May 30, 2019: What's in a Name? If It's "McCain," It Offends the Petty President

 

5/30/19: At this point, it would be nearly impossible to overestimate how petty the president is and how petty everyone who works for him knows he is (see: 5/15/19). The Wall Street Journal reports that when Trump was in Japan the White House requested that the USS John S. McCain, a destroyer, be moved out of sight during his visit to the U.S. Naval Base in Yokosuka.

 

The ship no one should name if Trump is about.

The request to move the ship was rejected. Nevertheless, Navy officers reportedly draped a tarp over the “offending” name. Clearer heads prevailed and down came the tarp. 

Real reporters do their best to verify what they say. So, ABC added this: 

The Navy’s top spokesman, Adm. Charlie Brown, tweeted that the ship’s name had not been obscured.

 

“The name of USS John S. McCain was not obscured during the POTUS visit to Yokosuka on Memorial Day,” Brown tweeted. “The Navy is proud of that ship, its crew, its namesake and its heritage.”

 

But it had been obscured, per White House request, until base commanders ordered the tarp removed. “There was a lower level effort to comply with the request but when leadership became aware they ordered the tarp be taken down,” a U.S. Navy official told ABC News. “Navy leadership decided the name should not be obscured.” 

There was disagreement about details and ancillary claims. For example, was a barge moved closer to the destroyer to block its name from view after the tarp disappeared?

 

What we know beyond doubt is that the White House made the request. We know the president said he had no prior knowledge of the request. “Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, OK? And they were well-meaning,” Trump told reporters gathered on the White House lawn. “I will say, I didn’t know anything about it. I would never have done that.” 

By the time the storm had settled, with no warships sunk or damaged, Navy officials had wasted much of the day explaining and clarifying the situation surrounding the “offending” name. 

And here, your hard-working blogger would like to add that the offending vessel is named for three generations of the McCain family who served bravely during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam War. The tradition continues, with James McCain, the late senator’s son, having fought with the Marines and the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. His brothers, Doug McCain and Jack McCain were both Navy pilots, like their dad.

 

By comparison no Trump, since Friedrich Trump first planted immigrant foot on U.S. soil in 1885, has ever dodged a bullet or bomb or even flown a paper airplane in service to this country. 

Naturally, the president thought this all over and then decided to ignore the basics of the story, and tweet out a defense: 

 

* 

MEANWHILE, reporters managed to question the president about growing talk among congressional Democrats of impeachment. 

“Do you think they’re going to impeach you?” one of the enemies of the people, unless that reporter works for Fox News, asked. 

Trump replied: 

I don’t see how they can, because they’re possibly allowed, although I can’t imagine the courts allowing it [emphasis added]. I’ve never got into it. I never thought that would even be possible to be using that word.

 

To me it’s a dirty word, the word “impeach.” It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting word. And it has nothing to do with me.

 

Or to put it plainly, Trump fails Government 101 again! The courts have nothing to do with the impeachment process. Also, the “dirty, filthy, disgusting word” appears in the U.S. Constitution for obvious reasons. 

The process can be used to deter a president or any other high official intent on abusing the powers of office. (See: 4/24/19, for explanation of the role of the Chief Justice in any impeachment trial.)

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (6/24/20): We were in error when we said no one in the Trump family had ever served in uniform. Trump’s older brother, Fred, did serve in the Air National Guard. However, no one in the president’s direct line has.)