Donald Trump needs to take it back. He didn’t mean what he said about Barack Obama allegedly wiretapping his successor as president of the United States.
That’s the word coming from a growing number of Republican members of Congress, both senators and House members. They are feeling shamed by the president’s recklessness, his utter disregard for propriety and his misunderstanding of due process.
Will the president do as his fellow Republicans are demanding? I am not holding my breath. I am not at all confident that the president will issue anything resembling a sincere mea culpa for what he has done.
What is that? He has essentially defamed his predecessor. He has accused the former president of committing a felony.
He said President Obama ordered a wiretap, which he cannot do under U.S. law. Who’s the authority on that? Oh, let’s see … the director of the FBI, James Comey, who on Monday shattered the president’s assertion about a wiretap that never occurred.
How does this president take it back? It would have to involve an actual apology, something Trump says he’s never done.
The wiretap allegation follows the pattern of lies, deceit and innuendo that Trump has demonstrated repeatedly since the moment he declared his presidential candidacy in the summer of 2015.
Many of us expressed concern from the outset about Trump’s fitness for the presidency. I will submit yet again that the president is not fit for the office he occupies.
Even a retraction of the Twitter tantrum that ignited this firestorm will do little to assuage concerns about his moral fitness to be president.
If it comes — and if the president follows the advice of his fellow Republicans — he damn sure better do a better job of it than when he declared at the end of a lengthy statement about some hotel he had opened that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States.
Would a retraction end this discussion? It might end talk of the specific allegation Trump has made against Obama. As for the president’s continual use of Twitter to make ridiculous statements that articulate some form of U.S. policy, well … that’s another matter altogether.
We can hope–and encourage others in the belief that–the numbers of Republicans and Democrats; the numbers of people of integrity and principle who are united against this continual embarrassment and shameful travesty continue to increase until there is a groundswell of support for decency and a turning against deceit. Unfit, indeed; unfit.