For quite some time I have been voicing my criticisms of Donald Trump.
This time I will withhold my personal opinions and simply report on what some leading Republicans have been saying about the occupant of the Oval Office.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Mr. Trump a “moron.” Given an opportunity to deny that statement, Mr. Tillerson declined. So Mr. Tillerson’s assessment stands.
Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has likened the Trump White House to an “adult day care center.” Mr. Corker has said that Mr. Trump is treating his office like “a reality show” and that his reckless threats toward other nations could set our country “on the path to World War III.”
Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, has likened Mr. Trump’s rise and the willingness of the Republican Party to condone his conduct to the story of the emperor’s new clothes, writing that Republicans “pretended the emperor wasn’t naked.
Even worse: we checked our critical faculties at the door and pretended the emperor was making sense.”
Does any of this matter?
Well consider what could happen if one of our bombers flying near North Korea were to accidentally stray into North Korean airspace.
Would Kim Jong-un knock it down? And if he did, what would be the response of the tweeter-in-chief who Mr. Tillerson called a “moron?”
Or, think of what might happen if one of those unarmed missiles which Kim likes to launch over Japan into the Pacific were to misfire and strike Japan. How would Mr. Trump respond?
Would this be the trigger for Mr. Trump to unleash our nuclear weapons to “totally destroy” North Korea as he has threatened to do?
And what would be Kim’s response? How many in South Korea and Japan, including American troops and civilians living there, would be killed and wounded by the North Korean response?
And how would China respond?
Is this the path to World War III?
I trust that after reading this, you will all have a pleasant night’s sleep.
Jay N. Feldman
Port Washington
