Please Donald, STOP!

I told myself that I wasn’t going to write about President Donald Trump’s daily outrages. People are used to them, they have come to expect them and, basically, except for the rabid left and right of America, they usually just ignore them.

It is who he is and he can’t help himself.

But ...

I can’t help myself, either. There is just too much at stake. So, consider this a promise (at least to myself) not kept.

I have been thinking about Memorial Day coming up at the end of next month and the sacrifices of so many brave Americans who have given everything to keep our country safe and strong and free.

And I have been thinking about what the United States of America has meant to the rest of the world — the free world and that which is not yet free. We have been that symbol of hope for better tomorrows, that beacon of light toward a better life and a blueprint for prosperity that all nations aspire to and for which all people yearn.

And I think about all of the wars we have had to fight and the lives we have lost maintaining all that America is for all these years.

And that is why I must howl at the moon and whistle in the wind, because I know there are good and decent people out there who want to preserve all that is great about our country.

We can start with Trump’s tariff wars which he conducts, often by himself and for himself, on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. He may not mean or believe most of what comes out of his mouth, but there are real people with real savings accounts with real bills to pay and with real-world consequences to their mental and financial well-being who are caught in the crossfire.

Among the last bits of news was the president suggesting that China is starting to break from the pressure. That would be great news. But China says no way, no how. That is not good news.

The problem is that for perhaps the first time in my life, I don’t know who to believe. I am one of those “my country, right or wrong” guys, so believing my president over the leader of our strongest (shouldn’t be but that’s another story for another time) adversary should be a no-brainer.

But given Trump’s known, provable and unequivocal challenges with the truth, and having a modest understanding of world economics and market forces, I am leaning eastward. That is unsettling.

What is also of deep concern is Trump’s war on the courts and lawyers.

Normally, I am sympathetic to every lawyer joke ever told. But I also know and believe that when push comes to shove, it is our legal system that matters. And the courts and the men and women of the bar who have sworn an oath to defend it are our first line of defense against authoritarianism. They may even be our last. A country without the rule of law is not a democracy.

Trump threatened the country’s largest law firms with the loss of their clients by threatening to shut the government’s doors to those clients’ needs. He demanded that the firms represented what he wanted rather than what they believed their clients needed.

Some firms capitulated (they went for the money) and some firms have sued (they went for the principle). The question to be answered at a later time is how many clients want a lawyer who has demonstrably proven that he serves two masters.

For now, we should be listening to the judges who, for the most part, have shut Trump down at every turn.

One well-respected federal judge asked the government’s lawyer this past week whether what Trump was doing smacked of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s Red-baiting era. The lawyer tried to answer without facts and without the law on his side.

In fact, there was no one standing on the side of this lawyer against the biggest names in the business. He was left all alone. That’s not a good look when you represent the government of the United States of America and there is no one else on your side of the table!

The first move of dictators around the world is to shut down the courts and intimidate the lawyers.

The next move is to silence the media. And Trump is doing his best on that score.

And, finally, let’s talk about Ukraine. Before Trump, the United States did more than talk. We provided, along with our European and other allies, the military assistance Ukraine needed to defend itself.

Since Trump took office three months ago, Ukraine has gone begging and Russia has pounded those people relentlessly. So much so that our president goes on TV daily decrying the loss of life and crying the tears of a pacifist when he says he just wants the killing to stop.

His efforts in that regard have, so far, been wanting. His first answer has been to give Vladimir Putin everything he wants to stop the carnage. Ukraine, for good reason, hasn’t agreed.

Trump’s latest idea to stop the war and find a peace settlement is to just say no. As in, “Vladimir, STOP.”

Of course, why didn’t the rest of us think of that?

But, now that our president has shown us how to conduct foreign affairs against a brutal dictator and a man who would bend others to his will against their own will, we can learn.

And what I have learned is to stop howling at the moon and whistling in the wind.

Instead, I will simply ask — no demand — of President Trump:

Donald, STOP!

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.