During his first two months in office, Donald Trump has taken a shock and awe approach to remaking the Federal Government. He attempted to close USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He laid off thousands of Federal workers despite questions about the legality of these moves without the approval of Congress. He has imposed crippling tariffs on close allies and plans to close the Department of Education…and it’s been less than 60 days since he took office.So who will stand up to the man ruining America?
You would think that Democrats would be the ones standing up to the President, but no. Hakeem Jeffries made it clear that there was nothing he, the Minority Leader in the US House of Representatives, could do to fight the Commander in Chief. Chuck Shumer, Minority Leader in the Senate, is not much better. He and nine other Democratic Senators just voted with Republicans to advance GOP funding bill and avert a Government shutdown that would have laid bare the disfunction in the President’s own party.
So, I ask again. Who will stand up to Donald Trump?
I am not a Republican, but I have had a grumpy respect for some of them. Folks like John McCain and Mitt Romney weren’t my kind of people. They were too militaristic when it came to foreign policy and they didn’t like the kind of policies I liked. (Remember the uproar over Obamacare?) But they always came off as decent. Would I like to get a beer with one? Probably not. But I never wondered if they would undermine the entire democratic experiment that is America. Today’s GOP is different.
They go along with whatever the President wants to do even if it undermines their own authority. MAGA has so enveloped the GOP that it makes me wonder who, if anyone, will stand up to the man who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I have an idea about who can do it, however. But it’s just a theory. Hear me out.
We need a handsome, in shape white man who guzzles beer but doesn’t look like it. He can’t come from the North because that might make Republicans suspicious. He needs to be from the South: Texas, maybe. It can’t be Mississippi or Alabama because Black folks tend to be suspicious of people from those states. A Matthew McConaughey type minus the banging on bongos in the middle of the night while high on Za.
I don’t know who that will be. Given all the animosity to DEI, it can’t be an Obama type. And despite the number of women in Trump’s orbit, his base seems suspicious of a woman having too much power.
So, a white dude from Texas who is willing to stand up to Trump while not alienating the President’s base. That’s what we need. And now that marijuana is widely accepted, maybe McConaughey could actually do it. He sure as hell hasn’t been in a good movie for a while. And last year, he was toying with the idea.