 Joe Honick |
Have the country, the media and the world overindulged on Trump already? That might be the case if you listen to some editors and self-anointed social media critics.
And it just might be the case if only the POTUS would let it be for just a day instead of demanding his seemingly daily (sometimes twice daily) photo/executive order shot and commentary about stuff from which a Chief Executive should distance himself and let his well-placed staffers handle.
Perhaps he is finally learning that he need not put the “Trump” brand on everything anyone reads, hears or views. That might be fine when he’s hardly innocently marketing his luxury hotel in Florida while ignoring the good old Camp David that served well and historically for his predecessors…and the world.
In just a few weeks of putting the Nazi knock on his own intelligence people sworn to prepare and keep almost sacred the nation’s most sensitive secrets…threatening his own Republican party folks who don’t obey and somehow, maybe…perhaps…telling some guys to meet with Rep. Nunes secretly on the White House Grounds about Russian tampering stuff…it would seem United States President Trump had not learned that his approach to public relations needs to be more than a bit different from being the swashbuckling boss of a hotel and country club empire.
So far he has gotten away with the fact media of all kind thrive on almost every presidential comment, conflict, misstep, misquote and anything else, including the doubtful importance that this president actually prefers his expensive steak overdone, as reported recently from Mara Delgado.
And this comes only after Donald Trump has been in office about two and a half months, hardly even close to the repeated “100 days” supposedly used to measure a new president’s post-inaugural immediate news impact.
Comes now after a little over two weeks of boasted Executive Orders were overshadowed by defeat of one of his greatest promoted campaign goals: assassination of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
And after deflation of his phone tap accusations and a foolishly staged White House grounds meeting to prime a supposedly independent Congressional Committee chair with “information” that might yet divert attention on the matter of alleged Russian election interference.
Confused yet? If not, you are not paying attention.
Mr. Trump’s major failures are his temperament, impatience, vengeance and inability to permit the professionals paid by the taxpayers to do their jobs so that he does not have to be so personally responsive to the tons of criticism that come his way simply because of his office.
And in these ways, he has violated some or most of the fundamental rules of logic that have dragged him into the very swamps he committed to clean up, while reporters at the daily verbal wrestling matches with presidential spokesperson Sean Spicer have to parse every phrase for contradictions with what his boss says.
The most sensitive contradiction that will challenge several elements of the White House revolve about retired General Michael Flynn's demands for immunity for testimony about deals with Russia’s ambassador and other subjects about which he may have spoken untruthfully.
It was not long ago during something called a campaign that candidate Trump and supporter Flynn both were quite specific in their assessments that claiming immunity was expression of a crime.
If the general somehow testifies to something that embroils President Trump, the stage could be set for a historic presence of a POTUS in a witness chair under oath…a situation he escaped in New York by writing a check for $25 million as a “settlement” over his phony real estate school. The payoff for those attending was to learn the “Art of the Deal.”
His “artistry” may well be sorely tested very shortly.
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Joseph J. Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.
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