Longtime Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan had very little good to say about Donald Trump in a scathing column, saying he has failed to become presidential in any way, shape or form since assuming office almost two years ago.
Using Trump's defense of the Saudi government involvement in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi because the Middle Eastern country is a big purchaser of American military hardware, Noonan said we all should be ashamed.
"Mr. Trump told Lesley Stahl of '60 Minutes': 'I don’t want to hurt jobs. I don’t want to lose an order like that.' Later in the week he told reporters that Saudi Arabia is a 'tremendous purchaser' of U.S. military equipment, and this must be factored in," she wrote. " We used to be ashamed, or at least embarrassed, to be seen as arms merchant to the world. It didn’t quite sit with our vision of ourselves. And American presidents, as representatives of a nation with a certain moral stature, didn’t use to declare that our world stands are heavily influenced by arms contracts."
She went on to explain that the problem is Trump, who manages to stomp all over his achievements by going off-message because he is a narcissist at heart.
"In the end it’s about Mr. Trump, isn’t it?" she suggested. "He is the living context and the constant question: For or against? He has had significant achievements—unemployment down, economy up, the courts, an imperfect tax bill that nonetheless got passed and was slightly better than what it replaced."
Explaining why Trump's popularity numbers stay so low, she blamed it on his penchant for acting "crazy."
"It’s no mystery," Noonan explained. "He obscures his victories with his crazy. And so in the weeks before the election he rants around about 'Horseface,' and compares MBS to Justice Kavanaugh, the victim of unproved allegations. He continues to rag on Attorney General Jeff Sessions: 'I could fire him whenever I want to fire him, but I haven’t said that I was going to.'”
"It is political malpractice on an epic scale and cannot be helped because he lacks self-command and is vain. He thinks nobody communicates like him. Nobody does. He thinks nobody breaks through like him. Nobody does!" she scolded. "He could have opted for a certain stature—the presidential stage, with its flags and salutes, almost leads you by the hand to stature. But he hasn’t."
"His supporters, especially Republican candidates, would love it if he’d put his arguments in the foreground, not his drama and weirdness. It is remarkable that he hasn’t cared about them enough to do this, to give them that kind of cover," the columnist concluded. "He’s lucky the mainstream media hate him so much, and in showing that hatred stiffen his supporters’ loyalty."
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