Day: <span>January 17, 2018</span>

It is time for Trump’s enablers and apologists to call him out

 

If any school kid had been overheard speaking half the trashy, racially-tinged remarks that President Trump makes headlines with, the child would have been suspended or transferred to an alternative, disciplinary campus. Unfortunately, there is no alternative White House. We are stuck with the occupant of the real Oval Office for the foreseeable future.

We also are stuck for the time being with a bunch of alleged political “leaders” in Texas who helped elect Trump and refuse to call him out when he uses his foul mouth to insult much of the world’s population as well as millions of American citizens –people of color – whom he purports to serve.

You can argue about whether the president of the United States is a racist, but there is no doubt that he is appealing to racists, and that’s a pretty thin distinction. Racists alone didn’t elect Trump, but they helped. He knows that, and he is counting on their support in 2020, if he is still a  viable candidate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a prominent member of the president’s adopted party, publicly and forcefully admonished Trump after the president’s trashy, demeaning remarks last week about Haiti, African countries and the people who live there.

There also may have been one or two other Republican members of the Senate who expressed their disapproval, but they weren’t the two U.S. senators from Texas, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, who have remained mum about the ill-prepared, uninformed and insensitive president they continue to help prop up.

The silence from Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who – like Cruz – are up for reelection this year, also has been noticeable. What kind of role models are they for Texas school children? We encourage kids to stand up to bullies. Should we expect any less from their alleged political leaders?

These are the same “leaders” who seem intent on dictating their version of morality to their constituents, to the dereliction of their real duties. Who can forget, for example, that Abbott and Patrick would rather tell school kids which bathroom they can use than provide enough funding to give all Texas children the educational opportunities they need.

Their morality meddling, however, doesn’t extend to the president. They refuse to call him out. Perhaps they don’t want to offend any of the president’s supporters, including the race-baiters they should be offending, because they don’t want to lose anyone’s vote, including a race-baiter’s.

Like all the other enablers and apologists for Trump, they also prefer power over decency, and power doesn’t require decency.

It is shameful.