DONALD TRUMP: AMERICA’S MOST UNPATRIOTIC PRESIDENT

When it comes to demonstrating patriotic respect for this country and all that it stands for, Donald J. Trump takes a knee. To be sure, it is a metaphorical knee, totally lacking the focused purpose and quiet grace of a Colin Kaepernick or Eric Reid. For the first time in American history, we have a deeply unpatriotic president who repeatedly spews disdain and disgust on the very foundations of government he was elected to lead.

Hours after an alleged terrorist killed eight people in Lower Manhattan last week, Trump went on a rant about the need to quickly execute the suspect. Here’s what he said: “We need quick justice and we need strong justice – much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke, and it’s a laughingstock. And no wonder so much of this stuff takes place.”

Now, there was probably a guy on a barstool in every American tavern who said the same thing last week. But none of them were elected president of the United States. It is easy, and sometimes therapeutic for coping purposes, to tune out the daily stream of inanities from our 45th president. But this one is too stunningly deplorable to ignore. Read that quote again. The leader of our “home of the free” called our system of justice a “joke” and a “laughingstock”. It’s one thing for a citizen, or even a political candidate, to besmirch the integrity of our government. Dissent is as American as apple pie. But when you occupy the Oval Office, when you are this country’s chief representative to the world, those words reverberate with an unpatriotic fervor that no kneeling NFL player has ever approached or contemplated.

But the Donald was just getting warmed up. Later in the week, the president had some choice words for the non-imprisonment sentence handed down in one of the country’s most prominent desertion cases. In 2009, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his military base in Afghanistan, was captured by the Taliban and spent five years in captivity. He pled guilty to desertion and was sentenced to a dishonorable discharge but no prison time. Within minutes, Trump’s Twitter fingers pronounced the judge’s decision “a complete disgrace to our country and to our military.”

As commander in chief, Trump outranks the military judge who conducted a lengthy hearing on Bergdahl’s sentencing. Nevertheless, that judge, Army Col. Jeffrey Nance, had to consider a key defense argument that the president had stomped on Bergdahl’s due process rights. As a candidate, Trump repeatedly called Bergdahl a “dirty rotten traitor” and said he should be executed or returned to the Taliban. As president, he recently referred back to those remarks, indicating they still applied. Judge Nance said Trump’s comments concerned him and warranted mitigation in sentencing.

So, in the course of three days, this president managed to denigrate the country’s justice system by calling it a “joke”, and pull the rug out from under military jurisprudence by labeling a judge’s decision as a “complete disgrace”. But he wasn’t quite done. Just as the special prosecutor in the Russia investigation released two indictments and a guilty plea against former Trump campaign aides, the president renewed his call for an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, insisting once again that she belongs in jail. Like a responsive reading in church, Trump automatically responds to adversity with the call for Clinton’s incarceration. After all, he promised in a 2016 debate that he would put her in jail if he won, a pledge that seems to have gone the way of the Mexican wall and Obamacare repeal.

Not only are these presidential rants against our justice system anti-American, they are also counterproductive to the Donald’s own cause. Bergdahl, for example, would probably have been given prison time if Trump hadn’t called for his execution. In the case of the recent New York terrorist attack, prosecutors anticipate difficulties in jury selection because of the president’s prejudicial remarks. And if any career Justice Department attorneys ever entertained an idea of going after Clinton, Trump’s repeated calls for that prosecution would undoubtedly hold them back just to avoid the aura of political persecution.

“But you know the saddest thing,” Trump said in a radio interview last week, “because I’m the president of the United States I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.” Poor guy. If he had known he couldn’t obstruct justice by tossing his enemies in jail like they do in a banana republic, he would have never taken the job.

Despite the flags he uses as props, despite his National Anthem militancy, despite his “America first” rhetoric, Donald Trump does not love this country. The core of this nation’s democracy is predicated on an independent judiciary, one that dispenses justice through the rule of law, not by political fiat or authoritarian dictate. It’s a system based on a presumption of innocence and a fair trial, not an “off with their heads” order from a strongman dictator. It’s not perfect, this system of ours, and it needs periodic care and maintenance by lawmakers. But for 241 years this has been the essence of American justice. Far from being a joke or a laughing stock, it’s who we are as a county. It’s what America is all about. To reject that, Mr. President, is to reject America. It doesn’t get more unpatriotic than that.