It’s been a week since our Republican president took office but the outrage is still ringing in the air, from Washington, D.C. to the Islands of Hawaii.
Speaking of outrage:
A Salem newspaper wrote, “His disgusting manner has made us the laughing stock of the world.” Another speech-writer commented, “he is a person of inferior character, wholly unequal to the crisis ahead.”
There is a question whether he is a legitimate president. The attorney general informed us that the “Republican delegates at the convention were instructed to vote for him but hated to do it.” A famous southern writer wrote, “he has no admirers and if a Republican Convention was held again he would not get the vote in one state.”
His approval rating is the lowest approval rating ever recorded for a United States President and he received the smallest percentage of popular votes than all losing candidates in a national election.
The country’s reaction is that it is a historic low point of presidential prestige. Democrats are saying he is “a deadly threat to the Republic.”
Views of the country’s new leader are pretty dismal.
A soldier in the Army with a negative view of his newly elected commander in chief wrote a letter printed in a New York paper saying that, “He is a dictator and more of a tyrant than he ever was.”
An intriguing rumor surfaced that the president-elect felt the threat of deadly harm was real enough to “cause him to secretly sneak into his inauguration at midnight.” The rumor is proving to be true.
The most chilling comments about the Republican leader was from an article by commentator Sam Dickson. “He is a demagogic politician who maneuvered with skill the issues of the day, and he will suspend the right of a trial and close down newspapers who criticize his policies.”
Summing it up is a line in a soldier’s letter to a newspaper, “How could we have elected a president in November and have him be so hated in January?”
This is pretty rough criticism of our president, but it is not about our president today.
That outrage was for the one elected over 150 years ago. Every fact and quote was written in 1861 about President Abraham Lincoln.
Think about that a minute, makes your jaw drop a little.
Lincoln had the lowest approval rating in U.S. history, never won the popular vote, and for his inauguration, he had to sneak into Washington, D.C. in a disguise for fear of being shot. You can’t make this stuff up.
The finest president we ever had who saved the nation, freed the slaves, we put him on the penny and the five dollar bill. And what do you know, he was real unpopular at the time.
What does that tell you?
We now have a president who’s mighty unpopular, but who knows what he can do? It’s only been a week. We like to say, “give peace a chance.” I’ve turned a corner. I used to want to bury my head in the sand like an ostrich, but now I say, “give Trump a chance.”
I didn’t vote for him, I think I was born a Democrat, but I know I was born an American, and so were a lot of you, and here we have a saying, “You’re innocent until proven guilty.”
President Trump is no Abe Lincoln, I know that much, but before you start marching up and down, splitting the country in two, let’s see what he’s got. I know I will.
Dennis Gregory is a writer, artist and singer who mixes truth, humor and aloha in his biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. He can be reached at makewavess@yahoo.com