There’s more to talk about than dumb tweets
Donald Trump is just that lucky.
The U.S. Senate was poised Thursday to pass a tax “reform” bill that only the already wealthy can love.
Some remain dumbfounded that Trump has turned over the bureau dedicated to protecting consumers from fraudulent and predatory banking practices – the kind that nearly ruined our region a decade ago – to someone who feels those bankers needs less watch-dogging, not more.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who famously called Trump a moron, is on the verge of being ousted – having served less than a year.
We learned this week that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner appeared before the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
North Korea launched a missile that experts say puts Washington, D.C., in range.
All this, and what are people talking about?
Trump’s bellicose, racist, mistaken and just plain ignorant tweets. How lucky can one guy get?
Nothing compelled Trump to retweet the Islamophobic rantings – and links to three intolerant and misleading videos – of one of his British fans. He did it, we guess, because those videos fit his world view.
That caused the leader of one of our greatest allies, Great Britain, to denounce Trump in a speech in Amman, Jordan – another of our strongest allies. Prime Minister Theresa May called Trump “wrong” and accused him of helping a bunch of Brit wackos “spread mistrust and division,” drawing wild applause from Jordanian politicians. That applause should tell Trump about his popularity outside rural America.
Not one to let well enough alone, Trump responded … and got the wrong Theresa May. He linked his tweet to a “mum from Bognor” – not the PM from London – providing a glimpse of how careless and clueless he actually is.
Meanwhile, dozens of economists, deficit hawks, college presidents and organizations representing retirees, doctors, poor children, realtors, environmentalists and many others have thrown up their hands in despair over the tax reform.
It gives the middle class a tax break in the early years, but will likely lower the value of homes, increase the cost of health insurance, and hurt any Californian who itemizes. The deficit will balloon as will the cost of borrowing. But those earning $1 million a year or more will love it. And the children of the super-wealthy won’t have to pay taxes on their inheritances – ushering in a de facto aristocracy our founding fathers abhorred.
The brouhaha over who leads the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau should alarm us especially. The impetus for creating the bureau was the fraud-fueled meltdown of 2008, for which we were ground zero. The CFPB has hit Citibank, Wells Fargo, American Express, JPMorgan Chase and dozens of other banking firms with fines totaling $12 billion. The man now in charge has vowed to gut the bureau.
Then there’s Tillerson, who was considered one of the cabinet’s “grownups.” But he has refused to join the increasing cadre of sycophantic “yes men” the president prefers, and now his job is jeopardy. Perhaps Trump finally looked up the word “moron.”
Worse than moron, the New York Daily News said in an editorial Trump “is not well” and called him “profoundly unstable.”
All the while, special counsel Robert Mueller continues to circle ever closer while investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.
So yes, President Trump is a lucky guy. There’s so much we could be talking about – Russia, malfeasance, budget deficits, nuclear danger. Instead we’re talking about tweets.
This story was originally published November 30, 2017 at 3:28 PM with the headline "There’s more to talk about than dumb tweets."