Opinion: Is Trump poisoning everyone around him?
Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, Oct. 21, 2017. Good news: The Dodgers start playing in the World Series on Tuesday. Bad news: The forecast high for downtown Los Angeles that day is 102 degrees. Let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.
The case in point is retired Marine Corp. Gen. John F. Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff and the most recent well-regarded official serving in the administration to sacrifice his credibility in service of this president. When Trump came under fire for his insultingly tone-deaf condolence call to the widow of an Army sergeant who was on her way to pick up her husband’s remains, it was Kelly — himself the father of a soldier killed while serving his country — who appeared before cameras to defend the president. In so doing, he attacked the member of Congress who was with the grieving widow when Trump called and later disclosed the president’s cringe-worthy comments to the media.
Problem is, in a wholly unnecessary and tasteless attack on Rep.
On Tuesday, Trump finally called the families and reportedly told the pregnant widow of Sgt. La David Johnson that her husband knew what he was getting into — then acknowledged that this wouldn’t make her grief any less painful. Trump denied he acted so boorishly, tweeting that Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), who revealed the comments and has been backed up by the sergeant’s mother, “totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!” Sadder is that the American people can’t believe any claim by their president. Until Trump presents his “proof,” the benefit of the doubt here goes to Wilson.
But the broader pattern here is what is so disheartening. Beyond Trump’s inability to articulate compassionate thoughts without screwing them up, or to stick with the humane positions he occasionally espouses (see, for example, his back and forth on “Dreamers”), it’s disturbing that this president is so willing to turn even the deaths of servicemen into a political game — in this instance, a jab in his incessant efforts to one-up Obama. Is nothing sacred?
As a candidate, Trump insulted the sacrifice of former prisoner of war Sen.
John McCain (R-Ariz.), saying, “I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump also disparaged the parents of fallen Army Capt. Humayun Khan after Khan’s father, Khizr Khan, delivered an emotional speech at the Democratic National Convention accusing Trump of smearing Muslims for political gain. There is something fundamentally flawed about a person who would engage in a war of words with the families of dead soldiers to score political points.
Trump doesn’t care about California, if we are to judge him by his response to the Northern California fires that have killed at least 42 people, writes Newsweek’s Alexander Nazaryan on The Times’ op-ed page. “As the fires burned, President Trump flew to Northern California, comforting the displaced residents of Santa Rosa and promising the fullest emergency response possible,” Nazaryan writes. “Wait, sorry, that was fake news. Trump played golf.” L.A. Times
Big surprise: Trump’s “I alone” presidency is failing. Max Boot, a conservative critic of the president since the 2016 campaign, notes that the 45h president has taken unilateralism to a new level by alienating allies abroad on everything from the Iran nuclear deal to applying his travel ban to the African nation of Chad, and deciding to end payments to insurance companies under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Boot concludes, “We can only hope that he does not top himself by demonstrating his authority to launch a nuclear war — something that his unhinged rhetoric against North Korea is making more likely.” L.A. Times
John McCain vs. President Trump’s “America first” cabal: The Arizona senator, former prisoner of war and hands-down American hero (to everyone but the president) may be too eager to intervene militarily in world affairs, but he was dead-on-point this week in criticizing Trumpism as “some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.” L.A. Times
Picking lemons from trees while wearing a gas mask: the new normal? In Bay Area hardware stores, the masks worn by painters and construction workers to filter out harmful particulates are selling out. Writers who normally work from home or in coffee shops are researching which libraries have the kind of HVAC systems that intercept polluted air. Is this just a single, one-off period of hellishly hard breathing caused by a freak-occurrence wildfire, or is it a sign of things to come in Northern California? New York Times
Here’s how men can help women in the post-Harvey Weinstein era: First, says Opinion contributing writer Ann Friedman, they have to want to know the truth about sexual assault and harassment and be willing to listen to women about it. Next, they have to act: “This can mean cutting an offending man off from professional opportunities. It can mean privately warning other men and women about his behavior. It might mean ending a friendship with him.” L.A. Times
Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com
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