As bullies go, perhaps there are none better known than Scott Farkus and his toady pal Grover Dill from the popular holiday movie A Christmas Story.
But another pair of thugs is ready to challenge them in the Bully Olympics – President Donald Trump and his toady, Vice President J.D. Vance.
The principal ringleaders of an administration sorely lacking in maturity, their hotheaded – anything but diplomatic – bullying act was on full display before the media, and therefore the world, as they berated and belittled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
While Zelenskyy generally maintained an even temperament as he attempted to counter misrepresentations with truth and history, Gill and Farkus – oops, Vance and Trump – came unglued and treated this visiting leader of a war-torn nation with a demeaning level of disrespect in a deplorable display worthy of the condemnation it has received from most who witnessed it. And by now, almost everyone has.
By now it is clear that Trump does not really want peace between Russia and Ukraine. He wants credit for it.
He has publicly and audaciously coveted the Nobel Peace Prize, even as he has excluded the nation most impacted from the negotiation process and booted its president from the White House. For all his empty rhetoric about stopping the bullets and artillery shells, he has now cut off intelligence sharing with Kyiv and U.S. funding support for Ukraine, both of which will cost even more lives – civilian and military. Deplorable.
Trump also covets the natural resources of a beleaguered nation, and is eagerly leveraging this ugly war to extort valuable mineral rights from a savaged and desperate Ukraine. Trump asserts that this “business deal” should be security enough, ignoring Putin’s history of deal breaking and horrific war crimes, even under the first Trump administration. Abhorrent.
And as Trump’s ever-adoring, boot-licking toady, Vance walks in lock-step.
In the Gospel of Matthew* (7:16-20), Jesus tells us that we can recognize a tree by its fruit. Donald Trump’s fruit is a repugnant character combined with unbridled narcissism. Vance is a petulant child. Both were more than willing to embarrass themselves, and the United States of America, with their absence of self-control or fitness in their cruel Oval Office blowup.
MAGA-inebriated apologists laud Trump and Vance’s rude behavior as tough and sophisticated negotiating tactics. They are playing three-dimensional chess while everyone else is playing checkers. Nonsense! They are exactly what they appear to be. Their fruit exposes them. They are Farkus and Gill. They are bullies.
If this is what the behavior of America First looks like, may God help us.
* In that same chapter of Matthew, Jesus instructs us to not judge, and warns us that we will be judged by the same measure with which we judge others. If I am to be judged by the same measure with which I have assessed President Trump and Vice-President Vance here, I think I am comfortable with that.
Juggling Squirrel 