TRUMP CONTINUES TO PROVE HE’S UNFIT TO BE OUR PRESIDENT

….The Catholic Al Smith that ran for US president in 1928

 

Trump gets booed at the annual Al Smith Dinner in New York

 

It’s been pretty amazing as to how many prominent Republicans have spent their time blasting Donald Trump for refusing to promise that he would respect the results of the presidential election if he loses.

 

First there was GOP Senator John McCain:  “There have been irregularities in our elections, sometimes even fraud, but never to an extent that it affected the outcome.”  This Senator is running for his 6^th term in Arizona where some polls show Clinton with an edge in the traditionally Republican state.  The senator went on to say: “We should all be proud of that, and respect the decision of the majority even when we disagree with it. Especially when we disagree with it.”

 

Along with Senator McCain, Republican senators from blue states facing tough reelection bids in condemning Trump’s remarks, including Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Rob Portman (Ohio), and Ron Johnson (Wis.).

 

What is glaringly evident, as of the writing of this article, is that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), both of their GOP majorities are at stake because of Trump’s lack of support.  It is telling that neither of these GOP leaders has commented on the latest statements from Trump about the election’s legitimacy.

 

It needs to be said again, that until today, no presidential candidate in US history has ever said that they would ever consider not respecting the will of the people's voting decisions.  The United States is the “shining nation on a hill” for always respecting the peaceful changing of political power since the country’s inception.  Trump is now saying that he may not actually concede if he loses the election.

 

Speaker Ryan’s office had pushed back earlier this week against Trump’s allegations of a “rigged” election, when the House spokeswoman AshLee Strong stated: “Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.”

 

But Ryan was seriously criticized when this statement came from the House spokesperson, NOT from the Speaker himself.  Many have surmised that this was done for keeping the Speaker from directly implying that perhaps he was not supporting his party’s nominee.

 

Even though all this GOP response was caused by Trump’s debate statement where he repeatedly refused to say he would accept the results of the election, Trump also stepped in it at the traditional Al Smith dinner where his inappropriate comments caused many boo’s from the audience.

 

The Al Smith Dinners, are for raising money for the Catholic church, and are sponsored by the great grandson of the same Al Smith that ran for president in 1928.  Al Smith was the first Catholic to run for US president and back then, he lost big time to the Republican, Herbert Hoover.

 

These dinners are usually where the two presidential candidates can offer funny digs at each other.  But this was the first time that there were serious boos against Trump, and many of the boos came from the catholic priests in attendance.  (One odd thing that came up after the dinner was that it was noted that even though Trump does smile a lot, no one has ever seen Trump actually laugh out loud…..think about it!)

 

When during the debate that Trump had told moderator, Chris Wallace, that he would not say he would support the election results, his actual words were: “I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense,” a response Hillary Clinton called “horrifying.”

 

The next day, Trump made it all that much worse when he said at one of his rally that he would “totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win.”

 

I’m sorry, but making a joke about the most important area of trust that a democratic nation can have is not acceptable.  That national trust in the election's results, and that trust is the true will of the American people, that is not a subject for a crude joke. 

 

The other strange issue that has kept raising its ugly head at the debates, is the subject of Trump and the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.  This time it’s the issue of Russian cyber hacking for influencing the US elections.  In addition, it is about Trump’s apparent total respect for the highly authoritarian Russian leader.

 

During the debate, as in the past, Trump again took Putin’s side against President Obama and Hillary Clinton.  He suggested that Putin’s military success was achieved through aggressive, destabilizing tactics in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria.  Trump says that it showed that Putin is a strong leader who’s able to push around a weak United States.  Trump continued with, “Putin has no respect for Hillary. He has no respect for our president,” Trump then said. “Putin has outsmarted her [Hillary] and Obama at every single step of the way. Whether it’s Syria, or you name it.”

 

Trump then said the United States had been totally “outplayed.”  But rather than condemning Russian and Syrian military strikes that devastated the city of Aleppo.  Steps by Russia that led the United States to suspend talks with Russia, Trump said civilians there were dying “because of bad decisions by the United States”.  Of course, there was no explanation as to what “bad decisions”.

 

Trump’s most bizarre comment about tough dictators was his basic praise of the murdering Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad.  Assad is a leader who has waged a vicious civil war and used chemical weapons against his own people. “He’s just much tougher and much smarter than her [Clinton],” Trump said, adding that if the Syrian opposition should prevail, “you may very well end up with worse than Assad.”

 

But what was even more disgusting was when once again Trump refused to agree with the 17 US intelligence agencies that confirmed the Russian cyber election hacking, and that it was condoned by high levels within the Russian Kremlin.

 

Even though Chris Wallace eventually got Trump to “condemn” Russia’s hacking of US political parties, he only did so after saying, “I doubt it, I doubt it”.  This was Trump doubting the statement that accused Russia made by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.  This statement was made on behalf of those same 17 agencies the director oversees.

 

It must be noted that Trump has given us another political first.   No other time in US history has an American presidential candidate actually encouraged a foreign adversary, Russia, to seriously “spy on the United States”.  Trump also actually challenged the agencies’ clear evidence of Russian hacking and wrongdoing.

 

This is just that much more proof of why this man is not qualified to be the Commander-in-Chief of the United States.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016