Tag: George Will

Conservative writer George Will says Trump’s incitement of violence shows he’s weak and a ‘national embarrassment’

AlterNet logoIn a new column this week, conservative writer George Will said clearly what many of his ideological brethren have been unwilling to say.

“It is not implausible to believe that Trump’s years of sulfurous rhetoric — never mind his Monday-morning reading, seemingly for the first time, of words the teleprompter told him to recite — can provoke behaviors from susceptible individuals, such as the alleged El Paso shooter,” Will wrote. “If so, those who marked ballots for Trump — we have had quite enough exculpatory sociology about the material deprivations and status anxieties of the white working class — should have second or perhaps first thoughts. His Republican groupies, meanwhile, are complicit.”

Will, who left the GOP after Trump’s takeover of the party, connected the attack in El Paso directly to Trump’s own rhetoric. Specifically, he opened the piece by describing Trump’s May 8 rally in Florida when the president cheerfully took up the suggestion from a fan who said we should “shoot” immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

View the complete August 7 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Trump is no longer the worst person in government

The following opinion commentary by George F. Will was posted on the Washington Post website May 9, 2018:

Vice President Pence sometimes seems to agree with President Trump just by looking at him. Here are some of the ways he does it. (Video: Bastien Inzaurralde/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

Last June, a Trump Cabinet meeting featured testimonials offered to Dear Leader by his forelock-tugging colleagues. His chief of staff, Reince Priebus, caught the spirit of the worship service by thanking Trump for the “blessing” of being allowed to serve him. The hosannas poured forthfrom around the table, unredeemed by even a scintilla of insincerity. Priebus was soon deprived of his blessing, as was Tom Price. Before Price’s ecstasy of public service was truncated because of his incontinent enthusiasm for charter flights, he was the secretary of health and human services who at the Cabinet meeting said, “I can’t thank you enough for the privileges you’ve given me.” The vice president chimed in but saved his best riff for a December Cabinet meeting when, as The Post’s Aaron Blake calculated, Pence praised Trump once every 12 seconds for three minutes: “I’m deeply humbled. . . . ” Judging by the number of times Pence announces himself “humbled,” he might seem proud of his humility, but that is impossible because he is conspicuously devout and pride is a sin. Continue reading “Trump is no longer the worst person in government”