Get ready for a really angry Donald Trump.
Probably angry like we’ve not seen him since – well, Charlottesville.
In the wake of a Trump supporter with a van adorned with anti-Democratic and anti-media memes being charged in connection with the recent mail bombs terror – Trump seems to be feeling cornered by the public’s need for him to be presidential and his inability to be so. Much as what happened in Charlottesville just over a year ago.
Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, of Aventura, Fla., was charged federally Friday with sending explosive packages to at least a dozen of the president’s critics, apparently bringing to a close a bombing spree that has gripped the country just ahead of the midterm elections. Asked why Sayoc had sent the bombs to Democrats, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the suspect “appears to be a partisan.”
Sayoc’s Facebook page shows a photo of him in a red “Make America Great Again” hat at a Trump rally he attended during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Clearly Trump did not make Sayoc commit the crimes with which he is charged. Still, Trump must understand that his words – perhaps more than anyone else’s – matter.
Some Americans (and Sayoc appears to have been one) hear the president’s talk of punches for protesters and jail times for his political opponents as a call to arms.
What many other Americans see and hear when the sower of division and hatred calls for peace, is a proverbial wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.
It’s a simple matter of trust.
Conservative columnist Michael Gerson wrote Thursday: “You can’t call women cruel and misogynist names, defame ethnic groups, discriminate based on religion, accuse opponents of being ‘un-American’ and ‘treasonous,’ excuse and encourage violence by your supporters, threaten political rivals with prison, tear migrant children from the arms of parents and then credibly call for national ‘unity’ when it is politically useful.”
Trump, to his credit, did try the unity message, and for a few hours on Thursday, he let those few sentences he read with decorum off the teleprompter echo. But, as after the Charlottesville white supremacists’ rally, he couldn’t seem to stay on the high road. At a rally in Wisconsin he veered off. And on Friday, after the arrest and extensive television coverage of the van with windows plastered with pro-Trump stickers and a Hillary Clinton face in target crosshairs, he began to speak what was in his heart, rather than on his talking points. He wrapped himself in victimhood.
The media is treating him – Trump – unfairly, the president told reporters. It was the media’s fault that a troubled man stands accused of acting out dark tweets and political campaign stage threats.
Gerson wasn’t buying it. “This is like a leper blaming the mirror for his sores,” he wrote.
In Charlottesville, where a white supremacist ran his car into a crowd of counter-protesters and killed a woman, Trump was quick to use two magic blame words: “both sides.” As in, there’s blame on “both sides.”
Sometimes there is, but that’s not an excuse to brush away wrong. Last year a left-leaner, James Hodgkinson, opened fire on Republican congressmen as they practiced for a charity baseball game, wounding several people, most seriously Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana. But Bernie Sanders, whom Hodgkinson supported, didn’t cry foul, didn’t raise the false flag of ‘both sides’ or accuse the media of being unfair to him when they reported the leanings and motives of the gunman.
Our problem isn’t broad-brush incivility in our politics, it’s the constant diet of the president’s unfailing mentorship of bullying and incivility. He’s quick to say “only I” can fix something, but if it breaks, it’s always someone else’s fault.
Actually, our problem isn’t our president’s incivility – it’s his instability.
So where is the vice president? Where is the GOP majority leadership – Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell? Where are the usual, and real, go-to leaders of the GOP – Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, who, though they are lame ducks, will be in the Senate until early January. Where is the Cabinet?
Apparently, they are all cowering in any corner they can find, fearful of being Twitter-swatted by the president when they really need to fear Americans’ impending ballot-box disgust at being, once again, left home alone.
Let’s show them the door and make Trump the lame duck. Election Day is Nov. 6.