The Trump presidency has been filled with glaring rhetorical contradictions from its inception. These contradictions, often out-right lies, and fabricated bloviating easily lay the mental groundwork for the question, for even the most aloof or disinterested among political enthusiast. What is the potential long-range impact on the America citizenry from the barrage of reversals, out-right lies and contradictions done by President Donald J. Trump? From such contradictions related to who will build his campaign promised “Mexican southern border wall” and claims of the “largest inaugural crowd-size” to view an inauguration in U.S. history, to his false, promised-filled rhetoric about “ draining the proverbial Washington D.C. swamp,” Trump has repeatedly said one thing, only to do another.
As previously stated, Trump’s propensity to set forth short-lived prevarications did not begin upon his ascension to the presidency. Speaking to the line of thought, a 2016 Politico Magazine article stated, “Over the past four decades Trump has talked about every imaginable subject: gun rights to germs, the nature of competition to pre-nuptial agreements, love and sex, self-promotion, and politics. And on every one of those topics, he has taken positions that directly contradict exactly what he has previously said.”
To be sure, many Americans agree that this potentially dangerous and politically harmful trait has undoubtedly followed the 45th U.S. president into the White House. A large contingency of Americans are painfully familiar with the following list of Trumpian contradictions: 2017 Obama wire-tapping accusations, were later proven false by the FBI; 2017 Trump claims he never met indicted campaign and Russia political connect George Papadopoulos — proved a lie — Papadopoulos was convicted of lying and subsequently acknowledges knowing Trump and family; the firing of James Comey, Trump told FBI Director James Comey in a letter that he had received letters from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and had accepted their recommendations and “you are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately.”
Two days later Trump later told NBC News he had planned to fire Comey for months. “Rosenstein recommending your dismissal as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He made a recommendation but regardless of the recommendation I was going to fire Comey.” Yet another contradiction.
What many American are not aware of is what effect the outlandish contradictions currently have on the U.S. as they now collide with an oppositional Democratic House of Representatives, led by Nancy Pelosi. This collision has the Republican POTUS and Democratic speaker of the congressional house, two deeply dug-in political titans, poised for a historic political clash, which has already produced the longest American governmental shutdown in U.S. history. Moreover, the shutdown, owned publicly by President Trump in late December 2018, is arguably one of Trump’s most blatant contradictions to date. Ironically, the foundation of this contradiction was laid four years before the Trump presidency came to fruition and has over 800,000 government employees working without pay and wondering how to make ends meet.
Donald Trump became president on January 20, 2017. Four years earlier he showed a clear and distinct desire to express opinions about the drastic actions of allowing the U.S. government to be shutdown. At that time Trump stated “a government shutdown shows a president is weak? In a September 2013 Fox & Friends phone interview, Trump blasted Obama for failing to “get everybody in a room.” Trump further explains, “If you say who gets fired, it always has to be the top. Problems start from the top, and they must get solved from the top, and the president’s the leader, and he’s got to get everybody in a room, and he’s got to lead. And he doesn’t do that, he doesn’t like doing that, that’s not his strength. A shutdown falls on the president’s lack of leadership. He can’t even control his own party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the president is weak.”
President Trump’s latest contradiction could prove to be his most painful to date for the American people locked in the clutches of his desperate attempts to appease his 34 percent political base. Various economists have opined that the Trump-owned shutdown could accelerate a U.S. recession. Numerous social casualties have already emerged ranging from TSA workers calling in sick, leaving dangerous access to would-be terrorist, which creates its own irony when one considers that the shutdown is supposedly over the terrorist seeking to enter the U.S. at the southern border of Mexico, according to Trump. Multiple news agencies have reported that crime at the southern border is at its lowest in over 10 years; representing yet another Trump contradiction.
There is probably no proven apparatus to gauge the long-range effect of Trump’s latest contradiction. We may never know how many meals were missed by children whose parent couldn’t afford groceries. We may never know how many insulin shots were missed by government workers who couldn’t afford their copays. What I do know is a country whose leadership cannot be trusted to stand on or consistently tell the truth is a country that has forgotten that it is the truth that makes us free. Until greater moral expectations and a higher premium on truth is demanded by America’s citizens, a contradictory presidency will continue making a strange bedfellow in the historic Lincoln bedroom of America’s White House.
Dr. Clyde Posley Jr., is a social scientist, author and pastor of Antioch Baptist Church.
