WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is finally gone – finished and washed up in politics in a single term.
He was a national embarrassment as president, woefully ignorant of politics, statecraft and international diplomacy, and egotistical to a fault.
It was said of him that he rarely cracked a book in college and instructed his White House aides to never bring him any reports or papers that were more than one page in length.
This was a man who fought with everybody, thought he was always the smartest guy in the room, but didn’t know how to get to first base on the most pressing issues facing our country.
The people Trump got along with were those who flattered him. And those who didn’t were quickly put on the dismissal list and sent packing.
He couldn’t take advice or criticism of any kind, and had a strange admiration for some of the world’s most murderous dictators.
When he first began campaigning for president, he made it clear to American voters that he was a big fan of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and looked upon him as a special friend of America.
U.S. intelligence thinks otherwise. A few years ago, it was revealed in news reports that Russia repeatedly infiltrated U.S. cyberspace and attacked networks in an attempt to help put Trump in the White House.
Moscow and Putin denied it, but our own U.S. intelligence said the reports were true. Everyone, it seems, believed our intelligence, except Trump.
Then there’s North Korean communist dictator Kim Jong Un, who, if Trump is to be believed, is another special friend of the U.S., despite a large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed in the direction of South Korea, a close U.S. ally.
Trump once described his correspondence with Kim as a “love letter,” something that U.S. intelligence and South Korea view as positively frightening.
Trump left the nation’s capital this week after it had become clear that the race for another term in the White House was over for him.
He had been out-dueled by now-President Joe Biden who had defeated him convincingly (except in Trump’s own warped mind).
When the smoke cleared from their epic political battle, Trump fled Washington, refusing to attend Biden’s inauguration ceremony.
After his swearing-in, Biden signed a number of executive orders – 17 in all – most of which overturned or countered specific Trump policies, including a mask mandate on federal property, halting construction of a border wall, reversing a travel ban on certain largely Muslim countries, rejoining the Paris climate accords and the World Health Organization, and canceling the Keystone XL pipeline.
Biden promised to undo all of Trump’s major directives and overturn them with the stroke of his pen.
In his inaugural address to the nation, he set the theme of his presidency by seeking an end to America’s “uncivil war,” and calling for the nation to embrace unity.
“Unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you, we will not fail.”
Unlike his predecessor, whose presidency was an endless stream of rancor, name-calling, insults and political warfare, Biden called for a new era of national unity.
“Politics need not be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path,” he said in his address. And as a dramatic symbol of that unity, seated behind him were three former presidents: Democrats Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and Republican George W. Bush.
“We’ve learned again that democracy is precious,” Biden said. “Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.”
“A cry for racial justice, some 400 years old in the making, moves us,” Biden said. “The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer. The cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear.”
Another of the executive actions he took was to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protected millions of young immigrants from deportation. They had been brought here as youngsters, knew little of their country of origin, and had grown up in America.
Trump had tried to end the DACA program, and to send them back, taking them from their families. But Biden took out his pen, and directed his administration to keep the program in place, ensuring they could remain in America.
An upbeat Biden entered the White House in the middle of this week and told reporters that “there was no time to waste.”
