I have heard some “bullying” references in the past day or so about Donald John Trump’s idiotic reference to “Pocahontas” at a ceremony saluting the Native American Code Talkers who helped win World War II.
The president, standing in front of President Andrew “Trail of Tears” Jackson, made a tacky and totally inappropriate reference to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s claim of Native American heritage. He referred to her as “Pocahontas,” which he has used to disparage the Democratic senator for as long as he’s been a politician.
Trump’s crack about Sen. Warren yanked attention away from the Code Talkers, who were deployed during WWII to communicate battle plans in their native language, which the enemy couldn’t translate. What’s more, he did so while standing in front of an American president, Jackson, who issued an eviction order that launched what amounted to a 19th-century Native American death march, aka the Trail of Tears.
Now comes the references from some observers that he sought to “bully” Warren with that idiocy.
This brings to mind an issue I have raised before: When is the first lady going to launch her anti-bullying initiative, which she announced she would make her theme during her time in the White House?
Many of us out here have wondered whether Melania Trump should counsel her husband, the bully in chief, about his own proclivities toward using Twitter as an intimidation tool.
The first lady aims to target her campaign toward children bullying their peers. My thought is this: Children aren’t born to bully; they learn about it from many sources, including their elders.
Melania needs to sit down with Donald and tell him about the consequences of his own juvenile behavior.
If only he would listen.
While Trump’s continued attempt to bully Senator Warren is juvenile, she always handles it by dismissing it as such and continuing her work. What I thought was more disgraceful about the ceremony, was the tone of voice and language he used to talk down to true American heroes, and the fact that bringing his own political agenda into the comments diminished the honor that should have been accorded those men.