Some fast facts for your reading pleasure: First, when the president lights into a morning show host with blatant sexism, most women, regardless of their political stances, won't be amused. (And this is coming from someone with a pretty crass and offensive sense of humor.)
To be appalled by such puerile behavior is a normal reaction, not a radical, third-wave feminazi thing. When the most powerful man in the world has a long history of misogyny, lewd comments and bragging about sexual assault, we should be horrified. Men and women, we are all old enough to recognize the inappropriateness of this behavior. And hopefully, we are all moral and educated enough to condemn it.
Second, when the president appears more interested in trash-talking legislators of his own party than in the actual health care bill they're trying to pass, feeling concern is totally valid. (Does the president even fully grasp the complexities of healthcare legislation or have an idea of what he wants? I'd love to see his great ideas if he can produce them. Otherwise, maybe we should just stick with Obamacare, not that it was working out too well for us, either.)
And finally, the president's endless repetition of "fake news!" in response to every single negative story grew tiresome about six months ago. His blatant attacks on any commentator who dares criticize him, on any journalist who reports anything less than a glowing review, are not presidential or aligned with American values. Let's forget about the sexist attacks on female commentators for a minute because, in my opinion, the president's obsession with attacking any media figure is far more troublesome.
Like Nixon before him, Trump wouldn't label the press as the enemy if he wasn't shady –– and I don't care how much you hate The Evil Liberal Media, you should be terrified that government officials work so hard to discredit them and limit their abilities to report freely. How is the press supposed to do its job of holding government officials accountable if citizens refuse to listen?
I don't naively think President Trump and members of Congress should just hold hands and be nice to one another. I don't expect healthcare bills to pass smoothly or politics to be clean. But I remember when Americans said character matters, and then they tossed that principle aside. And I think the president's Twitter isn't a joke because of what it reveals about his principles.
I'm concerned about the number of people who get their news from politicians' Twitter feeds rather than from news. I'm concerned people just naively believe that Trump is innocent and everything is fine because the media lies but Trump never does, or something. And I'm biased, but I think undermining the power of the press is not something to write off as no big deal.
I'm actually not worried that the president is so liberal with his social media usage. (My God, could you imagine if he played nice in public and none of us knew what an idiot was?) But writing off his Twitter attacks on lawmakers as part of the normal political environment isn't productive. Pretending his attacks on media or on women or marginalized groups are normal is incredibly dangerous to society. The president's seeming instability isn't a joke.
