For a President who in his first year waged a faux war so he could declare victory in the non-existent war against Christmas, Trump turned Grinch this year, and unlike the “real” Grinch he never got better. His crazy tweets sent the stock market plummeting, he challenged the innocence of a 7 year old, and concluded with a bizarre “Christmas message” hate rant involving James Comey. What the pattern all shows is a mentally ill man unfit to serve in the office.
To create some context, the Christmas season was not going well for Trump. The sentencing hearings for Michael Cohen and General Flynn were disasters for the President, with both implicating the President in potential criminal wrongdoing. Trump’s Foundation agreed to close under state supervision due to its misdeeds. The government shut down as Trump refused to accept any budget deal without $5 billion in wall funding. Trump’s Secretary of Defense resigned with a blistering letter attacking Trump for insulting our allies while helping our enemies. That resignation followed the early resignation of Trump’s Chief of Staff.
Even the stock market, something Trump once pointed to as proof of his economic success, was having a quite bad December. A week before Christmas, Trump took to Twitter to plead to the Federal Reserve that it not raise rates.
The Federal Reserve promptly ignored the President and raised rates anyway. News reports announced that Trump was demanding to know if he could fire Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. Trump’s threats to attack the apolitical Federal Reserve rattled the markets further, sending them plummeting.
Trump’s Christmas Eve Grinch Attack On the Stock Market
Unsurprisingly, the markets opened Christmas Eve down, but began to recover — after all, it’s Christmas. Then Trump tweeted. With the markets down out of fear Trump would attack the independence of the Federal Reserve, Trump tried to solve the problem by attacking the independence of the Federal Reserve.
The market turned sharply down, closing the day about 650 points lower. This nearly 3% one day drop was the worst Christmas Eve fall in the markets since . . . EVER! Yes, worse than any Christmas Eve drop in even the Great Depression, or the Great Recession in 2008. It wasn’t even close. The market had never closed more than 1% down on Christmas Eve. Trump managed to triple the Christmas Eve market Grinch record.
President Grinch Challenges a Seven Year Old On Santa
Attempting to appear more normal — and human — Trump and Melania took calls from children calling into a hotline to get updates on NORAD’s tracking of Santa’s sleigh. As Presidential duties go, it would seem almost impossible to screw this one up. You talk to kids, bedazzled by the President taking their call. You smile for the cameras and laugh as you ask what they want for Christmas and whether they have been good. Yep, this is kissing babies easy, impossible to screw that up. Unless you are a Trump. Trump challenged a seven year old girl’s belief in Santa.
“Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at 7, it’s marginal, right?”
said the Scroogely Grinch. I don’t know how to respond other to ask, who does this? What kind of sick man, taking calls of this nature, says that sort of thing to a seven year old?
The good news is the President did no real harm. The little girl involved, saying she never heard the word “marginal” before, still believes in Santa.
A Christmas “poor me” In My Mansion
Trump took to Twitter a lot on Christmas Eve, with somewhere around 20 tweets. Most were not exactly happy holiday greetings or even the customary effort to wish the best for those one does not get along with. Rather, Trump seemed determined to engage more in the parody holiday Festivus traditional “airing of grievances.” Here’s a sampling.
The President concluded saying “poor me” to America, literally.
Mr. President, if you find being in that house such a hardship, there are many who would love to see you leave it.
A Christmas Day Hate Message
But even the Scrooge and The Grinch, while having bad Christmas Eves, reformed and found the true spirit of Christmas on Christmas Day. Not so President Trump. Trump found coal in his stocking, though perhaps he would regard that as a good thing. So Trump summoned reporters to the Oval Office for a bizarre “Christmas message” presenting himself as the victim of Democrats. The tirade included a hating rant about Former FBI Director James Comey. Trump the declared it a “disgrace, what’s happening in our country,” before grudgingly offering an “other than that, a very Merry Christmas.”
“Take Comey. Everybody hated Comey, they thought he did a horrible job. The Democrats hated him. They were calling for his resignation, Literally the day before I fired him, they were saying he should be fired. As soon as I fired him, they said, ‘Oh, what did you fire him for? That was a terrible thing to do.’ It’s a disgrace, what’s happening in our country. But other than that, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas.”
Bad as it reads, please listen to it to get the full impact.
When you listen to that, one thing should stand out. These are not the Christmas words of a mentally well man. It’s not cute or funny that the President of the United States is mentally ill.
