Timmons Ripped for Ripping on Trump
4-22-26
From the reaction to my questioning the actions of one Donald J. Trump last week, I may well be back down to three or four readers. Some folks were pretty ticked off that a lowly vagabond newspaperman would dare question the Don.
What is it about this guy that inflames us so much?
By any reasonable measure, he had a decent first term in the office. But his second term has been anything but. He is spending money that we don’t have – and then some. His ego, which has always been his biggest defining character, is out of control this time. And hey, let me be clear. I didn’t mind his ego the first time. It seemed to me he parlayed it from he has to win all the time to We The People have to win all the time. That worked for me. After Obama’s world apology tour we needed some good ol’ patriotic flag waving. This time though? It’s no longer MAGA – Make America Great Again. Now it’s DAGA Don Always Gets Abrasive.
He has two worlds, those who kiss his rather large posterior and enemies.
There is no middle ground.
The Pope – a guy who is probably about as peaceful as they get – hasn’t said anything against Trump specifically. He denounced war. But that apparently ticked Trump off and now the Pope is a bad guy.
For denouncing war?
Did you hear that Trump wants an arch built in his honor? A 250-foot arch to go along with the country’s 250th. That’s not so bad, but we’re not calling it the US of A Arch, or anything like that. It’ll be the Trump Arch. Oh, and it’ll cost $400 million to build. Apparently, it’s fashioned after the one in Paris or something. Do we really need an arch? We’ve got tons of arches. Go to St. Louis. Heck, drive down the interstate and you’ll see two golden arches every 15 minutes or so. And $400 million? Give me some helpers, bricks, mortar and a trowel and we’ll build one for a lot less than that. Besides, we’re almost $40 trillion in debt and instead of telling the American people how he’s SAVING us $400 million, he’s spending $400 million on another monument . . . to himself.
He’s put his name on the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, the Institute of Peace, the Palm Beach airport, federal savings accounts, prescription plans, roads, ships, currency and more. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that all this work will cost around $2 billion.
Hey, if he eliminated the deficit I’d be the first one in line saying rename everything after him. But the debt, the deficit, every economic indicator just keeps going south.
When does it end? Sadly, we are reaching the point where it may not.
Anyone remember Greece in 2009?
But let’s get back to the question – why can we not criticize the guy without hateful responses? Why does every Cabinet member kow-tow to the Don like he’s some sort of royalty? Why are his lies OK?
If our nation is divided – which is a little like asking if it can get cold in Indiana in January – Trump appears to be the fulcrum. I don’t know why. Just because I believe that Trump has lost his way doesn’t mean I’m jumping on the liberal bandwagon. Not even close. I swear by the old saw that if you aren’t a liberal when you’re 20 you have no heart and if you’re not a conservative when you’re 50 you have no brain.
Trump has put himself so far above everything that whether or not he has a heart or a brain is a serious question.
Here’s hoping whoever comes along next can take the ideals from that first term and – along with a huge dose of economic smarts – get this country back on a path to sanity.
Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically in The Times. Timmons is the chief executive officer of Sagamore News Media, the company that owns The Noblesville Times. He is also a proud Noblesville High School graduate and can be contacted at ttimmons@thetimes24-7.com.
