Donald Trump, divider
Donald Trump stood before Congress Tuesday night and urged the nation to unify: “Victory is not winning for our party,” he said. “Victory is winning for our country.” “We must reject the politics of revenge,” he added, with a straight face.
He failed to admit that from the moment he took office, he has used his bully pulpit to scorch the earth.
Despite having lost the 2016 popular vote by almost 3 million ballots, he has sabotaged nearly every opportunity to reach meaningful consensus.
Last February, in the wake of the massacre in a Parkland, Fla., high school, Trump hosted a roundtable with legislators. In it, he embraced bipartisan solutions on firearm safety backed by broad majorities of the public.
Then he capitulated to the absolutist gun lobby.
The phenomenon has repeated itself once, twice, three times on immigration: Supposed dealmaker Trump purported to support a compromise giving Dreamers a path to legal status in exchange for more funding for his beloved wall — only to see his base balk, at which point the President chose to widen rifts.
He plunged the country into the longest government shutdown in its history in a fit of pique to try to get a massive border wall built.
Now, characterizing illegal immigrants like those he employed at his golf courses as violent invading hordes, he stands poised to declare a national emergency at the border, a step that would drive a dangerous wedge between the executive and legislative branches.
Gesture: Trump said Tuesday he wants legal immigrants to enter the nation “in the largest numbers ever.” Reality: He backs legislation that would slash their flow in half and killed a deal that included a wall because it didn’t include that reduction.
Meanwhile, Trump, rebranded as a uniter, owns up to none of the ways his words and actions have deliberately, deviously salted wounds.
He calls critics “the enemy of the people,” echoing Stalinist invective.
He attacks law enforcers and intelligence agencies when it suits his political ends. He pillories as somehow illegitimate judges who happen to have been appointed by Democratic Presidents.
He pushed through Congress a tax bill that is attacking high-tax states that happen to spend more on social services.
After his last State of the Union, he said Democrats who didn’t applaud were “unAmerican” and could even be called “treasonous.”
Trump didn’t singlehandedly divide America. But a President’s job is to close wounds, not aggravate them. If he wants to do that, he must become a different man. Starting today.