Pirate's Cove

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr. is continuing his Moonbat Meltdown

This is the most ominous Inauguration Day in modern history
Whether or not Trump is “legitimate,” he’s legitimately terrifying.

Whether Dionne wrote the headline or subhead, or an editor did, either way, they’re utterly bat guano insane, and bear out in the actual article

Why is this inauguration different from any other?

Let’s start with the fact that most Americans are not happy that Donald Trump is about to become president. The Post/ABC News poll this week found that Trump enters the Oval Office with the lowest favorable ratings since the question has been asked. Only 40 percent view Trump favorably. That compares with 62 percent for George W. Bush as he entered office in 2001 and 79 percent for Barack Obama in 2009.

I’m doubting Hillary would have been better. But, somehow, this is Really Important to EJ

In the past, presidents facing public doubts of the sort Trump confronts have practiced what you might call self-interested humility. Bush declined to acknowledge the anger so many felt at the time about how the Supreme Court paved the way to his presidency, but in his well-wrought inaugural address he did show how to reach out and reassure those who worried about what he might do with power.

“Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment,” Bush declared. “It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.”

How’d that work out for Dubya? The Clinton’s took all the w’s from the keyboards. That may seem a cute prank in 2017. In 2001, it would have been a pain and expensive to replace. Democrats continuously smeared Bush when he wouldn’t fight back, not even on his policies. You had 45% of Democrats believing that Bush either let 9/11 happen or was involved in making it happen. Crazy Democrats held basement impeachment hearings. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called him a loser. The hit parade goes on and on. And I don’t remember Dionne calling for civility from Democrats.

Presidents about to take office typically speak warmly of their vanquished election foes. Not Trump. He renewed his attacks on Hillary Clinton at his news conference last week as if the campaign were still in full swing. He has waged a running war against civil rights icon John Lewis, both on Twitter and in a Fox News interview. Its effect was to incite a boycott of his inauguration by dozens of House Democrats.

Nice historical rewrite, as John Lewis, and many other Democrats, had already pledged to boycott the inauguration. Where is Dionne’s attack against those being uncivil to Trump (well, that would be tough, since Dionne is one of those)

Trump’s disdain for the democratic disposition we like our presidents to embrace was on display when he dressed down CNN’s Jim Acosta at that news conference last week. Trump’s tone, style and sheer rage (whether real or staged) brought to mind authoritarian leaders who brook no dissent.

Perhaps Trump was a bit upset over CNN lying to make Trump look bad.

Lewis stirred controversy when he declared that he did not see Trump as a “legitimate” president because of the Russians’ intervention. One definition of “legitimate” is “lawful,” and here we have, on the one side, Trump legally winning the vote of the electoral college and, on the other, the lawless act of stealing emails.

Another meaning of “legitimate” is “conforming to or in accordance with established rules, standards, principles.” So far, Trump has flouted all of these, and that is far more important than a debate about a word.

So, Lewis started it, but Trump is wrong to respond to that bit of incivility. And Dionne seems to be positioning that Trump is not the legitimate general election winner. He sure doesn’t set Lewis right.

Whatever Trump may be, he is, for so many of his fellow citizens, legitimately terrifying. This is a terrible way to feel on a day that is supposed to observe, as John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address 56 years ago, “not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom.”

These people need heavy medication.

Crossed at Right Wing News.