Over the course of this campaign cycle, Donald Trump has frequently gone after people or organizations who have criticized him in some way. Usually that person or organization has been related to journalism. They’ll say something about him and he’ll hop on Twitter to fire off one or more tweets in anger about those he feels have slighted him.
Wacky @NYTimesDowd, who hardly knows me, makes up things that I never said for her boring interviews and column. A neurotic dope!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2016
Crazy Maureen Dowd, the wacky columnist for the failing @nytimes, pretends she knows me well–wrong!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2016
The failing @nytimes has gone nuts that Crooked Hillary is doing so badly. They are willing to say anything, has become a laughingstock rag!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2016
I think many people will brush off criticisms about these Twitter, thinking something like “They’re just journalists. They definitely deserve it for lying about him.”
Lying or not, they’re not just journalists. Yesterday he also went on one of his rants against Robert Gates, the former Secretary of Defense. Weirdly his defense for doing this is that Gates spoke out against his former bosses. Well, his last boss in government was Obama, so you’d think that would be okay with Trump, but I guess not.
Never met but never liked dopey Robert Gates. Look at the mess the U.S. is in. Always speaks badly of his many bosses, including Obama.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2016
Once again we’re seeing how Trump immensely dislikes disloyalty to him personally and will trash anyone who goes against him, even in a small way. That is extremely disturbing as the president’s job is to represent the entire nation, not just his personal ego.
But Gates was a political appointee, so maybe some think that opens him up to criticism like this. Okay, perhaps, but who is Trump going to go after next? Well, we know that despite his statements to the contrary, he’s perfectly fine going after first responders as he once trashed a fire marshal just hours after being rescued from an elevator by the marshal’s fellow firefighters. This person said nothing about Trump and yet it still happened anyway.
Worse still, Trump doesn’t just go after people, he usually assigns them some kind of epithet. Just in the last 24 hours, he’s used “wacky,” “crazy,” and “dopey” on two different people. In the past, he’s been well known for using “bimbo” against people like Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. “Lying” and “crooked” are also favorites of his, though they’re not quite as bad, and are pretty typical for a political campaign. The others, though, are just attempts to discredit the dissenter as someone to who people shouldn’t listen. Maybe that’s okay to do as a private citizen, but never okay to do as president.
Who is Trump going to go after next? Will a President Trump go after a general who disagrees with him, even privately, or doesn’t quite get the job done? Maybe a rank-and-file member of the military? A member of a police force? A foreign diplomat or head of state or government. The point is that we really don’t know, but do we really want to give someone the presidency who so frequently goes on tantrums against people he doesn’t like?
That’s what we as a nation have to decide this November.