Donald Trump is No One’s President Except Those Who Worship Donald Trump

District Productive
8 min readAug 16, 2017

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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

I do not think Donald Trump is a Nazi. I never thought I would have to write that about an American president even at a time when the word ‘Nazi’ is thrown around against anyone who you disagree with like Limbaugh’s ‘feminazis’ to people who make you go to the end of the line if you don’t have your lunch order ready like Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi.

I also don’t think Donald Trump is a Nazi sympathizer. He is, rather, something altogether new and yet still, altogether unoriginal, another sentence I never thought there would ever be a need to say. He is a Nazi sympathizer-sympathizer. Yes, he has indeed become a personage somewhat unique by his becoming something different without having put a single thought into accomplishing the task.

We have had important Americans come close to this before, but Joseph Kennedy was an actual greatly anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer. His only problem with Hitler was that actions like Kristallnacht were so very public, that they made for bad press in the United States. Other than that he agreed with Nancy Astor that Hitler could take care of both the world’s problems: communism and Jews. Joe Kennedy was only a Nazi sympathizer because he lived here. In Germany, he would have been first in line to be a full-fledged Nazi.

Charles Lindbergh was pro-Nazi, though he disapproved of mass murder. He was absolutely a white supremacist and anti-Semitic, and though his solo flight across the Atlantic still deserves praise, as a person Lindbergh hardly deserved Jimmy Stewart who portrayed him. The actual Lindbergh fathered seven children among three mistresses across Germany while married to Ann Morrow, who wrote a book about fascism being the wave of the future, and matched her much-worshipped husband by having affairs with her doctor and the author of The Little Prince.

But these were something different: Joe Kennedy was a Nazi sympathizer. Charles Lindbergh was pretty much a Nazi. Ann Morrow Lindbergh considered Nazis unfortunate, but worth the trouble.

Trump is a guy who is willing to support Nazis simply because they support him. I don’t think Trump personally hates Jews. I don’t think he actually thinks that deeply. I don’t think he hates Blacks. Well, not for being Black anyway, or even Latinos. He is willing to sacrifice their lives simply because he doesn’t want to be president of all the people. Just the ones that support him and even then only the ones who support him at this minute.

What Donald Trump does, does not even have the actual twisted belief of Nazis and Klansmen. He has what in some ways is an even more twisted belief that letting such people have their way and supporting them is fine because they like him, in a world where the number of such people is dwindling.

Yes, we have a man who just months ago was popular enough to be elected president of the United States, who is clinging to Nazis because they like him. That’s it. He’s down to Nazis. This is like a last night in Vegas with only counterfeit tens in your pocket, a few tokens from a peep show, and a bottle of something that says its whisky but actually just got drained from a crankcase at a Jiffy Lube.

General Kelly stood through yesterday’s news conference looking like a guy who could only get a date with that woman who convinced her boyfriend to kill himself. What’s better? Being alone or being able to at least say for a few hours you have a girlfriend? That was what he looked like as he stood there — chief of staff to a man scared if he offended Nazis, what would he have left?

Tuesday’s press conference was like makeup sex with David Duke, who praised Trump for not blaming white supremacists on Sunday, was upset with Trump on Monday, and was all giggly because everything was good again on Tuesday.

He may not even have his best friend — other than Vladimir Putin — overseas. Bibi Netanyahu, fighting for survival as Israel’s leader as he faces possible corruption charges, is now that man whose best political friend overseas just apologized again for Nazis. For Netanyahu, this is about as bad as it gets. Hey, Bibi! How’s your friend the Nazi lover? Even the Jerusalem Post — which loves Netanyahu like birds love seed — is now trumpeting stories about the rising anti-Semitism in America under Netanyahu’s buddy, including Alex Jones claiming Jews disguised as KKK members started the trouble. Trump told Jones on the air that Jones’ reputation was amazing, adding, I will not let you down. And he hasn’t.

Before we get to all the obvious things people are talking about and which hardly need me at this point, just think about the family dynamics.

Standing next to Trump with a frozen expression on her face was Elaine Chao, Trump’s secretary of transportation who is standing by her man even though her actual man, husband Mitch McConnell has been constantly run into the ground by Trump. Chao at this point has decided that being secretary of transportation is far more important than what the man she has pledged her loyalty to says about the man she sleeps with. She is not only sticking with Trump in the battle, over her husband, but her face did not crack at all while Trump stood there and said people who fight Nazis are just as bad as Nazis.

Hey, there are good people on both sides. There are good Nazis. And what is a good Nazi? Well, the standard used to be that the only good Nazi was a dead Nazi, but for Trump, it’s any Nazi who likes him. Really it’s anyone who likes him.

Which getting back to family is why Trump sees no problem liking his Jewish daughter — who he likes so much he wanted to date her — and liking Nazis who would want to kill her daughter if they could. In fact, they must especially hate Ivanka because unlike Jared who was just born a Jew, Ivanka turned her back on Christianity, and if the Nazis had a dragon, they’d put Ivanka first up for the fire.

Think about that. Donald Trump was making excuses for people who would murder his own daughter if they could, and that son-in-law he thinks is so great — he’s put Jared in charge of Mideast peace, reorganizing government, fighting opioids, getting the coffee table not to tilt, and figuring out how to make the Roku just automatically go to Fox and Friends even after Melania has gummed it up by binging 15 seasons of Project Runway.

Yeah, these people Trump likes so much were chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and “this city is run by Jewish communists and criminals, n-word.” And by the way, I hate saying ‘n-word’ though I know I need to or iTunes will have a coronary, but we really should be done cleaning up the ugliness. You can’t sanitize the hatred and make it come out sounding cute, like you’re chastising a three-year-old for a word he heard Uncle Ernie say in the car. You have to understand the depth of the hatred and ugliness Donald Trump is willing to legitimize as long as the people spewing it say nice things about him. They don’t say ‘n-word’ nor do they say ‘k-word’ for Jews, and I think by having to clean that up, all we’re doing is making them sound less horrible than they really are, but there you have it.

We clean up the language they use because we believed they were, if hardly harmless, at the very least marginalized and they were until Steve Bannon and his president gave them the spotlight and said some of them were good.

Trump is willing to sell out and endanger his own daughter for the heils of Jeffrey Lord. He left Jews out of Holocaust Remembrance Day. He retweeted from his own account a meme against Hillary Clinton with a Star of David and he has often and freely retweeted things from openly anti-Semitic organizations.

Is Donald Trump a Nazi? No. I don’t think he believes in anything really but Donald Trump, but he is a fellow traveler — to borrow a phrase from the right wing of the 50’s. He’s willing to lead a parade of Klansmen, white supremacists and Nazis as long as they let him march out in front, even as they lead him around by the nose.

I have never been one of those people to say a president is not my president, because however much I disagree with a president about issues, and however much I want them out of office, a President in office is mine in so far as he is the leader of my country.

I also believed that even the ones I despised like George W. Bush, at least believed they were doing the right thing for America, however misguided I believed they were, and however misguided they would have thought I was. In fact, both George W. and George H.W. Bush issued a statement today condemning racial bigotry, anti-Semitism and hatred, though they did not go as far as they should have and mentioned Trump by name. Even the Army chief of staff felt he had to tweet that bigotry has no place in America’s armed forces.

But Donald Trump is NOT my president. Not because of his politics, but because he does not believe in America. He does not believe in the ideals of this country expressed by both conservatives and liberals. He does not believe that Nazis are a scourge that more than 400,000 Americans gave their lives to stop. He talks about freedom and then has his Justice Department demand the names of more than one million Americans who have visited websites that oppose him. He took an oath to be president of the United States, but he has turned his back on that nation.

He believes only in Donald Trump.

He may be his president, but he isn’t mine. He isn’t America’s. He pledges allegiance only to himself and demands that of others as well.

In fact, lower than that, he’s not even a man willing to protect his own daughter.

He’s not only not MY president. He’s not even really a true father to his daughter.

He is a disgrace to this nation. To Republicans. To conservatives. To the brave men and women of all colors, creeds and genders who fought for the ideals he is so willing to abandon for the greater good of one man.

There are plenty of countries where Donald Trump would feel at home if he could takeover: Belarus, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, Russia, of course, and the country run by his doppelgänger, North Korea.

If he really wants to make America great again, he should leave, and take those good Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists with him. If nothing else, it would make America safe again…for his own daughter.

Subscribe to Gil Gross’ daily podcast The Gross National Podcast here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gross-national-podcast-with-gil-gross/id1212496651?mt=2

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