There are some days that I absolutely dread opening my phone, afraid of an announcement from CNN or MSNBC about something that President Trump has done that day. Whether it’s banning travel from majority Muslim countries, but excluding countries that are hosts to his hotels, angering China with his treatment of Taiwan or silencing the EPA, it seems that President Trump is always in the middle of affairs that he knows nothing about, and, evident by his unwillingness to attend briefings in the past, has no interest in learning about. In recent weeks, President Trump has proved very unprofessional, especially when he made claims — without any evidence at all — that the Obama administration wiretapped him during his campaign.
As human beings, we make mistakes, and President Trump is no different, even if he may believe himself to be. However, even now, President Trump refuses to back down from his assertions, even though the Justice Department has not produced any evidence of his accusations against the former president. The accusation, while disappointing, is not entirely the issue. The problem is that he refuses to admit his mistakes and learn from them, which has occurred quite often since even before his election. His unprofessionalism is not only dividing our country, and the politicians that run it, but also affecting our relations with other countries as well.
President Trump’s relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel has not been the best since even before he entered office. He has criticized her for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany, and has used her as a synonym with destruction by claiming Hillary desired to be “America’s Angela Merkel,” destroying the country. Chancellor Merkel has been relatively more restrained on her opinions, as a politician should be. Despite their political differences, it seemed that relations were approaching the right direction when President Trump welcomed Chancellor Merkel to speak with him in the White House. However, when she arrived, Donald Trump refused to shake her hand or even look in her direction at all. In addition, when a reporter questioned him about his claims of the wiretapping controversy, he reopened old wounds by joking that because several UN nations had been wiretapped by the U.S., he and Chancellor Merkel had something in common.
While he meant it as a joke — perhaps — Chancellor Merkel didn’t laugh, smile or even chuckle. She frowned and shuffled through her papers awkwardly, and it was obvious that she was quite uncomfortable. This, coupled with the fact that President Trump has named Britain as collaborators in Obama’s wiretapping scheme, is degrading some of our most valuable alliances. Germany is one of the most, if not the most, powerful political figure in the UN, and by disrupting relations with them we risk disrupting relations with the entirety of NATO. Because of this, at this point, we must drop the domestic partisan façade that we wear; President Trump is not just standing against Democratic and Liberal values within the US, but is quite literally destroying America’s values in the eyes of the world.
Thus, liberals should not be the only ones alerting him of his mistakes. He needs to hear it from his own party. He needs to hear it from his own cabinet. When you have Sean Spicer, Jeff Sessions and Devin Nunes, all big political figures and important people, trying to make excuses for President Trump by saying, “He meant at a bigger face value,” and other nonsense, you do not really address the issue. When only one GOP lawmaker, Tom Cole, comes out and asks President Trump to apologize to Obama, while others simply inquire why President Trump has made the claim without evidence, you do not address the issue. Telling him that he is wrong and questioning his actions are not the same thing. You cannot slightly disagree with him, nor can you do it in a way that somehow panders to him. President Trump needs to hear from people “on his side” that he is being unprofessional. President Trump needs to hear that he’s wrong from the people he trusts the most, and those are the people who he personally picked to help him serve the United States as president. I understand the need to stick with one’s party, but on issues like this, in blatant incorrectness, it is crucial that we criticize the people on our sides, so that we can prevent it from escalating and to prevent it from happening again.