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#  O.N.E.

GUEST WORDS--Our National Embarrassment.

Our National Emergency.

Written by Tom H. Hastings.

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February 28 2019

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GUEST WORDS--Our National Embarrassment.

Our National Emergency.

There he is, residing for a minute in the White House, a minute that is the longest lucid American nightmare since Watergate.

The day is not complete until [Trump has lied](https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/statements/byruling/false/) to the American people and the world, until [he’s insulted](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html) any and all critics even when those critiques are deliberative and strictly evidence-based, and even when they are people nearly universally respected, even revered. [Ruth Bader Ginsberg](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/753090242203283457)? [Justin Trudeau](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1005586562959093760)? Really? Toss in some [misogynist identity slurs](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/trump-made-light-of-metoo-and-used-a-racial-slur-at-a-recent-rally), several [braggart](http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/after-health-care-rate-hikes-trump-falsely-boasts-hes-kept-rates-down) malignant narcissistic [self-congratulating ridiculous claims](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-38996290/trump-was-challenged-by-nbc-on-his-false-election-boast)—even managing to combine them with [insulting Samuel L. Jackson](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/684817323333693442)—and a few [gaslighting](https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/10/03/trump-classic-gaslighter-abusive-relationship-america-column/1445050002/) redundancies and there isn’t much left on the Trump list of Abusive Things to Do Today. Brilliant.

A [waddling](https://twitter.com/trump_is_fat), braying, tweeting embarrassment to any and all critical thinking, fact-reliant Americans.

My colleague and I do workshops, sometimes for visiting foreign professionals. Almost no matter their country or countries of origin, I lead with a sincere apology for the Dear Leader who lost the popular vote but still managed to get installed in the most powerful office on Earth.

Here comes a roomful of Kenyan National Police. I apologize for obvious reasons. Most Americans have likely forgotten Trump’s repugnant comment about African “[sh—hole](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946)” countries. I assure you that Kenyans and other Africans absolutely have not. They appreciate a genuine apology from an American white man. It gets us off on the right foot.

Now comes journalists from some dozen countries, mostly European but a few from the Middle East and one from Asia. None of us have ever met each other. I open with an apology for slights, for insults, for mortifying misstatements and [unwarranted UN laughingstock braggadocio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z4y8OJxlK8) emanating from the old white guy who just seems verbally incontinent and whose thumbs seem to have zero impulse control, managing to praise dictators and vilify popular democratic leaders as a matter of course—not to mention his incessant juvenilia about all manner of journalists, from the [Wall Street Journal](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/710456179173040128) to [Katie Couric](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/737784398515441664), for goshsakes.

This week we see a grifter lawyer, Michael Cohen, turn state’s evidence against his former boss—and even though Cohen, as Trump’s lawyer, was a serial liar, he is presenting Congress with [actual forensic evidence](https://www.newyorker.com/news/swamp-chronicles/what-michael-cohens-testimony-will-tell-us-about-trumps-business-bluster-and-wealth?utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_022719&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd6727d3f92a41245dd6b97&user_id=27626585&esrc=&utm_term=TNY_Daily) that Trump committed felonies, not just in the past, but while in office. Shades of [Spiro Agnew](https://www.msnbc.com/bagman).

My father was a psychologist, not I, but clearly, Trump’s claims of fake news are what psychologists call [projection](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freud-lives/201807/the-projector-in-chief). I attest to my own profound confusion at his clumsy hate speech and utter cultural incompetence and frankly, [negotiating fails](http://fortune.com/2016/07/19/donald-trump-negotiating-the-art-of-the-deal/) despite his blowhard boasts and his fake autobiography—his next memoir: How to Be a Rotten Role Model for American Youth and the Great Big Butt of International Jokes. My wincing and shaking head let them know that I’m fully as confounded as I am certain they are.

This is what it means to be an American dealing with a fake president spouting cringeworthy claims even as we try to create decent relationships with bewildered people from other lands.

 *(Dr. Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice Director and on occasion an expert witness for the defense in court.)*

*-cw*

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