Trump: Ignorant or Malevolent, Take Your Pick

DID THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES just threaten to undermine the First Amendment this week? 

Yes. 

He did. 

Does Donald J. Trump secretly hope to stamp out a free press? 

It’s unclear.

If you missed the story, on Wednesday the President casually revealed the danger in one of seventeen tweets. God, that fool man loves to tweet! In fact, this much should be obvious by now. We have a leader who thinks in 140-character bits. (Since I wrote this, Twitter doubled the possible length.) At best, Trump is incapable of coming to grips with complex thoughts, be it the Constitutional limits imposed on any chief executive or the nature of Americans’ most cherished rights. It could be when he tweets he is simply displaying his ignorance. Or he may have malicious intent.

In either case, an elected official who cavalierly threatens to trample the First Amendment must be watched with extreme care.

WE’VE SEEN WORRISOME signals before. There was Candidate Trump telling supporters he might pay their legal fees if they punched out protesters. There was Trump calling for Katie Tur, a petite young reporter, to be fired because her coverage of him wasn’t positive enough. There was Trump at a rally stirring the crowd against Tur, so that Secret Service agents had to guide her to safety. More recently, the President insisted that an ESPN writer be fired for insulting him—via Twitter, for god’s sake. Finally, he has called NFL players who protest “sons of bitches” and demanded they be fired for disrespecting the flag. But those players have made it clear they are not against our soldiers or flag.

Their protest began with a handful of African-American players bringing attention to what they felt was injustice—too-frequent police violence directed against blacks. Now the protest has spread. It aims at Trump himself.

You need not agree with the players’ position. You do need to keep this much in mind. The protections guaranteed under the First Amendment supersede any personal feelings any of us, including the President, might have. When Tea Party protesters marched against Obama they had every right. If a Fox News commentator wishes to lambaste Hillary Clinton, the First Amendment is clear. That commentator may do so without fear. If I want to call Trump the worst president in U.S. history, not excepting Warren G. Harding, I am saying what the Bill of Rights makes clear I have every right to say. Even the most despicable citizens among us, the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville in August, have clear First Amendment rights.

The courts have ruled that only “hate speech” or speech which creates “a clear and present danger” can be limited by legal means.

I think even a Trump fan might be able to see that kneeling is not a form of “hate speech.”

THE DANGER should be clear. What should worry any thinking American is the growing sense Trump has the instincts of any tin-pot dictator. And Wednesday he dragged his attacks on the First Amendment to a new low. 

Here’s the offending tweet, aimed at NBC, because he fumes over that organization’s coverage: “Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”

Oh. I see! So silly of me to imagine the President wants to stifle a free press. 

He’s only thinking of us. He only cares about what’s good for the public. In fact, what would be really good for each and every American would be if we all decided to watch way, way more Fox News.

What the President seems to desire is that we fill our heads with as much propaganda as we can possibly stand. Meanwhile, if he can stir enough anger in his base he may try to hamstring those whose jobs, by their very nature, involve presentation of often very uncomfortable facts. Two of Trump’s tweets Wednesday were howls of rage claiming “fake news.”

By now even the dumbest Trump fan, some poor soul wearing a too-small red MAGA hat, so tight it constricts the flow of blood to the brain, should grasp one fundamental truth. “Fake news” is any news that makes Donald J. Trump look bad. In the same way “real news” is any news that makes Trump look good. (Great is better; but he can sometimes be content with just good.) Taken together, those two ideas, rattling around in the president’s head, make for a volatile mix.

If you have never followed the president’s Twitter feed you can catch up simply by clicking this link: trumptwitterarchive.com/archive. What you discover, if you do, are the ramblings of a delusional soul, a duly-elected fool. One feature allows you to search the archive by word, term or phrase. That’s when you realize Trump wants the media to serve up as many heaping plate fulls of praise as the public will swallow.

Equally clear: he has his chosen cooks.

We saw this Wednesday when four tweets, including the last of the day, were pleas to tune in to his favorite “real news” show: “RT @realDonaldTrump: I will be interviewed tonight on @FoxNews by @SeanHannity at 9pmE. Enjoy!”

Trump was at it again when the sun rose over the Rose Garden Thursday. His first tweet came at 5:04 a.m.: “Clips from tax speech and @seanhannity on @foxandfriends now. Have a great day!”

IF NOTHING ELSE, Trump seems to think he can dupe the majority of Americans into believing he’s doing a great job. Should that fail, his secondary goal seems to be to convince his loyal followers that all stories that shed a negative light on his policies, his erratic behavior, his administration in all its bizarre permutations, members of his family, those chummy with Russians and those not, are false. A hundred times and more since he took office (105 tweets) he has, like the boy who cried “wolf,” squealed over supposed “fake news.” He has assailed ABC, CBS and NBC. He has called into question the veracity of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Far more dangerous, the President of the United States has stirred hatred against reporters and made threats to the First Amendment real by calling into question the fundamental job of a free press. That is: to speak truth to power. 

We should not forget nor can we afford to ignore two chilling tweets. Both came in February, during his first month in office.

At even that stage, they revealed, in our newest leader, a depth of his hate, a visceral fury for anyone who dares criticize the Great Leader. They revealed a potent megalomania in the man: At 4:32 p.m. on February 17 he posted this: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people. SICK!”

Sixteen minutes later he was at it again: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

Think about what it was he said.

TRUMP MAY BE too ignorant to understand why a free press is essential to protect our freedoms. His base may be too short-sighted to see that, if press is battered under Trump, it can be battered again when Democrats return to power. (And let me interject here. As a tried and true liberal, I would fear Democratic threats to the First Amendment as much as I fear Trump’s threats now.) 

But a free press we must have. So long as Fox News can dig deep into the story of Benghazi we remain safer in our rights. The New York Times has an identical duty to reveal any evidence it may find regarding a secret meeting between Don Trump Jr. and individuals linked with the Russian government. The media has exposed both Republican malfeasance in office and rampant Democratic corruption too.

That’s how a free press keeps us safe. We hear the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico criticize Trump. We hear the Governor of Puerto Rico give him praise. The free press is both Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow in action. The free press gives us Senator Bob Corker insulting the president and Sarah Huckabee Sanders coming to the president’s defense. This week the free press brought down the serial sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein and last week toppled cabinet secretary Tom Price, after he wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on special charter flights.

The danger under President Trump is that he has a taste only for praise and a furious reaction to anything less. Search his Twitter feed. You’ll see. Twice recently he suggested we all watch Jesse Waters on Fox News. Four times he touted a show called The Five. Sixteen times since swearing to uphold the Constitution (including three tweets Wednesday) he advocated for Sean Hannity’s show. He was an even bigger fan during his campaign, tweeting and re-tweeting calls for all to watch Hannity 41 times. Bill O’Reilly was a favorite with Candidate Trump (87 tweets). Sadly, O’Reilly received only six mentions after Trump took office. This had nothing to do with Trump deciding to act “more presidential” and everything to do with the fact a free press, including particularly a newspaper Trump labels “fake news,” brought O’Reilly, like Weinstein, crashing to earth.

As for Fox News—where the news is always real and fawning over the president is a studied art—Donald J. Trump believes we should block out (or perhaps he’ll block them out for us) all other outlets. Don’t listen to what ABC reports. Snap off your TV if you come across CNN. Nothing you read in Washington Post is to be believed. Reporters who question him are enemies of the American people.

Fox News?

Fox News reporters are great.

Since he announced he was running for office on June 15, 2015, Donald J. Trump has sung the praises of Fox New in 365 tweets.

NONE OF THIS PROVES we are dealing with the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler in the White House today. What it does remind us about is the manner in which Hitler and his minions set to work in 1933 to control, as much as possible, what the German people heard and read and saw every day.

So take your pick. Is the President simply ignorant of what the First Amendment is about?

Or does he understand—and does he just not care?

*

Since posting this originally in October, my concern has only grown. Trump has added to his lengthy list of shows (357) he would like us all to watch, always on Fox News, and complained about “fake news” from all kinds of new sources. We now have 167 Twitter posts about “fake news.” Jake Tapper, for example, is a “CNN flunky. Sean Hannity is a Hero of the People.

Pravda, my good Americans. правда, to you.

A free press is essential to democracy, as any fool should be able to tell you.
Why this truth baffles President Trump is anyone's guess.

Trump and Pence: Bogus Respect for the Flag

As of yesterday, we know Vice President Mike Pence will never, ever stand for any anti-American crap.

Not from African-American football players, at least.

Nobody is going to disrespect our nation, our soldiers, our National Anthem and our glorious flag. Not while Mike Pence and Donald J. Trump are on guard.

Okay. True. Candidate Trump did say war hero John McCain was no war hero. That would be disrespecting soldiers for sure. 

Okay, true again.

He did attack a Gold Star mother during the campaign. That’s disrespecting her sacrifice, her son’s, the nation for which he fought and died, and finally the flag that covered his coffin when his body returned home. 

In other words, the hypocrisy of Trump and Pence in this matter should be clear. 

If you missed the story this weekend here are the key parameters. VP Pence flew back from Las Vegas, after comforting survivors of a bloody massacre, to put in his appearance at an Indianapolis Colts football game. This flight came at taxpayer expense; but who’s counting tax dollars right now! (Not former cabinet member Tom Price!) A spokesperson for Pence later explained this trip was definitely not a political stunt. First, the VP’s office posted a picture of the VP decked out in blue and white Colts gear. Second, they admitted lamely that very picture of that very same VP was taken in 2014, when he was not yet, technically, the VP. Third, they claimed Pence was in attendance only to honor Peyton Manning, longtime Indianapolis Colts star. The Hall of Fame quarterback’s statue was being unveiled before the game.

We know Trump and Co. have been having problems with statues for weeks. 

For now, let’s focus on Sunday. As kickoff approached there was Pence (but wearing a suit coat and dress shirt), standing erect, hand over heart, lovely wife by his side, also hand over heart, as the first strains of the National Anthem sounded before the game. Imagine, then, the VP’s “surprise” when two dozen players from the visiting San Francisco 49ers took a knee. (San Francisco players have been protesting at every game for weeks. So any surprise had to be feigned)

Well, that was that, as far as the shocked VP and the equally shocked Mrs. VP were concerned. Hardly had the final notes of the Anthem reverberated before they had bolted from their seats.

This protest angered the President and the VP  (and the VP's wife.)

Almost as soon as their feet touched the parking lot pavement outside, the Vice President was ready to tweet. “I left today’s Colts game,” he tappity-tap-tapped, “because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem.” Then he and his wife hopped on Air Force Two and flew back to Los Angeles to enjoy the remains of the day.

That’s right. Mr. and Mrs. Pence they turned right around—protest of the protest complete—and headed for California. Estimated cost to taxpayers for their little Sunday jaunt: $242,500.

You could buy a lot of nice flags for that.

If you stopped to think about it—something President Trump clearly never does—you had to wonder what the furor was about. Flags are always symbols and flags mean different things to different people at different times. When I was a boy, for example, growing up in Northern Ohio back in 1961, I developed an abiding interest in the American Civil War. For some reason, I identified with Robert E. Lee and his brave troops who fought long odds for four bloody years.

At a museum in Gettysburg that summer, I used some of my allowance to purchase a replica of a Rebel soldier’s kepi hat. A small Rebel flag was glued incongruously, flat, to the top. I admit I wore that hat in many a faux battle fought in months to come in orchards and woods behind our home.

You can argue, rightly, I think, that not everyone who displays a Rebel flag is a racist at heart. But we should remember that increasingly, in the 1950s and 60s, it became a totem for bigots of every stripe. When the struggle for civil rights began to heat up half a dozen former Confederate states added it to the design of their state flags. Most have given the symbol up in recent years, several with reluctance. Alabama dropped it—you could say—but clearly kept it in spirit.

Alabama state flag c. 1967, top.
Current state flag, bottom.

Mississippi kept it for sure.

You might wonder, then, why some symbolic gestures involving flags bother Trump and Pence while others do not. In fact, you might argue that there is no greater sign of disrespect to the “Stars and Stripes,” to the soldiers who died carrying our flag and the nation for which it stands, than to fly or display the “Southern Cross,” as the banner is often called. Few enemies in history have killed more U.S. soldiers that General Robert E. Lee and his men, carrying that symbol high at his command.

Make America Great Again? Bring back slavery, maybe?

You can forget any nuances and throw decent respect for differing opinions aside when it comes to President Trump. He and his willing tool, VP Pence, understand their base far, far too well. That base is almost entirely white. And some portion, however large or small and rabid as it might be, still wishes when it comes to the American Civil War that Lee and the South had won.

Dylan Roof proudly displayed this symbol before murdering nine black parishioners at at Charleston, S.C. church.

Who loves this flag? The people at Breitbart News. As in, Steve Bannon,
key White House adviser, till recently, of President Trump.

Who else? Oh, these guys for sure. But their protests in Charlottesville in August didn't bother President Trump because they had a permit.

In fact, if you really care about people disrespecting our soldiers and flag,
maybe you want to consider who we fought during World War II.

A Trump campaign rally (above). Okay, that's a joke.

Exercising freedom of speech, the right to protest, and the right to be a bigoted dick.
Where was Pence when we really needed him to show he was pissed?

If you're going to fly back and forth across the country to protest, maybe this African-American police officer should be in your thoughts.
And it might be nice to remember that every American, even a neo-Nazi, has a right to protest.

African-Americans fought under our flag in the American Revolution, War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II.
They were denied equal rights when they came home--after fighting under our flag.
Symbols mean different things to different people at different times.

Corey Stewart, now preparing a Republican run for the U. S. Senate in Virginia.
He cites Trump as his role model, of course.
"The era of the kinder, gentler Republican is over," he says.

This Sunday stunt by the VP, with support from our Divider-in-Chief had nothing to do in the end with respect for our nation, our song or our flag. Instead, picking a fight with mostly African-American athletes in the NFL, and to a lesser extent in the NBA, was a battle—like Gettysburg or Antietam—the President thought he could win.

The VP’s costly trip to Indianapolis was a sleazy stunt cooked up to put political points on a warped scoreboard, at taxpayer expense.

The GOP and Guns: We’ve Got Nothing

I FIRST POSTED THIS STORY in October, in the wake of a massacre on the Las Vegas streets. Sadly, today we can recycle it, word by bloody word.

All we need are a few fresh tears.

This morning twenty-six Americans, ages 5-72, do not wake up to worry about health care or border walls or transgender people using the same bathrooms. 

They do not wake up at all.

A gunman armed with a military-style Ruger AR-15, the weapon of choice of most modern psychopaths, shoots up a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The toll, including wounded, rises to 46.

What an unspeakable tragedy this is. And what will Republican leaders do now that they control all the necessary levers of power to make a change?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Thoughts and prayers will be offered. That’s not enough. We can spend $21.6 billion (if not three times that much) to build a “big, beautiful wall” along our border to keep “criminals” and “rapists” out.

But we can’t lift a legislative little finger to staunch the carnage in our churches, schools and on our streets? We can’t act, no matter how sensible policy changes might be, no matter how limited the steps we might take? We can’t do anything at all—because the NRA crowd holds GOP lawmakers’ nuts in a vice?

Here is what I said a month ago. Here is what I fear we will be talking about again and again in weeks and months and years to come.

*

MASS MURDER PLAYS out in America again. The tragedy in Las Vegas follows scenes equally terrible at the Pulse Nightclub in 2016, at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2014, at the Century 16 Theater in 2012. There are too many senseless mass shootings in this country even to mention or list.

At this point all the leading voices in the Republican Party offer  are thoughts and prayers.

Turn on the news right now. Turn on Fox—NBC—or CNN. You’ll hear the same questions you heard last time and you’re going to hear again, sometime much too soon. What was the shooter’s motivation? Were there accomplices? Did neighbors know he harbored a sickness? 

You will hear the same shaken voices of survivors—a girlfriend of a wounded concert goer, her blouse specked with blood, a visitor to Las Vegas from Canada who caught the shooting in a choppy video on his phone, a local man, a fan of country music, thanking first responders who helped him escape the gory scene. A grim-faced sheriff will look into a bank of cameras and tell us what authorities so far know. Search warrants will be issued for the perpetrator’s car and home.

The death toll will climb in the hours and days to come, as critically wounded human beings succumb.

The same debates we’ve heard before will be heard again. Guns don’t kill people, people…. Fuck it.

Why even finish that sentence?

We will be told that it makes no sense to ban sales of semi-automatic or automatic weapons because any truly sick individual can kill you with a car, club, bare fists, a goddamn knife, fork or spoon.

You’ll hear right-wing conspiracy types insist this was a government-sponsored job, so liberal politicians in Washington will have an excuse to confiscate all the guns. That’s the sick and pathetic line pedaled by gun nuts (and not all gun owners are nuts) after the massacre of teachers and children at Sandy Hook. No one ever saw the bodies, they howled. The slaughter must have been faked.

See, for example: Alex Jones.

After that tragedy, you hoped something positive might result. You thought, maybe, Wayne LaPierre and his NRA buddies would relent. Six- and seven-year-olds, torn to pieces by bullets, sprayed from an AR-15 in the hands of an unbalanced teen. Even the NRA, you hoped, would balk at that.

President Obama called for action. Thinking of his own children he began to cry.

The Democrats couldn’t get a bill passed—even to limit the size of gun magazines for sale.

Republican refused to act.

JUST THE OPPOSITE in fact: Beholden to the NRA for support and massive infusions of campaign cash, the GOP pushed to extend gun rights. Open carry laws proliferated across the states. Under Republican rule, it became easier to get concealed carry licenses than access to the voting booth. In fact, Congress is currently considering a bill to allow more Americans, including the kind of crazed killer who just sprayed a Las Vegas crowd, to buy silencers for their weapons.

At this point, we might as well be blunt. We’ve heard every argument from the right we can ever hear. In the wake of the bloodbath at the Pulse Nightclub we heard the problem was not guns. The problem was terrorists. 

Or, from true right-wing haters, we heard, “The problem is Muslims. We must ban them all from coming to America if we want to be safe.”

We heard that Mexican immigrants were the threat. What we had to have was a long and tall wall. On right-wing television and right-wing radio stories of individual tragedies were endlessly reported—and they were tragedies indeed—of this illegal immigrant or that, who came here and killed.

We had to keep those people out too.

We heard about carnage in Chicago. We heard right-wing types hint the problem there was…well, to be frank…black people with guns.

Black people were the problem.

Not guns.

In the wake of multiple school shootings we were told the only way to protect our children would be to arm teachers—so that in crowded third grade classrooms, hallways filled with middle school teens or at drop off times in front of our high schools, educators could counter incoming fire with outgoing fire of their own.

There was nothing else we could do.

If we tried—if, for example, we required background checks for private sales at gun shows—the Second Amendment was dead.

IT WASN’T JUST TRAGIC. It was ludicrous and insane. Paranoia substituted for policy. All too often the real issue was profit, not even people. Gun sales meant billions for manufacturers every year. We heard from a thousand right-wing voices: Obama planned to take away all our guns! We heard that again, during the last campaign. According to Candidate Trump, his opponent would abolish the Second Amendment if she won.

Yet, the facts pointed in the opposite direction. According to the FBI, based on background checks nationwide, during eight years Obama was in office, approximately 14 million guns were sold—in 2009 alone. Sales increased—I suppose to replace all the imaginary guns Obama was supposedly taking away—almost every year: 14.4 million in 2010; 16.5 million in 2011; 19.6 million in 2012; 21.1 million the year after that. There was a “dip” in 2014. Only 20.9 million more guns and pistols hit America’s streets. In 2015 and 2016, however, banner sales occurred: 23.1 and 27.5 million more weapons went into our purses, cars and homes.

That’s 157.1 million background checks and roughly that many more guns.

In theory, then, we became, as citizens of this nation, safer with each passing day. We would stop killers in their tracks. We would pull pistols from our purses and defend ourselves. And let’s be clear: We do have gun rights. The Second Amendment is there in the Constitution for a clear reason.

But there are sensible limits on all rights. “Fighting words,” the courts have ruled, are not protected speech. You can’t urge people when a brawl is about to occur to hit foes over the head with lead pipes. Nor does freedom of religion allow you to start a church and practice polygamy like kings of old.

And all the paranoia and all the political shouting haven’t made us safe. The right can’t blame today’s tragedy on terrorists or immigrants or Hillary Clinton. One angry white male, a citizen of the United States, heavily armed with automatic weapons, using a supply of high-capacity magazines to allow sheets of rapid fire, and strategically located on the thirty-second floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, just murdered fifty-eight other Americans and wounded countless more.

Law-abiding citizens can now arm themselves to their eyeteeth. What good has it done? More American kids are accidentally killed by guns every year than are ever killed by illegal immigrants who, we are told, we must block with a wall. More drivers and passengers are killed and wounded in incidents of road rage than die at the hands of terrorists in twelve months. Americans are cut down in churches, shot at work by disgruntled former employers, killed by enraged former husbands at parties, blown away on community college campuses, and now massacred at concerts on the Las Vegas strip.

Who do you blame today? What do we, as a nation, do—other than mop up the blood and move on till the next time the sirens wail?

HOW MANY GUNS DO WE ALL NEED before we can finally staunch the flow of blood on our streets?

Republicans control all the levers of power in our nation’s capital today. They control most state capitals as well.

What ideas to stem the mayhem will they offer today, tomorrow or next week? Is the answer again going to be: Nothing but thoughts and prayers?

Or: Buy one gun, get one free?

How long can the gun manufacturers—merchants of death as surely as captains of slave ships in 1808—continue to buy the silence of lawmakers with fat campaign donations every two or four years? At some point, doesn’t the dam of citizen horror for lives lost finally break?

The American people want to know what their leaders will say. They don’t want the sounds of automatic weapons fire to be all they hear this week—and the next time—and the next after that.

Say a prayer for all the lives lost, yes. 

Keep the bereaved families in your thoughts.

But if that’s all the GOP has to offer, the next time we have a mass shooting event, let’s be honest. Let President Trump stride to the podium, bow his head slightly and speak to the gathered cameras. Let him be totally honest.

“We’ve got nothing to offer,” he should say.

***

I wrote about this before, after the slaughter of the innocents at Sandy Hook. Nothing has changed for the good since that day.

Only the pools of blood change.

How many will die next time?

Trumpcare: Terrible for Your Heart, Lungs and Spleen

IF IT FEELS LIKE BAD GOP HEALTHCARE PLANS keep cropping up like drug-resistant bacteria, you’re not imagining it.

Having discovered that repeal and replace wasn’t as easy as he thought, President Trump is desperate to get any bill passed, declare himself tired of winning and get back to doing what he does best. Tweeting insults.

The latest Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, reduce money spent on healthcare, but still miraculously cover everyone covered now, is wobbling along in the U.S. Senate.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, with an assist from Trump—have managed to do what President Barack Obama could never do. No. I don’t mean take away all our guns. Remember how that was going to happen! Last we checked everyone still had the guns they had on Inauguration Day in 2009. In fact, gun sales boomed while Obama was seated in the White House.

Paranoia, I think it was. (Conservatives probably thought you needed more guns to stop gay weddings.)

As I was saying, GOP leaders have made Obamacare more popular than ever. We liberals readily admit the law is imperfect. And, as sure as you mention thermometers (climate change) math (monthly job growth) or polls (pretty much every approval poll taken since Trump sat down in the Oval Office), this one will probably not be believed by our friends glued to Fox News.

Here are recent polls on the favorability of Obamacare in graphic form:

HAVING VENTED A LITTLE, I feel better—which is good, because we’re going to have to take better care of ourselves once this new Trumpcare plan goes into effect. We don’t know exactly how many Americans will lose coverage, or exactly when the worst features will fully take hold.

We just know the Graham-Cassidy bill currently being discussed by the Senate is decidedly unloved.

Sponsored by Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, this looks like the Republicans’ last chance to repeal and replace. Cassidy, for one, has been insisting his bill passes “the Jimmy Kimmel test.” That is: it will ensure that less-fortunate Americans whose children are born with severe health problems receive the care families require. Kimmel, the late night talk show host, has a young son with serious heart problems. In his case, he makes clear he has good coverage himself. He can pay. He’s rich. But Kimmel worries about families whose resources are slim.

Or none.

Senator Cassidy claims the latest Trumpcare plan passes that test.

Kimmel says, emphatically, it does not. He says Cassidy “lied right to my face” when he told him it did.

How bad is this plan?

Let’s try a test (not covered under the new Republican plan). Imagine you have a parent or grandparent suffering from long-term effects of Alzheimer’s disease. They need fulltime help.

Wouldn’t the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) support a good healthcare bill?

AARP hates this plan.

Okay. Babies might not be covered. (The American Academy of Pediatrics calls Graham-Cassidy “dangerous” and “ill-conceived.”)

And grandpa and grandma might be screwed.

How about this? You have a heart problem and bills are piling up. The American Heart Association blasts the GOP plan.

“I think the odds have improved,” Senator John Thune told reporters yesterday. He thinks this bill can pass. “I just told Bill Cassidy he’s kind of the grave robber,” Thune added. “This thing was six feet under, and I think he’s revived it.”

Mentioning Trumpcare and graves in the same breathe might not be the best metaphor one could select.

Take cancer. The lobbying arm of the American Cancer Society is opposed.

Got a six-year-old with type-1 diabetes? The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation believes the plan is a mess.

Are you an overweight or obese adult? Ha, ha. Of course you are. Seven in ten American adults weigh way too much. Suffering from type-2 diabetes, are you, now? The American Diabetes Association says vote “no” on the bill.

Your husband has lung cancer? The American Lung Association is opposed.

Your cousin is suffering the terrible effects of Lou Gehrig’s disease? The ALS Association considers the plan a joke.

The list (several are combined and linked below) goes on and on—with groups interested in pretty much every part of the body, from our heads to our toes, calling for the Senate to vote down the plan. These groups have come out against this last ditch Trumpcare-don’t care plan:

American Academy of Family Physicians

American College of Physicians

American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

American Osteopathic Association

American Psychiatric Association (“this bill harms our most vulnerable patients”)

American Public Health Association (the bill would “devastate” Medicare)

America’s Essential Hospitals

American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living (“this bill will undermine care for vulnerable seniors and individuals with disabilities”)

Arthritis Foundation 

Association of American Medical Colleges

Catholic Health Association of the United States

Children’s Hospital Association
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
Family Voices

Federation of American Hospitals

HIV Medicine Association
Lutheran Services in America
March of Dimes
National Health Council 

National Council for Behavioral Health

National Institute for Reproductive Health
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Organization for Rare Diseases

Planned Parenthood
Volunteers of America
WomenHeart

Who else hates the GOP bill? The American Medical Association, speaking for 200,000 professionals, opposes the Graham-Cassidy plan. They say it violates the first principle of all medical care: “First, do no harm.”

The American Hospital Association: They don’t like it at all.

Maybe nurses? Maybe…good grief…the American Nurses Association wants the plan defeated too.

Blue Cross Blue Shield? They don’t like either. “The bill contains provisions that would allow states to waive key consumer protections, as well as undermine safeguards for those with pre-existing conditions,” says the company president. “The legislation reduces funding for many states significantly and would increase uncertainty in the marketplace, making coverage more expensive and jeopardizing Americans’ choice of health plans.” But, hey, other than that, the plan isn’t bad.

I talked to my daughter recently. She’s head of Newborn Screening at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D. C. I asked how work was going since she just returned from a medical conference in Brazil. She mentioned meeting doctors from Egypt, Uganda and Rawanda, now that she’s back, to talk about what her hospital does to help children born with serious, life-threatening genetic problems. She mentioned one drug that costs $1,000,000 per day. We can all argue about what to do about ballooning drug costs. (Prices are expected to increase 11.6% in 2017.) But if Senator Cassidy and Senator Graham and Senator Mitch McConnell and President Trump truly want to help, they can get on the stick and start fighting to reduce costs today.

Until that day comes—which probably never will—we know leading professional healthcare groups consider this last GOP hope a contemptible mess.

Medicare Part D (passed under the last Republican president, has helped balloon healthcare costs.

Of course we all remember, during the 2016 campaign, how Candidate Trump promised to protect us from all those illegal immigrant rapists and murderers, pouring across the border from Mexico.

What we didn’t realize then, once the GOP was in full control, was that if loved ones developed skin cancer, required kidney transplants, or suffered catastrophic injuries in automobile accidents, they’d be pretty much screwed.