Beyond his titanic dishonesty, Trump is appallingly uninformed about foreign and defense policy – the most important (and unconstrained) realm of presidential action. He confused the Kurds with Al Quds. He thinks NATO is a protection racket and that Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia should go ahead and develop nuclear weapons. He plans trade wars. In addition to ignorance, he regularly displays comprehensive antipathy to American values that one would have thought were nearly universal. He threatens war crimes. He applauds the war crimes of others including Saddam Hussein (“he throws a little gas and everyone goes crazy”), and the butchers of Tiananmen Square. He praises Vladimir Putin like a toady.
Trump openly encouraged violence at his rallies and threatened it at the Cleveland convention when he feared that he would fall short of the required delegates for nomination. That, alone, should have been enough for the party to drop him like radioactive waste. It violated a sacred civic norm that we abide by the democratic process and do not threaten or bully our way to power. Refusing to say that he’ll respect the results on November 8 was part of a well-established pattern.
His defense against the charge of sexual boorishness is . . . confirmed boorishness, explaining that the women in question are too unattractive to merit pawing.
Should we elect him and then impeach if necessary? Who, exactly, would we trust to do that – this crowd of Republicans who (with a few laudable exceptions) have fallen into line for him? What would he have to do to merit impeachment if his thousands of offenses did not merit censure, a much lower bar? No, once elected, there will be very few checks on Trump. It’s Clinton who should fear impeachment — which might be the best we can hope for at this dismal, dispiriting moment.
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