Trump unfiltered and untethered

Meanwhile, our president prattles about deploying the National Guard to defend the border with Mexico while instructing the military to prepare for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. He escalates a trade war with China that sends the U.S. markets into another dive.

White House officials scurried to calm fears, saying the administration’s proposed China tariffs were a “threat” that would ultimately help, not hurt, the United States economy. Those officials also jumped quickly to say that the United States was committed to continuing to fight the Islamic State in Syria, signaling Trump’s retreat from the insistence that the 2,000 American forces there would soon return home.

As for the National Guard “wall?” Well, who knows. Trump got that bright idea when he saw a Fox News story about a caravan of Central Americans headed for the border. He first claimed they were seeking DACA status — never mind that they would have had to be in the U.S. before mid-2007 and been 15 or younger even then. Fake News.

But, after all, Fox is the original purveyor of scare tactics to rouse Trump’s “American First” credo.

The trouble is, the impressionable Trump’s actions are moving us (and his party) further and further from being “first” in anything.

Even the ‘blue wave’ expected to sweep Democrats to power in Congress in the midterm elections, may not be enough to fix the Fox-fanned national social disconnect that gave us Donald Trump in the first place.

Again, we ask: Where are the Republicans leaders with the backbone to stand up to Trump? And to Fox?