He's got everybody fooled

I’ve heard Donald Trump called literally every name in the book since he declared his candidacy for the Presidency. And it runs the gamut of compliments and put-downs from God-like to the Devil Incarnate. Hardly anyone has a neutral opinion of him. He’s either the best guy or the worst guy to ever be elected President.

He was elected President because he was cut from a different cloth when compared with the rest of the politicians. He didn’t go along to get along. He didn’t parse his speech. He didn’t worry about bruised egos. He was perceived as calling in like it was and if it affected someone in a negative way, so be it. This drove the Democrats and moderate Republicans crazy but continued to delight his base every single day.

The problem is that his base was wrong for loving him and his opponents were wrong for hating him, at least wrong for the wrong reasons. He didn’t get rid of Obama care on his first day in office like he promised to at every political rally he spoke at. One of his first acts as President wasn’t to build a wall along our southern border and make Mexico pay for it. He never intended to do that because he knew he COULDN’T do it. Trump isn’t a politician and never has been one. He’s a carnival barker. He’s a door-to-door salesman. He’s the P.T. Barnum of the modern era. He sells people on his ideas and his rhetoric rather than selling them on things he can actually do.

The only promise he has kept so far was to select a conservative Republican to the Supreme Court and that obviously delighted every Republican who voted for him because of the Republican party's’ stance on abortion. But he’s done little else except cause outrage at the things he says and does on an almost daily basis.

That’s what he wanted to do. That’s what he INTENDED to do. I don’t think he has any interest in serving a second term because he can’t make nearly enough money as President of the United States and that’s his main objective and has been since he was a child. Neither is he obligated or beholden to the Republican Party for anything and, in fact, was considered by many a Democrat until a couple of years ago.

It’s debatable and, in fact, probably false, that Trump ever said Republicans were the dumbest group of voters in the country because they automatically believed anything that was uttered on Fox news but he did say they were far too right to be a functioning political party.

This is all a game to Trump and I’m sure he’s having the time of his life. He probably chuckles after every inflammatory tweet he sends out, already knowing the consternation it’s going to cause when it becomes public. He’s having the time of his life because he has no respect for the principles of governing laid out by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. He can’t see or doesn’t understand that we’ve been the leader of the free world for all these years BECAUSE of these principles, not in spite of them. We’ve been respected by other countries worldwide because we were serious and forthright and deliberative due to the fact that so many of our decisions affected not only the United States but the rest of the world as well.

And now after just six months of President Trump, that has all been laid on its side. Now more countries criticize us that support us. We are no longer seen as leaders people can trust. We’re retreating from the world stage at far too fast a pace and once you retreat, it’s hard to reclaim the top spot again.

When President Trump leaves office and returns to private life, he’ll return to the multi-billion dollar lifestyle he was accustomed to before.

The question is what will America return to?