Post #4365 Bad Elephant of the Year 2019

This is one of my tongue-in-cheek annual mock awards; there are no trophies, plaques, stipends, etc., over and beyond a few bytes in cyberspace. This award was introduced sometime after my inaugural "Jackass of the Year"over Democrat politicians behaving badly. Even though at the time I was nominally a registered Republican, I didn't want my blog to be perceived as partisan in nature; in fact, I never donated to the GOP or worked/volunteered for them or any of their candidates. (On the other hand, I did volunteer for the first Carter POTUS campaign.) I've only contributed (a modest amount) for one (POTUS) candidate, John McCain, something I've regretted ever since. My blog was issue-, not party-oriented. True, at least in the early years of the blog, I did follow the political horse races more prominently under my "political potpourri" tag. I still publish an occasional tweet on Trump's approvals and Dem or Dem/Trump's polls, but I got turned off as the Tea Party momentum waned, the anti-immigrants co-opted the movement and  the Trumpkin hostile takeover of the GOP led to my leaving the GOP. (Recall that I as a conservative had left the Dems in the mid-80's and I joined the GOP as a more viable alternative, not because of the party's appeal. Generally speaking, GOP candidates are still more preferable as more market-friendly and less Statist, but I object to Trump's  policies across the board, especially his anti-trade and anti-immigration policies, and the GOP turning its back on decades of policy repulses me.

So, realizing no party has a monopoly on politicians behaving badly, I finally started this mock award of Republicans behaving badly a few years back.

President Donald Trump

I have written hundreds, if not thousands of tweets and blog posts critical of Trump. I'm not going to review here his anti-trade and anti-immigration policies or other violations from a conservative perspective or his obnoxious use of social media, often roiling the markets, or contemptible, outrageous behavior. In this genre, I'm going beyond bad policy and looking at misconduct.

I'm not going to restrict myself here to the current calendar year. Trump has shown a disturbing pattern of behavior across his 3 years in office. The following is a selective list, by no means exhaustive:

• his attempt to quash the Mueller investigation. Whether or not the original Russiagate probe had merit, the fact is that Trump had a vested interest in its outcome. There is no doubt that Trump dismissed Comey and later AG Sessions, an unethical abuse of power, for insufficient personal loyalty. It was not up to Trump to decide the merits of the investigation.
• his unconstitutional invocation of "emergency" powers vs. Congress' power of the purse. In part here I'm referring to Trump's unprovoked tariff wars. A tariff is a tax and only Congress can levy taxes, which Congress can't constitutionally delegate. Also prominently there was Trump's unauthorized diversion of military funding for funding his personal priority of building border walls, against the expressed will of Congress, which refused to pass additional funding.
• his abuse of pardon/other authority, particularly as Commander in Chief. I'm specifically referencing his efforts to bypass the UCMJ, e.g., the pardon of Gallagher, an alleged/convicted war criminal and others. This undermines military discipline and sets the stage for blowback and reciprocal violations in future engagements.
• his extortion of Ukraine in an effort to undermine his political rival, Joe Biden. Yes, Trump made it clear, even in the abridged transcript he released of the phone call to new Ukraine President Zelensky, he expected a political favor for sustaining US support (an investigation of Biden and/or his son Hunter, and a crackpot conspiracy allegation about Ukraine interference in the 2016 election). This is an astonishing conflict of interest that things like the Emoluments Clause were specifically intended to guard against. There is no legitimate interest in raising Biden's name, no way of explaining it away.
• his (aborted) attempt to have a Trump property host an international summit. Although Trump backed down in the face of a likely impeachment charge, one has to wonder how such a blatant conflict of interest ever saw the light of day.