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A real sickness

2/7/2020, 6 a.m.
Forget the coronavirus. Would somebody please quarantine President Trump before he makes the nation sicker?

Forget the coronavirus.

Would somebody please quarantine President Trump before he makes the nation sicker?

Already, GOP members of the U.S. Senate have been infected by him, refusing on Wednesday to remove him from office despite his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

And hearing Republicans members of Congress break into a chant of “Four more years!” during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address shows the malady is spreading, giving the president the belief that he now has carte blanche to carry out any assortment of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Like the con man he is, President Trump pulled out all the stops during his address Tuesday, using an array of black people in the House gallery as props for his re-election campaign — from the reformed drug abuser (Yeah, he had to showcase a brother even though more white people than black people have used illicit drugs during their lifetimes, according to the 2018 national survey on Drug Use and Health.) to the mother and daughter to whom he promised a school scholarship to a 100-year-old Tuskegee Airman from Bethesda, Md., and his 13-year-old great-grandson from Arizona who is studying at an aviation academy and is a potential recruit for the U.S. Air Force Academy and, ultimately, the president’s new Space Force.

President Trump didn’t pledge to reverse the chronic underfunding of public schools. He had Janiyah Davis, the fourth-grader from Philadelphia, to stand so he could tout a $5 billion private school voucher program that would fun- nel money away from public schools and give tax breaks to corporations and the richest Americans.

Knowing President Trump’s track record, we question whether Janiyah will ever receive the opportunity scholar- ship he promised her. In November, a New York judge ordered him to pay $2 million in damages for misusing money raised by the Trump Foundation during a televised charity event that never reached the veterans organizations it was supposed to benefit.

There is no doubt President Trump is a master manipulator. He claimed the economy and the stock market are booming, key accomplishments of his administration. Yet he failed to address the fact that millions of people continue to struggle daily, facing the dilemma of how to put food on the table if they pay their rent, pay for medicine or car loan. Student loan debt also threatens the economic well-being of hundreds of thousands of young people just starting out.

He claimed to have reduced poverty and unemployment for African-Americans and pledged to protect Medicare, Social Security and health care for all Americans. Yet, at every turn, his administration has battled to repeal the Affordable Care Act enacted under former President Obama that ensures health coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. His 2020 budget proposal would cut Medicaid spending by $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

His administration also has pushed for and instituted rules and policy changes that would boot tens of thousands of people off food stamps and other critical government assistance programs.

And he is trying to capitalize on the misery of black people and buy their votes by sending his African-American surrogates to communities that are largely black and economically depressed to hand out envelopes of $300 in cash to people who stick around long enough after a pro-Trump message for a drawing. Such an event in Richmond, billed as an “economic development” message, was shut down at Virginia Union University just days before it was to take place on campus on the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

President Trump is insulting. So is his attempt to use black people as camouflage during his State of the Union address so he won’t look like a racist to his hardcore base of supporters.

But during the past three years or more, we have come to see and understand the kind of anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-women, anti-immigrant white supremacist that he is. He had his wife present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to right wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who has helped spread President Trump’s disease of hate and division. He degrades the medal that has been awarded to people dedi- cated to justice and uplifting people, including the late noted Richmond civil rights attorney Oliver W. Hill Sr.; Dr. Jonas Salk, who developed one of the first successful vaccines for polio; and the saint herself, Mother Teresa.

President Trump falsely wraps himself in patriotism and support for the military (Don’t forget the made-for-reality TV moment during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address when he welcomed to the House chamber an Army sergeant from Afghanistan for a surprise reunion with his wife and two young children.) while he has diverted money for the military to help build a border wall between the United States and Mexico as he continues to denounce immigrants of color, alienates our allies and threatens to embroil our country into wars of his provocation.

He also threatened our national security by holding up U.S. aid to Ukraine, our ally, in exchange for the Ukrainian government digging up dirt on his potential 2020 Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden.

On Dec. 18, President Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for his actions involving Ukraine, but that doesn’t matter to the Senate, whose Republican ma- jority voted Wednesday against kicking him out of office.

All of this is disturbing and, like the Trump presidency itself, is sickening America. As President Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Earlier this week, a rodent in Pennsylvania didn’t see his shadow on Groundhog Day, predicting an early spring. Here, we will make another prediction: If people of con- science don’t turn out to vote on Tuesday, Nov. 3, America will be stuck another four years in this sickhouse afflicted by President Trump.