It’s been a week now since our election earthquake, and true to seismic form, our life has become one aftershock after another. White nationalists, formerly known as bigots, are crawling out of the shadows of the netherworld en route to the West Wing. Muslims, Latinos, blacks and Jews are being brazenly attacked by emboldened racists, freed from their closets by their victorious shake-things-up change candidate. Meanwhile, many on the left are feeling shockwaves from President Obama’s seemingly sanguine acceptance of his successor.
Nobody escaped the severity of these aftershocks, not even the quake’s walking epicenter himself, President-elect Donald J. Trump. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump left his White House meeting with Obama Friday totally stunned over the depth and breadth of the job he just won. Apparently, it has now dawned on him that this presidency gig may take more than a few 3 a.m. tweets to pull off. Obama has agreed to spend more time mentoring Trump before the inauguration. The president also told reporters he believes The Donald will soften many of his more provocative campaign promises.
The president’s subdued reaction to the guy he once called a “carnival barker,” has riled progressives and prompted a Washington Post think piece to speculate that Obama is still working his way through the denial stage of the grieving process. I think there may be a better explanation: after an eight-year search, Obama finally found a Republican in Washington who will listen to him. As a longtime advocate for special needs students, I wholeheartedly salute this tutoring project.
Unfortunately, I suspect that most of Obama’s lessons will be geared toward procedural matters, maybe with a shot or two at trying to nudge his student’s policy positions slightly forward from deep right field. What Trump desperately needs help with is that other part of the presidency, the one that aims to reach people’s hearts and pull the country together in times of severe distress. You know what I’m talking about. It’s what Obama did after the Charleston church shooting; what George W. Bush did after 9/11; what Bill Clinton did after the Oklahoma City bombing and, what all presidents have done on so many difficult occasions.
No, there has been no terrorist attack, no mass shooting. But large portions of this country are hurting right now. Given his campaign’s vitriol and rhetoric directed at various ethnic and underrepresented groups, the fear and trembling of living in Trump Nation has been rampant everyplace, from elementary schools to college campuses and beyond. For some time now, at least in most communities, overt racism has been a cultural taboo. People have been fired for using the N word. Those who openly attack others based on race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity are quickly called on it and ostracized. It’s what most of us call civility and decency. Sadly, there is a faction of Trump voters who see it as a state of political correctness that just died in the electoral college. Unleashed since the election, this cabal has spread its hate and ugliness throughout the land. For example:
In Delaware, a black woman was accosted by four white male Trump supporters boasting how they “no longer have to deal with n*****s.” She said one asked her, “how scared are you, you black bitch? I should just kill you right now, you’re a waste of air.”
In San Jose, a Muslim student said she was attacked from behind in a parking garage by a man who pulled at her hijab and choked her.
In Texas, fliers depicting men in camouflage, wielding guns and an American flag, were distributed throughout Texas State University. Here’s what they said: “Now that our man Trump is elected, (it is) time to organize tar and feather vigilante squads and go arrest and torture those deviant university leaders spouting off that diversity garbage.”
In Maryland, a sign advertising Spanish services at an Episcopal church in Silver Spring was ripped and vandalized with the words, TRUMP NATION WHITES ONLY.”
In a “60 Minutes” interview, Lesley Stahl asked Trump to respond to reports of racist attacks by his supporters. He seemed stunned by the news. Asked by Stahl what he would say to his supporters doing things like that, Trump said, “I would say don’t do it, that’s terrible, because I’m going to bring this country together.” Pressed by Stahl for an even stronger response, Trump tried to crank it up a notch, like he was in a role playing exercise: “I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, ‘Stop it.’ If it—if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: ‘Stop it.’”
Therein lies the problem in elevating to the presidency a man whose only notion of leadership is making decisions and barking orders. Even a city council member in the smallest of towns has a better instinctive feel for reaching out to people and appealing to their better angels. Trump has never had to do anything like that before. He doesn’t know where to begin. He is a fish out of water. What makes it even more sad is that it is in his own interest to reach out to America right now, to condemn the attacks and the racism, to apologize for any hurt he caused in an overzealous campaign moment. No, such an approach wouldn’t change the minds of the never-Trump voters, but it would mitigate his negatives a bit, soften his tone, make him seem a little more human, a little more caring. It’s the thing good leaders do. Unfortunately, it is simply not in his wheelhouse. And that’s one more thing we’re just going to have to get used to here in Trump Nation.