Trump's actions show he's still only out for himself

 

In the six weeks since President-elect Joe Biden won the White House, President Donald Trump has proved again and again that he has little concern for anyone other than himself, scheming and spreading falsehoods as he seeks to overturn the election while seeming unmoved by the grim climb in coronavirus cases that has led to more than 316,000 deaths in the United States while countless Americans struggle to keep food on the table.
 

Just when it seemed like the President couldn't sink any lower in his quest to subvert the November election results, his mere entertainment of invoking martial law to negate Biden's victory underscores how laser-focused he still is on his own interests at a time when the nation is mired in crisis.
 

The idea came up during an extraordinary Oval Office meeting Friday between Trump, members of his team and two of his most discredited outside advisers -- lawyer Sidney Powell, a fount of baseless voter fraud theories, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, whom Trump recently pardoned and who first floated the martial law idea earlier last week. The impromptu gathering devolved into a shouting match between his advisers -- some of whom were forcefully resisting Powell and Flynn's outrageous suggestions -- but it nevertheless showed how Trump continues to surround himself with sycophants, no matter how crazy their theories are as long as they will benefit him.

Though Trump is fighting hard to stay in the White House, he has shown little interest in doing the actual work required of the commander-in-chief. Though he directed billions of dollars into Operation Warp Speed to speed the development and distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, he has done nothing to try to curb the spread of Covid-19 in the interim -- tweeting Saturday that "we don't want to have lockdowns. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself" -- and he has not interceded to try to force bickering members of Congress to strike a deal on an emergency stimulus package that would alleviate some of the nation's financial suffering as some 12 million Americans face the loss of their jobless benefits on December 26.
 

For the first time Saturday, Trump addressed the massive cyberattack on US government agencies, contradicting his own Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said Friday that "we can now say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity." 

Trump, who has inexplicably proven unwilling to call out Russia or President Vladimir Putin for nefarious acts over the past four years, confounded national security experts on Saturday by tweeting that "it may be China" that is responsible for the attacks.

"I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control," Trump wrote on Twitter.

Showing his lingering insecurity about the legitimacy of his 2016 victory, and his rejection of any suggestion that Russia tried to interfere in that contest against Hillary Clinton to help him win, Trump went on to say that "Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens."

"Discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)," the President tweeted of the cyber hack that breached US government systems.

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who warned when he was running for president in 2012 that Russia was America's number one geopolitical foe, noted that the President has always had "a blind spot" when it comes to Russia and said the idea of invoking martial law to force new presidential elections in swing states is "not going to happen. That's going nowhere."

"I understand the President is casting about, trying to find some way to have a different result than the one that was delivered by the American people. But it's really sad, in a lot of respects, and embarrassing, because the President could right now be writing the last chapter of this administration with a victory lap with regards to the vaccine," Romney told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."

"After all, he pushed aggressively to get the vaccine developed and distributed. That's happening on a quick time frame. He could be going out and championing this extraordinary success. And, instead, he's leaving Washington with a whole series of conspiracy theories and things that are so nutty and loopy that people are shaking their head, wondering, what in the world has gotten into this man?"

Other Republican senators gingerly tried to sidestep the President's latest theories about the cyberattack and the November election this weekend. Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said of the hack, "Everything I've seen is indicative of something that's pretty widespread and serious and I think indicates that it was the Russian intelligence service."

When asked about Trump's claim that China might be involved in the massive cyberhack, Sen. Jim Inhofe, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and was briefed on the attack, replied, "All of I've heard is Russia."
The Oklahoma Republican also told CNN's Manu Raju that Trump made a bad decision by vowing to veto the annual defense authorization bill, which Trump has claimed is weak on China -- a view Inhofe disputes.

"I really believe he's not getting the right advice. I know people advising him -- they don't appreciate the fact that I say that," Inhofe said. "But I believe that."

Rep. Adam Smith, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called Trump "an aspiring fascist" who admires Putin and wants the same kind of control that Putin exerts over his own country and its elections. Smith said the reports that Trump entertained Flynn's theories about invoking martial law were "unbelievably disturbing."

"He is talking about basically leading a coup against the United States government and destroying our Constitution," Smith told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" Saturday night. "There needs to be strong bipartisan pushback against this. It is an unbelievably dangerous thing for the President to be talking about."