By Madison Sell ’18

Times of crisis, like the recent London terror attacks, often trigger some sort of international support. These sad times usually spark empathy, sympathy, and compassion from allies. Instead, I am sadly represented by a man who, rather than acting as some sort of support, decides to criticise the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, for something that did not even happen. Maybe he didn’t have his covfefe this morning?

I wish this was a reasonable justification, but, sadly, it is not. President Trump has just displayed for about the 80th time his lack of professionalism for quite literally the most difficult job in the world – a job the does require a certain amount of professionalism, an amount that most consider to be greater than that of probably 99% of jobs. Whether it be through his angry-tweets where he targets random reporters and misspells words in a blaze of fury, or whether he makes a quick jab at someone without even thinking about acquiring information about the things he speaks of, Trump seems to just not think.

And like Jonathan Haidt describes in his novel The Righteous Mind, Trump seems to embody everything that could be wrong with a moral foundation. He feels the need to instantly assert his anger over something, with no reasoning or founded basis, and then attempts to justify his mistakes even after he must realize that he made them. Even after the Mayor of London reiterated exactly what he meant when he said there is “no reason to be alarmed,” Trump calls his explanation a “pathetic excuse.” He completely lacks the covfefe to admit he is wrong, which is a sign of complete lack of maturity and intelligence. Foreign leaders are saying that they have more important things to do than to respond to the leader of our country. People are dismissive of our president because of the joke that he comes across as.

Not only is Trump’s response extremely unusual considering the circumstances – like that the UK is dealing with a series of terror attacks and the Trump administration is attempting to push many policy proposals as we speak – it also completely disrespects the president’s role as the chief diplomat. He is picking petty fights with foreign leaders like a five year old.

Some of his supporters might say that my attack on Trump’s intelligence and professionalism – lack thereof – is dumb, irrelevant, doesn’t speak to his ability, and is a display of him simply “draining the swamp” of the elite Washington politicians, but they are wrong. While diversity in representation is important in every aspect, including diversity in levels of education, having the mental capacity, temper, and maturity of an infant is not a good thing, nor is it trivial. I do not believe that every president we have must be of the highest intelligence and have the highest degrees in eight areas of study, but I do believe that the president should be able to engage with foreign leaders respectfully, properly inform themselves on what is going on, and control their anger enough to spell things properly in their tweets. Don’t you covfefe?