Trump’s presidency and life are cons

Letters praising the most corrupt and incompetent president in my seventy-five years compel me to speak out after a long silence. I no longer have clients to lose and the people I care about agree with me. I can now be brutally honest and I will be.

Donald Trump was never prepared for public service and never expected to have to serve anyone but himself. His candidacy was another of his many cons, intended to resurrect his failing brand. A climate of hateful ignorance and the aid of a brutal dictator wanting to sow chaos in our democracy swept him into the most powerful position on earth.

He had no clue how to form a government, much less how to lead a constitutional democracy. He assembled a cabinet of wealthy misfits, each ideally suited and morally inclined to sabotage the mission of the agencies they led. Those who might have been capable of effective, principled leadership were soon removed. They were surreptitiously fired or resigned in disgust.

His first term has been marked by criminal indictments, convictions and guilty pleas. The 215 criminal indictments so far eclipse the meager 76 of the Nixon era and none in Obama’s two terms. These staggering numbers alone should cause any rational conservative to question Trump’s suitability for any position of public trust.

I hoped that Trump would be content to play the president on TV and let experience and expertise prevail while he basked in the glory of his improbable presidency. Barring an unforeseen calamity, America could survive.

Horrifyingly, Trump took the helm of the ship of state. He couldn’t refrain from inserting his grotesque ego into matters of great national and international consequence. He shattered alliances, trashed solemn treaties and waged war on those he chose to demonize. His brutal treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers made it clear that malevolence and incompetence would work hand in hand in his administration.

The business acumen that sold him to just enough voters to win the electoral college was an illusion. It wasn’t a million-dollar loan from his father that gave him his start. It was a 400-million-dollar inheritance, much of it stolen from his own family and hidden from the tax collectors. Bankrupting casinos was not a big enough red flag to voters aggrieved by eight years of success by a popular black president.

Historians will chronicle America’s foolish experiment with a reality TV president. They will paint a clearer picture of the treachery leading to Trump’s impeachment but nothing will stand out as prominently as his willful failure to protect the American people from a predictable pandemic. His vanity and his need to maintain the legal immunity he enjoys as president caused him to ignore the onrushing plague and to thwart the best efforts of our public health professionals.

I have faith in America and trust it will undo its disastrous mistake of 2016. If that faith proves unwarranted, I will be claiming my sainted grandmother’s Irish birthright. My wife and I will be resettling in Ireland, leaving behind family and friends. I trust they will not think we are abandoning them. They will understand that we have no desire to live or die in Donald Trump’s America.