Turtles Deserve Better

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper likened U.S. President Donald Trump to an "obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun."  While turtles actually deserve better than Anderson Cooper’s description of Trump’s post election behavior his description had a significant element of truth.  Trump, who has always bragged about his physical appearance, is definitely overweight.  Whether he is morbidly obese, as described by Nancy Pelosi or just overweight, Trump is beyond the point of healthy weight by more than a few pounds.  While not politically correct according to critics who have accused Anderson of fat shaming Trump is pounds away from setting a good example for healthy Americans.  His diet, much like many overweight people is based upon fast, sometimes termed, junk food.  His daily consumption of diet drinks do not add to what most nutritionists would term healthy behavior.  But, back to the turtle analogy.  Cooper would have been much more accurate is his analogy referred to a turtle that never left his shell. For the three plus years of the Trump Presidency is is apparent that Donald Trump had a turtle like view of the world.  (Perhaps an ostrich with its head buried in the ground might have been a better way to make this point, however.) Trump not only based many of his decisions on the advice he received from FOX TV hosts, ignoring information available to him from his intelligence advisors.  He also ignored many scientific advisors and again based his policy positions on incompetent medical practitioners who were neither experienced nor trained in the science of epidemiology.  As for economic advice he again reverted to TV spokesmen rather than economists.  All in all, the past period of the Trump Presidency has been a period of governing by the unskilled, incompetent, and inept.  It should be no surprise that over 75 million Americans told Donald Trump, YOU’RE FIRED!  That he pretends he never heard their cry for change is just another example of head in the shell by The Donald.  Whether or not he is fat and whether or not his being fat is the reason for either his behavior or lack of skill when it came to doing the job of president is not very important.  Nor is it important that people who, themselves, have a difficult time because of excessive weight feel that Cooper’s comment was fat shaming.  It is a reality that Trump is fat.  It is also a reality that Trump is unable to competently govern.  Finally it is a fact the Trump was not re-elected in a landslide like he claimed on election eve.  As his followers like to say when excusing Trumps behavior, Trump was just being Trump.  Which, like his excessive weight, is rationalization on the part of people, whether fat or slim, made a smart decision when they voted in either 2016 or 2020.  And, if they voted for Trump in 2016, many did they have the smarts to realize their mistake and not repeat that mistake in 2020 and there were many who failed to learn from their mistakes, just as Trump failed to learn how to win an election by becoming competent.