America deserves better than Trump’s petty and vindictive style of governance – Orange County Register

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Apparently, former President Donald Trump needed to be shown voting results in order to authorize aid for disaster victims in California, according to a recent report in Politico.

Trump’s disdain for the Golden State and its majority of Democratic voters was too much for him to bear so he dug in his feet and refused to give assistance to communities suffering from wildfire damage.

Now, it’s true that Trump lost California badly, twice (soon to be thrice), and state Democratic leaders made opposing Trump their singular focus for his one term.

But even still, blocking aid to wildfire victims is beneath the dignity of a president, any president, or anyone else elected to represent anyone.

In other words, it’s bad.

The 2018 wildfire season was at the time California’s worst, with 103 confirmed deaths and nearly two millions acres burned.

According to the Politico report, high-ranking officials scrambled for anything that would persuade the president to do the right thing, including making the case that many of the affected areas had a significant number of Trump supporters.

“We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” Mark Harvey, Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told Politico.

Often with stories like this, the sources are anonymous. But Harvey not only went on the record, his claim was backed up by a second source, Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House homeland security adviser, according to the report.

Harvey’s comments are also noteworthy as he would have been one of the top people advising the president on the issue, instead of being the Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Nobody Cares, who claimed to have heard something about something at the water cooler on the third floor of the Executive Office Building.

Granted, Harvey has endorsed Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, for president. But that doesn’t mean he’s lying. In fact, if he’s telling the truth, he would be highly motivated to endorse against Trump.

But more than anything, it doesn’t seem that far fetched.

Being insensitive and lacking character is on brand for Trump, especially when discussing human misery.

For example, about the late Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war during Vietnam with whom Trump beefed, Trump said: “He’s a war hero because he was captured; I like people that weren’t captured.”

In fact, according to his former chief of staff, John Kelly, Trump referred to all POWs and those seriously wounded or killed in combat as “suckers” because “there is nothing in it for them.” Kelly, a former general in the Marine Corps, added that Trump was someone who “did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for (Trump).’”

Even earlier this year, Trump said he’d withhold disaster aid to California over water deliveries.

The list goes on. But the point is that these latest comments are not hard to believe.

Sadly, Trump, while the most egregious offender, is not alone. This type of partisan, petty and vindictive style of governance is all too common. “Republicans” are a regular foil for California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, even though more than five and a half million Republicans are his constituents. Attacking Republicans was the basis of his State of the State speech earlier this summer and is the basis of much of his political identity.

Politics is hard and we live in a time where there is every incentive to bash opponents and far too many disincentives to work together.

Regardless, this type of governing only breeds cynicism among voters.

It’s not too late to turn things around. Let’s start rewarding elected officials for building consensus.

At this point, it’s too late to get new candidates for November, but it’s not too late to start demanding higher character.

Disaster victims shouldn’t suffer because of partisanship. No one should.

Follow Matt on Twitter @FlemingWords

Originally Published: October 14, 2024 at 8:00 a.m.

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