September 18, 2019: A Potato Has as Much Compassion as the President of the United States

 9/18/19: At this point it should be clear to all Americans: the president has the emotional range of a potato. 

This week, we have fresh evidence of Trump’s lack of compassion. During a flight on Air Force One, reporters ask him to comment on the death of Cokie Roberts, renowned ABC reporter. Roberts died this week from complications from breast surgery. She was 75. This was the perfect time for Trump to mention Trump. “I never met her,” he said. Then, he couldn’t help himself. “She never treated me nicely,” he added. 

Yes, Ms. Roberts was dead; but the tragedy was how much Trump’s ego had been hurt.

Trump and potatoes - not much difference.

 

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TODAY, the president had a second chance to get human emotion right. He blew it again. Trump was traveling in California, supposedly having taken an interest in the state’s problem with homelessness. 

Would he suggest ways the federal government could help? Would he focus on mental illness and other reasons most homeless people end up living on America’s streets? Surely, a president who touts love for what he refers to as “my military,” would address the need to help homeless veterans. They make up a large percentage of those who sleep in doorways, shelter under bridges, and live in tattered tents, where they recline on the seats of busted up cars. 

Then again, this is Trump. Here’s how he’s quoted in Fox News (although Fox News is not inclined to parse his words):  

We have people living in our…best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings...where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige.

 

In many cases, they came from other countries and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have tents. Hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And they want to leave. And the people of San Francisco are fed up, and the people of Los Angeles are fed up.

 

Oh, god, those poor rich people – even those poor rich people who immigrated to the United States – they came for the prestige. And they have suffered, what with less prestige than hoped. Also, tripping over those human wrecks on the sidewalks in front of their high-rent homes. 

And, oh, those ugly tents, where people with mental illnesses live, and where veterans with PTSD hunker down and don’t shower for a month. Oh, the smell. How the suffering folks who pay high taxes stand it, walking right by, god only knows! Right there, too! Right on our “best streets.” 

If only the homeless would go live in some crummy neighborhood, with the rest of the poor! Out of sight. 

Out of mind.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: President Twitter Thumbs posts a link on his account showing Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Muslim-American woman, dancing and celebrating on the eighteenth anniversary of 9/11. 

“The new face of the Democratic Party,” he warns. 

Once again, the “Fake News” is being put out there by Twitter Thumbs himself. The clip Trump linked to his account shows Omar dancing at a celebration on September 13. Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, hosted a celebration for Omar and other Democratic lawmakers that evening, and posted the clip of the dancing that night.