violently breached the U.S. Capitol in service of a narcissistic man who couldn't publicly admit he lost an election.

You are doomed! You call evil good and call good evil. You turn darkness into light and light into darkness. You make what is bitter sweet, and what is sweet you make bitter. (Isaiah 5:20 GNT)

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The first post in this series focuses on tariff policy - at this point, Mr. Trump's belief that tariffs are a "magic wand" that can cure all sorts of problems - child care, grocery prices, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., etc. They're not.

The second post in this series focuses on immigration policy - the dehumanizing language, the abject lies, and the unbelievably foolish promises of mass deportation.

The third post in this series focuses on Mr. Trump's narcissism and potential cognitive decline.

The fourth post in this series focuses on the unbelievable record of lying by Mr. Trump.

Classic: Card Games & Paint Splatters

By now, pretty much everyone who reads this blog is aware that I'm somewhat obsessed with my hobby, collecting & playing board games. (Those of you who've seen the game room are sniggering at my use of the word "somewhat" in the previous sentence - stop it.) One part of my enjoyment of the hobby is online conversations about board games with other folks who share my enthusiasm.

One of those conversations seventeen years ago took a very interesting turn. We had been talking about a new "take that" card game (one of the best known "take that" games is Mille Bornes) which has weak gameplay & even weaker card art. That got some folks wondering about the ugliest card art they'd ever seen... which then led someone to bring the cliché that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". And then I felt compelled to tell my story:

I'm reminded of our visit to the Art Institute in Chicago... after hours of perusing art by Seurat, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Van Gogh and others, we found ourselves in the lower reaches of the Institute, in the "Contemporary" section. 

After looking rather askew at a Jackson Pollock (I understand intellectually that I'm looking at something "fraught w/meaning", but it still looks like paint spatter to me), we turned to see a small African-American woman in a guard's uniform standing beside. 

"I painted that," she said... and smiled. 

My wife & I laughed and turned to look at an abstract nude of an obviously overweight woman to our left. 

"That's my mother-in-law," she said. 

I don't think I ever appreciated art quite as much as I did that afternoon.

Matthew Frederick responded:

One afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after having spent a week straight touring the city with my daughter, I plopped down exhausted on a bench to wait for her to finish with something and come find me.
I'd felt exactly as you do about Pollock, that it was just paint splatters, and that though in theory I should see something or be moved, there just wasn't anything there for me. Turns out I was sitting across from a huge Pollock, but I pretty much ignored it. Suddenly, though, WHAM, I could see it. Motion, and flow, and depth. The painting was simply stunning. My brain had finally worked it out. 

To this day I can immediately find depth in Pollock paintings, but my brain's never quite worked out improvised jazz. Similar to the Pollock, I know it's a matter of my brain "getting it," and perhaps someday it will. I'll never forget my sudden awakening to the painting style, though, and the realization that there are some things that I just don't get yet, but that doesn't mean there's nothing there.
(Not saying that you're saying there's not... just a memory and an observation.)

To which I responded:

Actually, Matthew, you've just given me one of the best sermon/message illustrations ever. That's the way I feel when I try to explain the grace of Jesus Christ to someone - like I'm talking & talking and they're looking at me like I'm trying to describe a Jackson Pollock painting. 

And then there's that moment when they "get it"... sweet.

With some more time to think about it, I've come to a trio of interesting conclusions about art & faith:

1. I think we feel like it's our "Christian duty" to be able to explain everything there is to know about an infinite God... it's this impulse that leads televangelists to claim to know why God allowed 9/11 or a Christian friend to jump quickly to "they're better off in heaven" to a grieving friend. Since we can see, as Matthew put it, the "motion & flow & depth" of a life that orbits around Jesus, we want desperately for other people to see it, too.
2. According to the Bible, our primary obligation is to live a life of "motion, flow & depth" - to do what Jesus did. (Romans 8:29) We should be "prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" (1 Peter 3:15), but that verse doesn't imply that we should explain the ways of God. Our responsibility is to tell our own story... (BTW, explaining the ways of God is gonna be pretty darn difficult when the Bible claims that "his ways are higher than our ways" (Isaiah 55:9).)
3. Finally, notice how Matthew ended up in front of the Jackson Pollock painting. He wasn't planning to be there - but someone (the curator) had placed a bench where he could take his time to soak it in. Another part of our job as followers of Christ is to metaphorically put up paintings & place benches so that people can have the opportunity to examine Jesus... the chance to have one of those moments where the "motion, flow & depth" becomes clear... a moment where they can clearly experience the grace of God. Our churches need to be that kind of place - where people weary from life can come in, sit down & see what it looks like when people in love with Jesus give themselves to Him 100%

This article was adapted from an article originally published in the 7/26/07 edition of the Grapevine, the newsletter of NewLife Community Church.

Why Not?: Lies

This is the fourth in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

The Wikipedia article entitled "False or misleading statements by Donald Trump" starts with this editing note:

This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. 

That is an understatement.

What follows is a series of scattered thoughts on truth, lies, and what that has to do with the Republican candidate for president.

Lies

Both my sons knew growing up that lying was an especially egregious misstep in our house. We emphasized over and over that doing something wrong but admitting it was vastly preferable to lying about it. Our discipline was different if you were caught in a lie.

When I was dealing with a senior pastor's affair (as a staff member), one of the most thoughtful pieces of advice came from another church staff member halfway across the country who'd dealt with a similar situation. He noted that while the adultery was obviously a sin and disqualifying, the process of hiding the affair from so many people had given the pastor a master class in learning how to lie.... and that level of comfort with falsehood called more than just his sexual fidelity to his marriage into question.

At this point, I'll note that Mr. Trump's well-publicized marriages, affairs, divorces, and accusations of sexual assault might be an initial indication of "a level of comfort with falsehood."

Politicians Lie

In anticipation of some folks instant response to broaching this subject, I'm happy to admit that politicians do lie. Sometimes it's intentional - a way to escape a difficult question and/or something stupid they said or did previously; other times, it's an accident born of exhaustion or mixing up two sets of information. But they do it.

That said, they don't do with the casual ease and/or prodigious volume of the former president. Who, it should be noted, returns to his previous lies as a dog returns to his own vomit. (Gross analogy, I know - but I borrowed straight from Scripture.)

As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.

Proverbs 26:11 NIV

Helene

In the last week or so, Mr. Trump has - along with many right-wing conspiracy-minded people - amplified blatantly false information about the rescue and recovery efforts taking place in the aftermath of the hurricane that decimated western North Carolina and portions of eastern Tennessee. The fetid stew of outright lies about government inaction, "the great replacement theory", voting by illegal immigrants, and accusations of denying assistance to Republican areas is not only politically unwise - it's a sin.

2020

Three things for you to consider amidst the relentless barrage of falsehoods:

• Fox News paid a $787.5 million dollar settlement to avoid trial with a Dominion Voting Systems - the actual testimony taken during discovery in that trial is a clear indication of the lack of evidence of voter fraud.
• Two pieces of reading material for you:
• Select January 6th Committee Final Report and Supporting Materials Collection
• Government's Motion for Immunity Determination in U.S. v Donald J. Trump

Yes, I've read the final report and immunity determination motion in full. I'm not just pointing you there. When it comes to assessing the truth of documents like these, you need to consider a couple of ideas that I've written about before: Occam's Razor and the difficulty of actually stealing a national election.

Truth

You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another.

Leviticus 19:11 NASB

God can’t stomach liars; he loves the company of those who keep their word.

Proverbs 12:22 MSG

For there is nothing hidden now which will not become perfectly plain and there are no secrets now which will not become as clear as daylight.

Luke 8:17 PHILLIPS

Therefore, rejecting all falsehood [whether lying, defrauding, telling half-truths, spreading rumors, any such as these], speak truth each one with his neighbor, for we are all parts of one another [and we are all parts of the body of Christ].

Ephesians 4:25 AMP

And, to close, an appropriate musical interlude...

The trouble with lies

When you tell them you still got to sell them

With the look in your eyes

Oh, that's the trouble with lies

As far as I'm concerned

With the lessons I've learned

I'm determined to try and survive

Without lies

The trouble with lies

Is that you start to forget where the real man hides

Adam Again ("Trouble With Lies" from their album Ten Songs)

Important reminder: I am not attempting to defend the Biden administration or the Harris candidacy. I am simply pointing out that the obvious issues of falsehood and deceit by Donald Trump do not deserve and will not receive my support.

The first post in this series focuses on tariff policy - at this point, Mr. Trump's belief that tariffs are a "magic wand" that can cure all sorts of problems - child care, grocery prices, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., etc. They're not.

The second post in this series focuses on immigration policy - the dehumanizing language, the abject lies, and the unbelievably foolish promises of mass deportation.

The third post in this series focuses on Mr. Trump's narcissism and potential cognitive decline.

Why Not?: Bragging & Weaving

This is the third in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

One of the ways you can tell when you've stumbled onto someone's trigger issues is their repeated attempts to explain and/or excuse that behavior. In my case, it's self-deprecating jokes about my board game collection. (While I love playing board games, I still feel a little bit like a teenager who still wants to play with blocks & Lincoln Logs sometimes - worrying about what other folks think about my "juvenile" hobby.)

Bragging

For the former president, the most obvious trigger is crowd size. From the patently ridiculous "my inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's crowd size" in January of 2017 to his debate behavior in September 2024, questioning the size of his audience has been a sure-fire way to produce a response. It's even continued with recent lies about being forced to turn 50k people away in Wisconsin:

In Waunakee and again in Milwaukee, Trump claimed 50,000 to 60,000 people were turned away from his Saturday rally in Prairie du Chien. About a thousand people were standing in line to get into the rally, but the auditorium sat somewhere near 300 people. Crawford County, where Prairie du Chien is located, has a population of about 16,000.

The rally was initially planned to be held outdoors but switched to indoors over Secret Service staffing concerns. The agency was responsible for securing the United Nations General Assembly summit in New York on the same day.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10/1/24

Weaving

Another trigger point for Mr. Trump is descriptions of his campaign rally speeches as rambling, disjointed, and/or a "word salad buffet" (credit to his former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci). In late August, the former president responded with a creative explanation:

"...you know I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I'll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together. And it's like -- and friends of mine that are like English professors, they say, "It's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen." But the fake news, you know what they say? "He rambled." That's not rambling when you have -- what you do is you get off a subject to mention another little tidbit, then you get back onto the subject, and you go through this, and you do it for two hours, and you don't even mispronounce one word."
Donald Trump (rally in Johnstown, PA 8/30/24)

Setting aside the obvious nonsensical lie about his friends who are English professors (the Trump campaign refused to name any of these professors when asked by the New York Times), I'll note that as I am an actual English major (B.A. in English, Baylor University 1986 - with a particular focus on the works of John Steinbeck), to me "the weave" sounds dangerously like an excuse for meandering circumlocutory wanderings through the corners of the speaker's mind.

I'm reminded of this classic bit from season 7 (admittedly, the low point in the series) of Gilmore Girls:

The former president sounds somewhat like Lorelai Gilmore when attempting to answer a question about inflation:

It is probably the question I get most. They say you’re going to vote with your stomach. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, but it’s a little bit true. And groceries, food has gone up at levels that nobody’s ever seen before. We’ve never seen anything like it, 50, 60, 70%. You take a look at bacon and some of these products and some people don’t eat bacon anymore, and we are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down… This was caused by their horrible energy wind. They want wind all over the place, but when it doesn’t blow, we have a little problem. This was caused by energy. This was really caused by energy and also their unbelievable spending. They’re spending us out of wealth. Actually, they’re taking our wealth away, but it was caused by energy. And what they’ve done is they started cutting way back. We were in third place. When I left, we were by far in first place beating Russia, beating Saudi, Arabia, and we were going to dominate to a level that we’ve never seen before. And then we had a bad election. I’ll be very nice. I’m supposed to be nice when I talk about the election because everybody’s afraid to talk about, “Oh, please sir don’t talk about the election, please.” If you can’t talk about a bad election, you really don’t have a democracy if you think about it, right? But what they did, Tulsi, is they took back the oil production, the oil started going crazy. That started the inflation. 

Donald Trump (town hall in La Crosse, WI 9/3/24)

To recap, Mr. Trump's answer was:

• groceries have gone up 50-70%
• people aren't eating bacon any more
• we are going to get energy prices lower (not sure how he made that jump in a single sentence)
• the energy issue is caused by using wind to generate energy
• side comment about how wind isn't a legit energy source
• current administration is causing this by spending too much money
• no, wait a minute, it's energy - because current administration cut back
• digression to talk about how he's not supposed to talk about the 2020 election (which was, in his words, "a bad election")
• returned to complain about reduced oil production
• blamed the start of inflation on reduced oil production

He goes on to talk  about ANWR and oil production and finally slides to a finish with promising the questioner that if he's elected, "We’re going to become the energy capital of the world. We’re going to pay down our debt, and we’re going to reduce your taxes still further, and your groceries are going to come tumbling down, and your interest rates are going to be tumbling down. And then you’re going to go out. You’re going to buy a beautiful house, okay? You’re going to buy a beautiful house that’s called the American Dream. The American Dream."

So, inflation leads to bacon to energy production to wind farms to oil to the 2020 election to oil to inflation to ANWR to economic nirvana to buying the American dream. 

Monkey monkey underpants.

A question about the cost of child care provoked a similar response:

But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that because - look, child care is child care - couldn't, you know, it's something - you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to, but they'll get used to it very quickly. And it's not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care.

Donald Trump (talk with Economic Club of New York 9/5/24)

More monkeys, more underpants. And more "tariffs are the magic bullet that solves everything." Sheesh.

The New York Times did an extensive article on how his speeches are becoming increasingly more angry and more rambling, using one campaign rally stop as an example:

He does not stick to a single train of thought for long. During one 10-minute stretch in Mosinee, Wis., last month, for instance, he ping-ponged from topic to topic: Ms. Harris’s record; the virtues of the merit system; Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement; supposed corruption at the F.D.A., the C.D.C. and the W.H.O.; the Covid-19 pandemic; immigration; back to the W.H.O.; China; Mr. Biden’s age; Ms. Harris again; Mr. Biden again; chronic health problems and childhood diseases; back to Mr. Kennedy; the “Biden crime family”; the president’s State of the Union address; Franklin D. Roosevelt; the 25th Amendment; the “parasitic political class”; Election Day; back to immigration; Senator Tammy Baldwin; back to immigration; energy production; back to immigration; and Ms. Baldwin again.

description by New York Times (transcript of full rally)

Linguist John McWhorter noted in an interview with NPR that the former president may have a method to this verbal madness - but not an emotionally healthy one.

The idea that Trump has that what he's doing is this kind of jaunty character trait called the weave is interesting. And he's not completely out of his mind on that, in that most of us are not as organized in how we manage topics in the heat of a casual conversation. I mean, casual speech is much less tidy than we often think. But when I listen to Trump, what I hear is a kind of verbal narcissism. And what I mean by that is that very often, the connection between point A and point B is something that's very difficult to understand. You have to almost parse it as if it was something in the Talmud, whereas it makes sense to him.

In other words, he can't be bothered to make the connection for us. He's not speaking to us, trying to communicate with us in any real way beyond, you know, the very primal aspect of it. He could be this way at 25. There are people who talk that way at 20. I don't think it's dementia. I think that it's a more elemental problem with his nature, which perhaps has gotten worse as he's gotten older, but I think it's less a matter of his aging than the fact that he knows he can get away with it.

John McWhorter (interview with NPR 9/13/24)

Other commentators have noted that his performance at these rallies is showing signs of cognitive decline:

“The reason he’s now offering these convoluted explanations of his speech patterns in his public appearances is because he’s hyper-aware that people have noted that he’s making even less sense than he used to,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is a reflection of someone who’s very troubled and very desperate.”...

"It’s certainly doing more harm than good right now because he no longer has the foil of Joe Biden to bounce off of. Biden had become so visibly diminished and the media was more ready to take Biden to task on it on a regular basis. That allowed Trump to skate by. Now that he has a different, younger, more acute and vibrant political opponent, I think it does for him because he now often looks ridiculous or unhinged, unfocused or very, very old,” he said.
Timothy O'Brien (quoted in The Guardian)

...just a few days after attacking Harris as “a very dumb person,” Trump held an event in Wisconsin in which he struggled to pronounce United Arab Emirates, flubbed the basics of hurricane season, mixed up Iran with North Korea, falsely claimed government agencies can’t determine the U.S. population, and referred to an African country before concluding, “I don’t know what that is.”

A Washington Post report told readers soon after, “Trump, 78, often speaks in a digressive, extemporaneous style that thrills his fans at large-scale rallies. But Tuesday’s event, in front of almost entirely reporters, was especially scattered and hard to follow.”

commentary from MSNBC (video of full rally speech)

Final Thoughts

Both of these trigger points are indicators of greater issues - an inability to focus, a narcissistic outlook on the world, and the possibility of mental & emotional decline.

I was personally willing to oppose hiring an individual with narcissistic tendencies to serve as a part-time worship pastor , even as it led to twenty-four hours of professional mediation and my eventual resignation from that church. I cannot possibly support someone with those same tendencies to occupy the the position of the President of the country I love.

Finally, if you doubt what I'm saying (or what the "lamestream media" is saying), I'd strongly suggest you spend some time watching and/or reading the transcripts from Mr. Trump's rallies over the past couple of months. It's easy to do thanks to the website, Rev.

Important reminder: I am not attempting to defend the Biden administration or the Harris candidacy. I am simply pointing out that the obvious issues of narcissism and scattered thinking/speaking by Donald Trump do not deserve and will not receive my support.

The first post in this series focuses on tariff policy - at this point, Mr. Trump's belief that tariffs are a "magic wand" that can cure all sorts of problems - child care, grocery prices, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., etc. They're not.

The second post in this series focuses on immigration policy - the dehumanizing language, the abject lies, and the unbelievably foolish promises of mass deportation.

Why Not?: Immigration

This is the second in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

When I started writing this post, the presidential debate between Vice President Harris and former president Donald Trump was only a few days in the rear view mirror. I began trying to pen a thoughtful if overly long blog entry about my numerous political, practical, ethical, moral, and spiritual objections to the former president's immigration rhetoric and policies.

The avalanche of nativist/xenophobic rhetoric from the former president and his campaign over the last couple of weeks has completely overwhelmed my ability to summarize my rejection of Mr. Trump's immigration lies and pipe dreams. Instead, I'm going to give you the barest of outlines along with a number of excellent deep dive resources to scratch the surface of these issues.

In fact, let's start there. Immigration is complicated. As long as folks are intent on dumbing it down to "build a wall" or "send them back", it is impossible to juggle the myriad of concerns involved: international trade, border security, preventing drug smuggling, welcoming genuine refugees and asylum seekers, promoting healthy legal immigration, import & exports, supporting the proper use of student and work visas, etc. 

Second, our legal immigration system is, at best, completely overwhelmed and thus increases the likelihood of individuals using illegal means to immigrate, among a number of other negative effects on the U.S. The former president is intent on making legal immigration more difficult.

• Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible (Cato Institute)
• Trump reveals new pledge amid Haitian refugee controversy: 'I will save our cities' (Fox News)

Third, legal immigration is actually a positive thing for the United States - providing economic benefits through productivity and keeping the falling birth rate from undercutting our economy. (Yes, that's a gross oversimplification - remember, immigration is a complicated issue.)

• The 14 Most Common Arguments against Immigration and Why They’re Wrong (Cato Institute)

Fourth, mass deportation is a ridiculous idea that appeals to the worst impulses of Americans - and, if actually implemented, will cause unbelievable economic hardship as well as untold amounts of suffering. 

• Trump's deportation army (The Watch - Radley Balko)

“A significant part of Republican immigration policy centers on the possibility of deporting 12 million people (or ‘self-deporting’ them). Think about it: we conservatives (rightly) mistrust the government to efficiently administer business loans and regulate our food supply, yet we allegedly believe that it can deport millions of unregistered aliens. The notion fails to pass the laugh test." (J.D. Vance, writing about immigration in 2012)

• JD Vance got a former professor to delete a blog post Vance wrote in 2012 attacking GOP over anti-immigrant rhetoric (CNN)

Fifth, the best chance Republicans have had at a bipartisan immigration bill was shot down by candidate Trump because he wanted the issue to campaign on rather than an attempt to mitigate the problem.

• Abandoned by his colleagues after negotiating a border compromise, GOP senator faces backlash alone (AP News)
• Trump says ‘blame it on me’ if border bill fails (The Hill)

Sixth, Donald Trump's language about immigrants is woefully tone-deaf (a charitable reading) - but more in line with far-right white supremacist rhetoric.

• "Remigration" - Trump’s Alarming Use Of A Word With A Deep Fascist History (Huffpost)
• "Poisoning the blood of our country" - Trump says immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ Biden campaign likens comments to Hitler. (NBC News)
• "These people are trying to get them to vote, and that's why they're allowing them into our country" (Great Replacement theory) - How Trump is relying on a racist conspiracy theory to question election results (NPR)
• "Shithole countries" - Trump: Why allow immigrants from ‘shithole countries’? (AP News)

Finally, the Haitian illegal immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio story is a lie. I saved this one until the end because it galls me that this is the level we've descended to in attempting to discuss an important policy issue - making up crap to score points. 

"The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do...” (J.D. Vance on ABC's State of the Union show on Sept. 15 - emphasis mine)

• The Lies They Tell (To The Contrary - Charlie Sykes)
• The Making of the MAGA Hoax About Pet-Eating Haitians (The Unpopulist - Cathy Young)

The immigrants in Springfield are primarily Haitian refugees on Temporary Protected Status - not illegals. And the eating pets accusation is not only unproven - it's been debunked by the source: a Trump shirt-wearing woman whose cat went missing and was found. The true story of Springfield is a profoundly American story - of the difficulties of assimilation, the economic benefits to a dying city of immigration, and the echoes of nativist fear-mongering persisting to the present day.

• What JD Vance and Donald Trump don't want you to know about Springfield (The Watch - Radley Balko)
• The Exotic Cat-Eaters of Springfield, Ohio (The Dispatch - Kevin Williamson)

Vance has turned Solzhenitsyn’s maxim on its head: “Let the lie come into the world, but only through me, and only if I get something good out of it.” A man who is not suffering from whatever disease of the soul with which Vance is afflicted would have a hard time even imagining wanting to be vice president—of all petty things!—that bad. A different and better sort of man would understand that bearing false witness against 15,000 poor and vulnerable people in the pursuit of political power is the same as bearing false witness against anybody else. 

But I’ll give Vance the last word. Here he is on Twitter, back when Twitter was Twitter and J.D. Vance was J.D. Vance: “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this, I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.” (Kevin Williamson)

A Closing Thought for those of us who follow Christ

You must not oppress a foreign resident; you yourselves know how it feels to be a foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. [Exodus 23:9 HCSB]

Important reminder: I am not attempting to defend the Biden administration's record on immigration. I am simply pointing out that the casual cruelty, the dehumanizing language, and the destructive policies advocated by Donald Trump do not deserve and will not receive my support.

The first post in this series focuses on tariff policy - at this point, Mr. Trump's "magic wand" that can cure all sorts of problems - child care, grocery prices, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., etc. It's not.

Why Not?: Tariffs

This is the first in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

For someone who graduated from the Wharton School (albeit graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Economics rather than an MBA), Mr. Trump has little or no understanding of how tariffs actually work.

Let's start simple: a tariff is a tax on foreign goods, not on a foreign country. The Chinese government is not paying the tariff to the American government... despite what the former president asserts:

We're doing tariffs on other countries. Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we've done for the world. And the tariff will be substantial in some cases. I took in billions and billions of dollars, as you know, from China. [Donald Trump from the presidential debate on Sept. 10]

The tariff is paid to the U.S. government by the importer of the item(s) - not the exporter. That cost is most often passed on to American consumers & businesses. (Occasionally, the exporter will choose to reduce the wholesale cost of the item(s) to the importer in order to keep from raising the price in the American market, but they are not required to do so.)

Tariffs don't lead naturally to lower prices - in fact, they can do the opposite:

...high or unpredictable tariffs can reduce potential supply and give domestic producers more market power over U.S. consumers who, thanks to the tariff, have fewer alternatives, and this can and often does increase the prices of the American-made goods even higher than they were before the tariff. These kinds of price-boosting effects are precisely why U.S. manufacturers—like this guy—lobby for tariff protection. [Scott Lincicome in his Capitolism newsletter on Sept. 11]

Important safety tip, courtesy of Professor Don Boudreaux (George Mason University):

Tariffs protect domestic producers from foreign competition only if and insofar as they raise the prices that consumers pay for imports, for only by raising imports’ prices are consumers incited to purchase more domestically produced goods. It’s not merely that, as Mr. Stuttaford writes, “the importer may, if its competitive position allows, pass on that cost to its customer.” A protective tariff serves its purpose only if the importer passes on at least part of that cost to its customer. The very purpose of tariffs is to increase demand for domestically produced goods by raising the prices that consumers pay for imports. A tariff that doesn’t raise prices paid by consumers doesn’t protect domestic producers. [post on Cafe Hayek on June 19]

So, if you want to protect American industries/businesses, using tariffs will end up raising costs to American importers, who will - in all likelihood - pass that cost onto businesses, retailers, and consumers.

Of course, that's not how Mr. Trump sees it. When asked about tariff costs being passed onto consumers during the debate, he answered:

They aren't gonna have higher prices what's gonna have and who's gonna have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years. I charge, I was the only president ever China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars and so were other countries and you know if she doesn't like 'em they should have gone out and they should have immediately cut the tariffs but those tariffs are there three and a half years now under their administration. We are gonna take in billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. [Donald Trump from the presidential debate on Sept. 10]

Honestly, a single sentence in this statement is one of the few moments where I will agree with the former president. The Biden administration left tariffs in place that the Trump administration started... which undercuts them making an argument about tariffs. However, it's not my job to defend the Biden administration.

On the other hand, Mr. Trump's assertion that we are hurting China and "all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years" coupled with the assurance that "they aren't gonna have higher prices" doesn't pass the smell test. Remember, China isn't paying the tariff (though large tariffs affect businesses in their country) - Americans are.

Please understand - this is a highly over-simplified discussion of a complicated economic problem. But even at this level, it's easy to see that the former president either (a) is willfully lying to the public about how tariffs affect American consumers & businesses as well as other countries on whom we impose tariffs, or (b) isn't able to actually understand the effects himself.

The primary concern here is that the power to enact tariffs - given to Congress in the Constitution but delegated to the President under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 in cases of "national security" - is one that can be exercised without much oversight. If, as I posited above, Mr. Trump doesn't understand (or doesn't care) about the effects of extensive tariffs, giving him that power is unwise.

I'll give Scott Lincicome the last word from his excellent Dispatch newsletter:

An intellectually honest pro-tariff case would go something like this: Yes, U.S. tariffs have real and significant economic and geopolitical costs on net, but those costs are a necessary price Americans must pay to achieve a core federal government objective (typically national security). I do occasionally see this argument when it comes to China, but in general it’s most definitely not what most American protectionists are offering today. Instead, tariffs are a magical policy that’s all benefits and no costs. They protect American jobs and security, boost industry and innovation, and advance our strategic interests abroad with both enemies and allies alike. We can use them to solve any problem—even child care and the national debt!—and, perhaps best of all, foreigners will foot the bill.

You don’t need a Ph.D. to see some of the flaws in these claims. Think about this stuff for more than a second, and problems emerge: If tariffs make us money and boost the economy, why stop at 10 or even 20 percent? If tariffs don’t raise prices here, then how do they protect American workers from “predatory dumping” or “cheap labor” (or whatever)? If tariffs achieve Real Free Trade, then why do we still have so many in place, some for literally centuries? And on and on. Most of the myths shrivel in the dimmest of sunlight, yet they persist if not flourish. [Scott Lincicome in his Capitolism newsletter on Sept. 11]

For much more detailed reading on tariffs, I recommend the previously linked articles as well as the Cato Institute's extensive Separating Tariff Facts from Tariff Fictions report.