In an alternate reality, Donald Trump would soon be flying into exile, given refuge by one of those “s—hole’’ countries he mocked. Like the Shah of Iran or Idi Amin or Baby Doc Duvalier. He is of their despotic demagogue nature. A gravely lacerated America would not have to wait for the November election.
On Nov. 9, 2016, I — stunned — was at the Hilton Hotel in New York City where, in the middle of the night, Trump spoke as triumphant president-elect. “Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division.”
Someone must have put those words in Trump’s mealy, pursed mouth. His predecessor used them too, after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Barack Obama appealing to the citizenry as mourner-father of a nation. “Heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.
It comes from scripture, Psalm 147:3. President Abraham Lincoln invoked them as well in his second inaugural address, as the Civil War was drawing to a close. A month later he was assassinated.
Trump mouthed the sentiment but didn’t mean it. I wondered and wrote that night: “America, what have you done?” From there to here, America burning, a week of protests and rioting in the streets, a nation on curfew from coast to coast, and a president who pours acid on the nation’s wounds, with a Bible as a sacrilegious prop.
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