Donald Trump is exhausting. We all know that. Ever since The Great Election (as I’m sure we’ll refer to it in the future under pain of death), Americans have tired of politics. It's not that they don't care, it's just that it's a lot. With Trump in particular, he keeps his finger on the scale of scandal so much that he’s practically built a cot to sleep on it.
Every week brings reminders of rescinding protections for trans students, stripping funding for the arts, falsely accusing a former president of a crime, erroneous claims of voter fraud, reports of skipping intelligence briefings, pay stubs for how much securing the Trump family is costing us, Twitter tirades, lies about terrorist attacks, operations on faulty intel that led to the death of a Navy SEAL, and unseemly connections with Russia.
And that doesn’t even cover a quarter of it.
The media hunts for a smoking gun
Not to mention that the media is going out of its mind looking for a Smoking Gun. They spend time thinking about what will finally bring Trump down, be it his tax returns on Rachel Maddow, his collusions with Russia, his nepotism, his carelessness with state secrets, or his rampant conflicts of interest. For months, the question has been posed: “What is it going to take to bring Donald Trump down?” And the answer has returned: “Nothing so far.”
The most recent is Trump’s coziness with Russia redefined in a report by the Washington Post that the founder of Blackwater, a security firm known for abuses, and ultimately criminally convicted for killing civilians in an Iraqi square, reportedly set up a back channel between then President-elect Trump and Vladimir Putin.
This is serious news. This is real news. This is news that worries me and is worthy of paying attention to. However, the constant search for a smoking gun leaves one important piece of the conversation to the side.
Donald Trump Is a Bad President
This is the reason I’m not looking for a smoking gun. I don’t believe that we need grand malfeasance to criticize Trump.
I understand that those are the most shocking, but simply the fact of him being a bad president is enough. Clearly stating that he doesn’t deliver to his voters (as exemplified in his glib response when told his proposed healthcare bill would hurt them the most) is enough.
Pointing to how he fails to protect Americans by not presenting a plan to defeat ISIS that he said he would is enough.
Explaining how he is gutting the American people dry with his constant trips to the golf course, or how he’s taking money from Americans to build the magical wall that was promised on someone else’s dime is enough.
It’s not out of apathy that I’ve stopped looking for “the one thing” that could bring down Donald Trump. It’s because even if he was the nicest person in the world, I think not knowing about world affairs and not delivering on your promises is enough to not want you in office.
There has been much handwringing about how to relate complex political issues to the "common man," given that many Americans just don’t have the resources to always keep up. I think Trump being a bad president is a simple message that the "common man" can understand quite well.
