TRUMP IN THE WEEK OF RELIGIOUS MURDER AND NEAR ASSASSINATIONS

As the President traipsed around the country conducting his Nuremberg Style rallies, the country reeled with the impact of two tsunamis of hate and violence. Not since the sixties with its Vietnam war death toll and accompanying bloody protests and the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King has the country been more on edge. Midst the crucial midterm elections where the President is fighting a desperate battle to motivate his base by resorting to the crudest possible rhetoric, including lauding violence, an attempted elimination of the entire leadership of the opposition was undertaken, which, had it been successful, might well have plunged the country into civil war. Then a brutal savage antisemitic attack took place in a synagogue where eleven worshippers were slain by a bigot armed to the teeth with an arsenal including an AK 47. 

It is fair to say that the Trump response to this anarchy and mayhem has differed from all other presidents in recent memory.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

The President occupies a unique position in American politics and culture. Once elected there is a reverence towards the victor that is unrecognizable in other Western Democracies. In the latter they have simple mechanisms to remove the country’s leader within the governing party. In America it is virtually impossible to do likewise and it requires a bipartisan effort where a Party has to publicly reject its leader. The President is thus there for the duration of four years unless he dies or in the one historical instance of Richard Nixon where he resigned to avoid the humiliation of being removed by two thirds of the Senate. 

The veneration dates back to America’s very beginning where a battle took place as to what would be the source of the country’s leader. Jefferson favored the populist model while Hamilton and Adams hankered for a more monarchistic approach, having little faith in the body politic. The unwritten compromise was the all powerful American President, who once elected by the people, would become the representative of all the people not just his party. This covenant between the individual who governed and those he served has been respected through the ages. However covenants are acts of faith not laws. 

So the President need not be a unifier, a healer, a father figure or an agent of comfort if he/she so chooses. He can be a provoker of division and a purveyor of fear if he so decides. Whatever the President may or may not be he has by tradition the largest megaphone in the country and therefore influence - in fact due to his unique constitutional position he is disproportionately influential. By his actions, inactions and words he can legitimize or delegitimize any policy, attitude or behavior. Put another way the POTUS can dictate the country’s agenda and move any policy or anybody from the fringes to the mainstream. 

It is fair to say that this President has sought to create a cult of followers who are exhorted to believe in their leader right or wrong. He disregards, delegitimizes and demonizes anybody or any institution that opposes him. 

Trump has thus broken the covenant which has been in operation for two and a half centuries. His modus operandi is to divide not unite, to create fear rather than pacify, to smear his opponents rather than encourage respect, to unashamedly serve his own and his Party’s interests rather than those of the country and to demonize "the other" rather than celebrate diversity which has been the formula for America’s success to date. All this is an enigma to the Presidency of the United States.  

It is with this as a background that Donald J. Trump faced the nation in the week that was.

DONALD J. TRUMP AND THE ATTEMPTED ELIMINATION OF THE LEADERSHIP OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

While the POTUS was obviously not involved in the pipe bomb cataclysm the very issues and individuals that he has focussed on and demonized were congruent with the motivations of this bomber. Also glaringly evident was the fact that he did not allow his campaign to miss a beat as the country was galvanized by shock at the vast number of leaders targeted with pipe bombs. His immediate frustration at learning of the tragedy has been universally condemned and unfavorably compared with the responses of his immediate predecessors to calamities such as the Oklahoma bombing, 9/11 and the Sandy Hook shootings.

Trump expressed frustration at the wide coverage that the attempted assassinations had evinced and the fact that he was no longer the center of attention. He tweeted, “Republicans are doing so well in the early voting, and at the polls and now this “Bomb Stuff” happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans go out and vote”. By so doing he made it obvious that reassuring the nation was not his priority. He dashed aside any suggestion that he should contact the high profile victims of these attacks, show support and solidarity and assure that he condemned, on behalf of the country, such acts of terror. 

When reminded that he had castigated bomb recipients such as CNN 633 times, Hillary Clinton 360, Barack Obama 137, Maxine Walters 73, John Brennan 30, Cory Booker 33 and John Clapper 20, he then resorted to playing the victim by rhetorically asking “How many times have I been attacked?” He then blamed a real victim, CNN and all the other “Fake News” outlets, for creating the environment 

Whichever way one looks at this egregious incident, the causes of which are multifactorial, with social media, for example, playing a large part, there is very little doubt what the perpetrator must have felt in his diseased mind while making his bombs in his white truck with pictures of Trump and Pence surrounding him and pictures of his victims in red cross hairs, that he was supporting his leader.

DONALD J.TRUMP AND THE WORST ANTI - SEMITIC ATTACK THE COUNTRY HAS EVER WITNESSED.

Throughout his Presidency, Donald Trump and his Jewish son in law have been at pains to reassure that the President is not an anti - semite. Their apparent need to do so was as a result of a host of incidents, actions, policies and insinuations that have been pointed at him. The principal defense of his pro Jewish position relates to his relationship with the Israeli premier, support of Israel per se and his declaration of Jerusalem as its capitol. 

His first clear cut attack on local anti semitism at a recent rally needs to be followed by confrontation of the individuals and groups that perpetrate this evil. The fact that he preceded his condemnation by laughingly apologizing to the crowd that he is going to have to tone down the volume hardly encourages his adoring fans to regard his message of denunciation seriously.  Like with the pipe bomb scare the President just continued campaigning in the wake of this synagogue carnage.

The Jewish Anti Defamation League, (ADL), condemned a statement in his campaign when he refused to denounce white supremacist anti semitic groups and David Duke in particular. They labelled his response as “obscene”. However, what loomed ominously as the largest affront to the Jewish community was a political attack on Hillary Clinton with a star of David next to her that apparently had been cut and pasted from an anti - semitic propaganda piece. The demonization of “crooked Hillary” was accompanied by an attack on the financial establishment which was represented by three prominent Jews, Janet Yellin, head of the Federal Reserve, George Soros, the billionaire and the head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein. All four were being held responsible for exploiting the financial system at the expense of the American worker. Trump put into words what this all meant, “Its a global power structure that is responsible for all economic decisions that have robbed our working class stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of corporations and political entities” - shades of European anti Jewish bigotry of the twentieth century.

Then, early in his Presidency, Trump, inexplicably, failed to mention the six million Jews slaughtered on Holocaust Remembrance Day. But what caused the largest outcry was his statement on the Charlottesville riots which was colored by a murder of a left wing protestor and anti semitic chants such as “Jews will not replace us”. He claimed that both sides were culpable. Trump apologized afterwards but told Bob Woodward that that apology was the “biggest f - ing mistake” that he had ever made. 

The belief is that Trump is not an anti semite but is more than mindful that a very active minority of his base is and there is no way he is going to say or do anything to upset them. 

TRUMP - THE REFUGEE CARAVAN IS THE GREATEST THREAT FACING AMERICA

Then there is the vitriol heaped on the Latin Americans, (The Caravan), who are wending their thousands of miles trek across South America so as to be able to enter USA. Trump has made their mission and the “threat it represents to the safety of America” the center piece of his campaign message for the midterms. There is the canard that has been repeated again and again and never retracted that The Caravan is being financed by the Jewish bogeyman George Soros. The Caravan represents an existential threat to the sovereignty of the country Trump claims and he will bring out the military to stop them. 

AMBIVALENCE ON ANTI - SEMITISM AND THE CARAVAN THREAT - THE BACKGROUND FOR THE ATTACK ON PITTSBURGH’S SYNAGOGUE

It was in this rhetorical milieu that the gunman attacked The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. What might have triggered the attack is the fact that the Synagogue supported the 130 year old Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. The latter, according to Jewish tradition, supports and comforts “the stranger” and has reaffirmed their support for refugees and asylum seekers in the light of The Caravan. The assailant vowed to kill all the Jews and referred to their support of the asylum seekers.

Again this attack took place in an environment where there is an historic 57 percent rise in American anti semitic attacks last year. All this venom has been fueled and amplified by the social media. However the demonization of The Caravan participants who are allegedly helped by the Jews and financed by a Jew, George Soros, had to make yet another diseased mind feel that he was not that far out of the mainstream. This even though he feels that Trump is not nationalistic enough and is surrounded by kikes, (a derogatory name for Jews).

AT THE END OF THE DAY

While these two horrendous acts have multifactorial and complex etiologies Donald Trump at the very least has failed to act as the Comforter in Chief. His lack of empathy immediately after the Pittsburgh attack by responding to the news by offering, “If there had been an armed guard the results would have been far better” hardly struck the right note. He needs further to condemn anti semitism unconditionally and all prejudice even when the perpetrators are his own supporters. Unless he assumes the traditional Presidential role and makes it clear that he is not ambivalent on the issue of bigotry this current toxic political environment will only worsen. The response to the religious slaughter coupled with his dismissal of what could be labelled as treason further enhances the criticism that he simply does not care about traditional American values.

One fact for sure is that the President of the United States,  in no uncertain terms, has sanctified violence. This has had the effect of validating his supporters bloodshed and making this behavior acceptable. The only question is to what degree does he believe it is okay? There is one statement that Trump made on the campaign trail that haunts Jay H. Ell to this day. At a time when Trump felt he may well lose the election his rallying cry was that the system was rigged. He then mused that the only recourse to that could be by the second amendment people……. 

A final thought from the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks:

“One of the most enduring facts of history is that antisemites never think of themselves as anti - semites.”