Mr. Big-Hearted

One may buy from Amazon a T-shirt reading "Not My President" or a "Donald Trump Is Not My President!" bumper sticker. They or things very similar are probably available elsewhere, perhaps even widely.

There is, inevitably, even a Donald Trump Is Not My President page on Facebook. The day after the election- before we fully learned of Russian meddling, nor fully understood the impact of the FBI or a media obsessed with Hillary Clinton's emials- Gloria Steinem declared "I'm not going to disobey the law, but I'm not going to pretend he represents me."

Steinem had an inkling of the potential damage of the Trump presidency before most of us did. Still, Donald Trump is President and does represent the American people.

Evidence that Trump is president comes, appropriately, from the realization that Trump does not himself fully understand the office he holds.

The official death toll from Hurricane Maria stands at 2,975 individuals (perhaps as many as 1670 more), which puts it merely 21 lower than the horrendous World Trade Center attacks of 9/11/01.  Still, Donald Trump on Thursday morning tweeted

3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000...

To that, Nate Silver responded

I know there's a lot of competition but this is the worst thing he's ever tweeted. https://t.co/szjPKKxzhK

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 13, 2018

If only that were so. Admittedly, when four people are involved in a car accident, two die at the scene and two sometime thereafter, four have died because of the crash. However, Trump a little later on Thursday morning Trump upped the ante with

.....This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018

When a bill appropriating money for Puerto Rico is passed by Congress after the President remarks "We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!" said President cannot credibly claim credit for the money.

Nor does the President "raise" money for anything, let alone an insufficient amount. He is not "raising" money for charity.  It is his job as President and is not a handout from a benevolent dictator.

Except, of course, that Donald Trump views himself as a friendly dictator. "I love Puerto Rico," he says of a territory whose problems he considers "largely.... of their own making."

Donald Trump does not realize he is a president with powers restricted by the Constitution, and whose control of the federal government is shared with two other branches of government. So when a person claims Donald Trump is not his or her president, the comment is incorrect- but only because no asterisk is included.

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