Thompson: This is not what we need

“No, you can’t always get what you want…

You can’t always get what you want…

You can’t always get what you want…

But if you try sometimes, you might find…

You get what you need.”

It’s a song Trump played throughout his presidential campaign, after his victory last November and still to this day when he makes public speeches.

At the time, I was struck by the oddity of such a choice. But in retrospect, considering Trump’s fragile ego, it makes perfect sense. He believes that we need him.

There were nearly two dozen nationally-known Republicans and Democrats who ran for president last year and while a few were tolerable and even well-intentioned, none of them quite fit the mold of what I would classify as me “wanting.”

I’ve largely given up on the idea of getting what I want and what I believe the country actually needs — a president who is not part of the failed two-party system and the hypocritical, hyper-partisanship that is rampant throughout Washington, D.C. and beyond.

What we do not need is this: an erratic and unhinged narcissist holding the mantle of “leader of the free world.”

Trump has been president now a little under 11 months and this presidency has been utterly exhausting with one stupid — yes, stupid — thing after another. It makes one not want to pay attention anymore, and perhaps this is his goal.

Exhaust us into submission.

All of the shenanigans from this man and his administration are almost impossible to keep up with, so let’s just take a look at last week as an example — aside from the news Friday that former national security adviser Michael Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI and said he was cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

At a White House ceremony honoring Navajo code talker veterans, Trump brought back his “Pocahontas” label for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who wasn’t even there and had zero to do with the event, all in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson, the man who signed the Indian Removal Act, basically condemning thousands of Native Americans to their deaths as they were forced to relocate in the days before vehicles, airplanes and central heating.

Trump also continued his war of words with maniacal North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, calling him a “sick puppy,” diverging off a speech in Missouri designed to trumpet support for the Republican tax bill.

A typical week, really.

Let’s zero even further into the Trump haven of Twitter and see what the president did on Nov. 29 — before lunchtime.

First, he continued his apparent disdain for all of Islam by tweeting out, to his 40 million-plus followers, three anti-Muslim videos from a fringe group in Britain. Those were titled “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”, “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!” and “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!”

They were fake news and he obviously did not care, nor did his press secretary.

“I’m not talking about the nature of the video,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said while being questioned by reporters about the re-tweets. “I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing. The threat is real, and that’s what the president is talking about.”

Setting aside the idiocy of that statement, because the actual truth does indeed matter, there you have the Trump presidency and his administration’s message in a nutshell: Divide, divide and fear-monger. Who cares if it’s true?

With that in mind, Trump, again, casually trampled on the spirit of the First Amendment by ranting about the “fake news” operations at CNN and NBC (and by extension anyone who publishes critical reports about his administration) while commenting on the dismissal of Matt Lauer (the latest male in a position of power in this country to be outed for his sexual misconduct) after he had just shared a video with completely false pretenses.

And then he slipped a little comment into one of his tweets that essentially implied MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough killed or had a role in the 2001 death of a woman who worked for his congressional office in Florida.

“And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the ‘unsolved mystery’ that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!”

It has actually been determined that the woman died from striking her head after collapsing due to abnormal heart rhythm, but who cares what the truth is, right? We’re making America great again.

This was all amid his “empty chair” stunt with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and reports from the Washington Post and New York Times that the president, in private conversations with those close to him and a sitting U.S. senator, has continued to cling to the myth that Barack Obama has a fake birth certificate. This continues to delve into the playbook of certain elements of the far right. It was not enough to just have substantive disagreements with the political leanings and policies of Obama; he had to be delegitimized by any means necessary.

Also last week, the papers reported that Trump has begun to question the authenticity of the “Access Hollywood” recording last year that surfaced of him, several years back, bragging about how he likes to treat women. This despite the fact that he already owned up to it last year and apologized for making the comments. It all gets to a point where this president’s basic competency and mental fitness for office has to be sincerely questioned when these remarkable inconsistencies keep popping up and when he constantly says things that are completely delusional and without any basis in fact.

As Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote, “It is one thing to create a fantasyland for political ends — appealing to some voting group’s prejudices or giving supporters a reason to excuse bad behavior. It is another thing altogether, however, for Trump to fall into his own rabbit hole and actually believe what he once knew to be untrue.”

Typically, important things like tax bills almost seem trivial when a man who talks like he’s operating out of parallel universes — straight out of an episode of “The Twilight Zone” — has the future of an entire nation, in an increasingly combustible world, in his hands. That’s not what many of us want and it’s certainly not what any of us need.

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Scott Thompson is the editor of the Barrow News-Journal. He can be reached at sthompson@barrownewsjournal.com.