A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. –General Douglas MacArthur
America has had some pathetic leaders throughout its history, but never one the likes of Donald J. Trump. Every principle or virtue of leadership one could point to as being obligatory to the character of a true leader is missing from this man. In fact, Trump’s character is the polar opposite of every principle or virtue of true leadership.
Trump leads by intimidation, threats, humiliation, bullying, arrogance, complete and utter callousness to the needs of others and pure, unadulterated violence and bloodshed. Those are not the marks of a leader; those are the marks of a gangster.
Those are also the marks of a coward. And that’s exactly what Trump is: the Coward-in-Chief. This character defect was put on display for the whole world to see just recently in a most astonishing way—even for Trump.
I begin with an excerpt of an interview between Scottish podcaster George Galloway and former USMC Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter.
George Galloway: Scott, let’s start, if we may, by the absolutely ignominious exit of the President of the United States in a catering cart at the airport in Turkey, having with full panoply climbed on board Air Force One. He skulked out the other side of the plane, was lowered by a crane and packed into what must have been a large catering cart, not telling anyone, even little Marco Rubio, that he’d gone. Marco thought he was snoozing up front or whatever else he does on these overnight flights. But in fact, he was no longer on the plane. And if there had been an Iranian assassination attempt, the entire Washington press corps, which might not have been so widely mourned, and Marco Rubio would have been done and dusted. But as a metaphor for the eclipse of his presidency, it serves quite well, I think.
Scott Ritter: Look, you have to take the security of the President seriously. But to be honest, to allow the President to fly to Turkey in a threat environment that could produce this outcome is absurd in the extreme. It’s a failure across the board. If in fact there was a threat to the President of the United States that was worthy of this kind of tomfoolery, then why did the President fly to Ankara to begin with?
The reason why I bring this up is that there was no threat against the President of the United States, no real threat. But the President has surrounded himself with insane people, literally crazies, who will breathe life into the most ridiculous social media-based rumor, whether it comes from Sarah Adams or Laura Loomer or some other equally insane Islamophobic people who have projected onto Iran the very things that we do.
Understand there’s a lot of American projectionism taking place here because we do assassinate leaders. We did kill the Supreme Leader. You know who doesn’t assassinate leaders? Iran. So, there was no real threat to this President.
Moreover, the shame of being willing to sacrifice—because the implication here is that Air Force One was at risk—[Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and the [White House] press corps. Why didn’t you take their lives into consideration? Because clearly you didn’t announce that the President was leaving Air Force One. So, you’re keeping Air Force One out there as a live decoy. This is shameful. This requires congressional intervention. But there won’t be. Why? Because this was just a game. This was a sham. This was a joke. This is an act of theater. And it shows the lack of professionalism throughout the Trump administration.
I mean, this is a man who has shown that he has no pride in who he is or in what the office that he holds is. No American president should ever allow himself to be evacuated in that fashion.
Right here, let’s be specific about who was left on Air Force One as a decoy for this perceived assassination attempt: The White House press corps (at least 13 Americans), Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, and some say that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was on the plane also, but most major news sources say she wasn’t. But what we do know for a fact is that Leavitt resigned shortly after the inexcusable incident. She said the reason she left was to “spend time with her family.” But that’s what they all say. But how do Rubio, Miller, Bessent and Cheung feel knowing that Trump used them as a decoy to be blown out of the sky by an Iranian missile?
When Donald Trump snuck off that plane like the spineless, traitorous rat that he truly is, in his mind, he was deliberately sending all of those people left on Air Force One to their deaths. Talk about callousness! Talk about coldness! Talk about heartlessness! Donald Trump wins first prize.
If Trump cares no more about the lives of his own cabinet and staff than to volitionally, calculatingly and purposefully put their very lives in jeopardy to save his own slimy skin, you can know unhesitatingly and without question that Trump cares absolutely NOTHING about the American people.
Neither does Donald Trump give a tinker’s dam about our U.S. service men and women. This is easily proven by the way Trump has handled the abysmal—even torturous—conditions existing on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
For this story, I quote an excerpt of an interview between Judge Andrew Napolitano and journalist Max Blumenthal:
Judge Andrew Napolitano: Now, you talk about senior military officials being fired. Shouldn’t the captain of the USS Abraham Lincoln be fired for the deplorable conditions that he’s putting the young soldiers and Marines through?
Max Blumenthal: I think Hung Cao, the Navy secretary, should be fired. This is a clownish MAGA loyalist who lost various campaigns in Virginia, a fanatical Vietnamese expat anti-communist who has no credentials, who just held a meeting on August 11th with families of sailors who were telling him that their family members want to kill themselves at sea. And they’re calling and saying they don’t want to live another day. They’ve been out there for months and months and months. They’re not getting any fresh food. They’re eating like pieces of stale bread with Velveeta. They’re not able to contact their family members. They’re certainly not able to see them.
And now we learn from Stars and Stripes and Military Times that sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln are jumping overboard or attempting to jump overboard. There have been several attempts at jumping overboard to commit suicide.
And what has he done? What reforms have been put in place? We’re not seeing any. This also goes to the top, to Pete Hegseth, and it’s really just about the war.
The USS Abraham Lincoln is attempting to impose a naval siege on Iran. It can’t operate near Iran because of Iran’s standoff weapons. It’s unclear what effect it’s even having. There have been fires on previous ships, on previous aircraft carriers [i.e. the USS Gerald R. Ford] that have been set by sailors to try to end their mission. And they’ve reached the limit that the human psyche can withstand.
Now, one thing that I think would improve morale and actually enable these sailors to withstand such a grueling mission would be a just war that was actually defending the country that they come from. And I think that’s the subtext here, is these sailors know they’re fighting a failed war for a psychotic little apartheid state that controls the president. They know, but they can’t say that publicly.
And so that’s the subtext and the issue here, is these sailors know they’re fighting for absolutely nothing in a glorified mercenary army, and their needs and their psychological and basic physical needs are not being cared for. They’re just cannon fodder for Israel.
Napolitano: Here’s a producer of a documentary on the USS Abraham Lincoln summarizing what he has found and what he has been told. Chris, number eight.
Andrew Brown: You guys, there is a mental health crisis happening aboard the USS Lincoln in the Middle East that no one is talking about. And mainly because the Navy is pretty much quashing it.
You will read online about food shortages, supply shortages, poor morale among crew members. That’s because they’ve been at sea continuously for 250 days. They’ve been deployed a total of 271 days, 250 without a port of call. That’s unheard of. Normally they would go to port every 3 to 6 weeks. They have not been to port in 38 weeks. Keep in mind there are 52 weeks in a year.
And yes, the showers are moldy. They’re eating basically like a gruel kind of slop at this point. There’s no deodorant. There is no toothpaste.
My nephew has a friend on board there. And I was basically hearing updates last week when I was in the States in real time.
They’re not talking about the mental health crisis. Six people have tried to jump off that ship. The most recent was last Monday.
When you have not touched land in 38 weeks, in over 200 days, things start to happen to you mentally. Combine that with exhaustion and deadly mistakes start to happen.
So, this is how the Department of War, this is how Donald Trump treats our service men and women whose lives are already being put in harm’s way for a bulls*** war of aggression that was supposed to be over in a matter of weeks.
We are further putting their lives at risk out of sheer ineptitude and neglect. It defies logic. It defies reason. And it defies basic humanity.
Napolitano: Hegseth called this fake news.
Blumenthal: Yeah, that’s all he can say.
Napolitano: I’m going to jump to another topic, but the Abraham Lincoln has 5,000 sailors. You have seven suicide attempts, more than one per thousand. I never heard of that even in the worst times in the US military. And your point is right on: They’re not fighting for a war they believe in. They’re fighting Netanyahu’s war, and they know it.
When publicly confronted about the abysmal conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, Donald Trump said that the ship has not been at sea too long, but not nearly long enough. And then he callously brushed off the veracity of any reported facts about the harsh realities on board the carrier.
I realize that the MAGA Republicans (what’s left of them) and evangelicals will never admit it, but we have a full-fledged, card-carrying, certified psychopath in the Oval Office. His malignant narcissism does not allow him the inconvenience of having a conscience or feelings of empathy of any kind toward anybody. He is as cold-blooded as a rattle snake and a lot more dangerous.
Recalling the last obligatory attribute of true leadership in the above quote from Douglas MacArthur: the compassion to listen to the needs of others.
In the most glaring, obvious ways possible, Trump has shown the world that he is anything but a leader. He is a raving lunatic and madman who has the potential and propensity to destroy anything or anyone in his path. And that includes the whole world.
And who are Trump’s most enthusiastic and steadfast supporters? Evangelical Christians. They even believe that Erika Kirk is a saint.
As Ohio Congressman James Traficant used to say, “Beam me up, Mr. Speaker.”
Article posted with permission from Chuck Baldwin
