Jesse Berney for Rolling Stone:
We know the next president of the United States uses his powerful platform to take revenge on individual citizens. He attacked Alec Baldwin for parodying him on Saturday Night Live, threatened to cancel a contract with Boeing because its CEO questioned his trade policy and called a union leader “terrible” for pointing out Trump lied in his characterization of the Carrier deal.
We know he doesn’t understand or care about the most fundamental constitutional rights, after he threatened to revoke the citizenship of anyone who burned a flag. We know he’s suggested using the power of his office to go after the press for vigorously reporting on what he says and does. (Quote him, and he’ll call you a liar.)
Add it all up, and what do you see? A child who reacts to the slightest perceived attack with vicious vitriol. A vengeful president who is willing to violate basic rights. A government run by incompetents, racists, bullies and conspiracy-mongers.
It’s a formula for tragedy.
No one can predict the future – we learned that lesson the hard way a month ago. But if you were to imagine what impending American fascism would look like, you couldn’t place the pieces on the board any more neatly than they’ve been placed in the last year.
There is no reason to believe Donald Trump understands or will accept the checks on an American president’s power. There is no reason to believe he won’t trample over the Constitution when it suits him. How far will he go? Is it impossible to imagine that the man who talked about “opening up” libel laws could start tossing journalists in jail? How about the guy who makes fun of him on SNL? Or anyone who criticizes him?
How confident can we be that a man who spreads lies about illegal voters giving his opponent the popular-vote win and talks endlessly about rigged elections will give up power in four years if he loses? Or in eight years, just because some amendment says he’s supposed to?
Who will stop him from grabbing power he’s not entitled to? The madmen he’s surrounded himself with? The weak-willed leaders of the Republican majority in Congress who have yet to provide hardly any resistance to the things he’s said and done, no matter how outrageous or un-American?
We can’t guess how bad it’s going to get over the next four or eight years. We don’t know what America will look like. But if you think things won’t change because they never have, you aren’t paying close enough attention to Donald Trump.
At the very least, we’re being led by an unqualified man-boy who doesn’t grasp even the most basic tenets of governance.
At worst, we’re headed down an extraordinarily dark road where the things that make America America simply cease to exist. A president who won on a campaign of anti-immigrant furor, who believes in casting aside freedom like litter, who craves constant validation and can’t abide criticism or satire – that’s a tyrant in the making.
And now he’s planning to make the time to reprise his role on NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice. Whilst serving as leader of the free world.
Let that sink in.
OK sorry he is going to be an exec producer for the show – not host.
No need to apologize, it is still an blatant conflict of interest. Especially in view that even giving the APPEARANCE of conflict can be grounds for dismissal of a federal employee. Personally, I think the American Tragedy already happened on 8 November 2016 – America’s new Date Which Will Live in Infamy.
“Guys who have made a lot of money in business have a real hard time working in a system of checks and balances.” – Molly Ivins, speaking of H.Ross Perot.