King Trump threatens to tear America apart |
When the Rev. Father Francis Mann read the last benediction at Donald Trump's inaugural ceremony, he ended by saying, "Americans kneel to God and to God alone."
But in President Donald Trump's second inaugural speech, and in the executive orders he's issued since, it is clear he expects Americans and the world to kneel to him.
Not since George Washington refused to let Americans make him a king has a president made so clear he intends to rule like one.
On Monday, Trump repeated his "I was saved (from assassination) by God to make America great again" mantra. (Despite his repeated references to God, the president swore his oath without placing his hand on either of the two Bibles Melania Trump held out to him, one a Lincoln Bible and the second a Bible Trump's mother gave him.)
But beyond the fake piety and repetition of past grievances, his speech was full of grandiose pledges to "annihilate" America's problems (note the word choice). His executive orders, and accompanying actions, were those of an ascendant autocrat, threatening anyone who dares to criticize him during the next four years.
The president exuded the energy of a man convinced he has nearly absolute power and no one can stop him, backed by a cluster of the world's richest tech multibillionaires seated close by in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda who had already knelt to his demands.
Nothing better illustrates that sense of omnipotence than his immediate pardon of nearly all the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters, and the commutation of sentences for the remaining 14. He did it just after being........