The Commander in Thief

With each passing month of his presidency, Donald Trump behaves more like America’s commander in thief than its commander in chief.

How so? Let me count the ways. We are a nation at war today, with tens of thousands of troops deployed near Iran. Generally, when our nation has been at war, the commander in chief’s top domestic priority is to keep the country united. Because there is nothing more demoralizing for U.S. troops fighting abroad than to look back and see our country ripping itself apart at home. And there is nothing that encourages an enemy to hold out for better terms for ending a war with America than seeing America at war with itself.

And how has Trump risen to that commander-in-chief unifying duty? He has not lifted a finger to bring Democrats behind the war. Instead, he’s prioritized acting like a commander in thief. At the same moment Trump is asking our men and women in uniform to make the ultimate sacrifice, he has engaged in a brazen, in-your-face attempted heist of the U.S. Treasury to benefit himself, his family and his political allies, which could include those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s so outrageous that even some of his most reliable Republican Party sycophants couldn’t accept it.

Trump conspired with his own Justice Department, headed by his former personal lawyer, to use taxpayer money to create a $1.776 billion political slush fund, supposedly to compensate those Trump supporters who “suffered weaponization and lawfare” at the hands of his predecessor. In fact, as this paper’s editorial board noted, it would “reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.”

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