This just in: I’m not a psychologist but I like to play one on Facebook. In this “opinion” piece, I will lay out my case for Donald J. Trump, our Commander In Chief being labeled as a coward.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. He went to a pseudo-military school so that he could play “brave soldier” and then suddenly developed a rare form of bone spur that kept him out of an actual war. By “rare” I mean he has the only bone spurs in history that self-healed. This is why he doesn’t have them any more.

Another easy one – He’s a bully. We all learned at a very early age that the bully on the playground was actually a coward. Bullies never pick on the bigger kid. They choose battles where they are the overwhelming favorite and then attack.

Trump is illiterate. Now, there are varying degrees of illiteracy. One thing that all illiterates have in common is the fear of being discovered. They don’t want you to know that they can’t read or, as in Trump’s case, ready very poorly.

Trump fires people by text message. He does not have the strength of character to see these people face to face. Only when they are not around does he fire them and then call them things like “disgraceful”.

Trump never takes the blame. The one bedrock of leadership; that one thing you learn by just ready in the introductory pages of a leadership text is that the Buck Stops Here. A leader takes the blame for everything underneath him. If his CDC failed him, it’s not the CDC’s fault. As the leader, it’s Trump’s job to make sure the CDC is capable. Trump, however, overseas nothing. He waits for something to happen and then, if it’s good, he did it. If it’s bad, he had nothing to do with it.

Trump is a misogynistic racist. I put these two together because they are both inspired by the fear of being out performed by someone that others may see as inferior. Keep women down because if they outperform you, then you will hear about it on the playground, “Trump got beat by a girl.” The same is for Hispanics, Islamics and Chinese. Yes, Trump uses them as scapegoats but at the very core, he fears them.

Trump idolizes bullies. This is a birds of a feather thing. Think Putin, Kim Jong Widebody, Erdogan, Xi Ping whatever. He fears them so he saddles up next to them. He then does their bidding. For example, Putin said he didn’t interfer in our elections and Trump supports him as he trashes the entire NSA. Erdogan says, “We are coming into Syria so get out of the way.” Trump does as he is told.

Trump praises North Korea since the alternative would be to face the fact that he has failed miserably. He fears facing this fact.

Trump is homophobic. People that are homophobic are really just afraid that they may be gay themselves and are afraid you may notice that.

Trump didn’t close down Airlines from China until after the airlines did it because he feared making such a big decision.

Trump didn’t use the Defence Authorization Act because he feared that there would be push-back and that would make him appear wrong.

Trump has abdicated his leadership role in the pandemic so that he can take credit for the work of others while not taking the blame at any step along the way. (He claims to have saved millions of lives so far)

Trump only keeps relatives and lapdogs in his inner circle. Qualifications are not required; only loyalty. He fears the truth getting out.

At no point in the last 3+ years have I looked at Trump and not seen a coward.

Now I ask myself: “Is it important that our leader have courage?”

In my humble opinion, I’d rather have a leader that says, “We have a major problem on our hands and I’m going to do what I think is best to fix it” as opposed to the Trumpian path of “I’m afraid to act so instead, I’ll pretend everything is fine and maybe it will go away.”

We will not emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic intact and in short order because of one thing: We have a coward for a president.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim