Nothing seems to touch Teflon Trump - not even the latest controversy over what the Russian secret services may or may not have found he did in a Moscow hotel.
Trump has reached scandal saturation.
He’s been hit by so many allegations and revelations that when a newspaper headline reads: ‘Trump did this!’ – true or not – people just think “well, that’s just the kinda thing Trump does”.
Yes, US polls show he has an approval rating as low as 37 per cent, which is shocking for a President-elect in his honeymoon period. But that doesn’t alter his behaviour.
After all, in the Presidential election Hillary Clinton actually beat Trump by almost three million votes. That’s more than 25 times the margin by which John F Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960. So, for the second time in the last five elections, America has a president it didn’t vote for.
The last time this happened was in 2000 when Vice-President Al Gore got more votes than George W Bush, though the latter still won the electoral college.
The truth is that the latest allegations don’t really matter. It’s just a distraction and an excuse for Trump to do what he does best: come out fighting.
The real issue is whether Trump’s campaign team was involved in Russia hacking US websites to alter the outcome of the election. That needs to be investigated – because if that’s how Trump took America’s highest office then it’s a major crime, and there will be consequences. In the meantime we can’t halt this week’s inauguration.
You can’t just stop that because of unproven allegations.
We just have to accept he’s the President, at least until the 2020 election.
By then it wouldn’t surprise me if the President was challenged by a rival within his own party, someone like Marco Rubio . Internal party challenges have happened before. President Carter was challenged in the primaries by fellow democrat Ted Kennedy in the run-up to the 1980 election.
And, historically, whenever a sitting president is challenged by a serious candidate in his own party he loses in the general election .
This Friday, for better or worse, Trump will be inaugurated.
I can’t help remembering John F Kennedy’s famous inaugural address when he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
I am worried Trump is all about what America can do for him.
He’s a man who could ask ordinary Americans to give their lives in battle for their country, while he can’t even hand over his tax details.
The Kennedys believed politics was the noblest calling, and that their lives should be devoted to making life better for other people. With Trump it seems it’s all about him. He’s devoted to making his own life better. There’s nothing about his approach to politics the Kennedys would have liked.
And how little respect do we have for our country that we don’t care that our leader should put the interest of the US first before his own?
What also worries me is Trump’s Twitter account. After Friday’s inauguration, I hope the government takes it from him.
It’s bad enough what HE types on there, but there’s also the risk his account could be hacked and cyber-terrorists could provoke some terrible panic or a stock market crash with rogue Tweets.
But one of the biggest challenges facing Trump will come when he tries to scrap Obamacare – because many of the people who backed him will soon start to lose their health cover.
That’s when Trump starts to lose
his Teflon. Because you can say and do all kinds of things when you’re running for election, but once you’re in the White House the facts speak for themselves.
- Jerry Springer hosts weekly podcasts online and on Talk Radio on Saturday nights.