The following commentary by Jonathan Capehart was posted on the Washington Post website July 8, 2018:
President Trump spoke about international relations and national politics at a rally in Great Falls, Mont., on July 5. (Patrick Martin /The Washington Post)
Without question, President Trump’s Catskills roast of a Montana rally on July 5 was a gasp-worthy disaster. Still, it was, as we used to say as kids, just more of the “same old, same old.” An hour-long rant that mixed the greatest hits from his racist and xenophobic campaign for the White House with some flecks of new material. What has changed is the heightened atmosphere of danger in which he delivered them 18 months into his presidency.
Monday night, before a national audience, the president is expected to hand a rose to his second nominee to the Supreme Court. The retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the court’s swing vote, gives Trump the chance to give conservatives the majority they worked decades to achieve. And that will give them a chance to take a sledgehammer to rights they abhor, from abortion to same-sex marriage.
The nation remains appalled by Trump’s morally bankrupt “zero-tolerance” policy, which separated migrant children from their parents at the border and set up jails for babies. Now that his feckless administration is under court order to reunite the children with their parents, its sheer incompetence is plain for all to see. Just when you thought the callous disregard for these children couldn’t get any worse, the New York Times reported last week that “records linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed.” And don’t forget that the Trump administration is going after naturalized U.S. citizensnow, too.
View the complete article on the Washington Post website here.