PRAGMATIC ISSUES

America is officially out of money and, apparently, out of leadership.

As millions of federal workers brace for another week of unpaid bills and shuttered services, Donald Trump has decided the best course of action is… to leave the country.

That’s right. The same man who built his political brand on “America First” is now boarding Air Force One whilst America itself is closed for business and in utter ruins because of his spiteful rhetoric and his Trump caused shutdown.

How very umm cowardly of our president, yet somehow it is so, so predictable and so very on point, President Trump has decided to bail whilst his country burns.

If irony could be taxed, the government wouldn’t need a shutdown at all.

The President Who Outsourced Responsibility

Trump’s decision to jet off amid a shutdown isn’t just tone-deaf, it’s the diplomatic equivalent of leaving a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door of a burning house.

Congress has been paralyzed for over a month, federal employees are without pay, and social services are suspended. But, rather than stay in Washington to fix the crisis, to help bridge the gap between the two parties, to broker compromise and to help the American people, Trump is headed abroad to do what he does best, sell spectacle.

Maybe he’ll announce a new trade deal with another country, or pose for a photo op eating imported beef, the same beef he just agreed to buy instead of supporting U.S. ranchers. Maybe TikTok will grant us yet another outstanding weekend of posts and videos of people celebrating, in the hopes Trump never returns like they did this past Memorial Day Weekend, when everyone thought he had died. I can see it now, #AirForceOneWayTicket.

It’s not a presidency anymore.

It’s just really bad performance art.

Shutdown? What Shutdown?

For ordinary Americans, the shutdown means uncertainty, unpaid wages, and frozen benefits. For Trump, it means freedom from accountability. It’s the perfect setup for a man who treats governance as a reality show and responsibility as someone else’s job.

While food banks scramble to feed furloughed workers and national parks rot without maintenance, the Commander-in-Chief is leaving the country as though he’s clocking out of a job he never took seriously.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going to another hemisphere.

The Art of the Vanish

Trump’s latest escape act fits neatly into the pattern of a man who sees chaos as strategy. Create the fire, then walk away before the smoke hits your clothes. He’s not fleeing the country, he’s fleeing accountability.

This is not leadership, it’s desertion wrapped in red, white, and blue packaging. When asked if he would speak to both sides about the shutdown, he only agreed he would if they would open the government back up, on his and his parties terms and no one else’s.

That is not leadership, that is a man child having a tantrum because he isn’t getting his way.

The symbolism is too rich to ignore a president abandoning a country he promised to “save” from dysfunction, only to become the dysfunction himself.

The America He is Leaving Behind

As he departs, America remains shuttered, silenced, and leaderless. SNAP benefits will run out within days, veterans’ assistance is in limbo, and small businesses tied to federal contracts are gasping for air.

And yet, the man responsible for this legislative paralysis finds time for a foreign tour perhaps to remind other nations that America is still “great,” at failing with Trump at her helm, leaving a government that can’t afford to operate whilst it’s people slowly and agonizingly start to starve to death.

The last president to flee Washington during a crisis was fictional.

This one’s doing it in high definition.

The Final Irony

Trump once said that he would “never leave Americans behind.” But when confronted with the consequences of his own policies and actions, he doesn’t just leave he flies out in style.

America’s lights are off, but Air Force One is fully fueled.

If patriotism is staying to fix what you broke, then this is the opposite a man leaving the scene of his own disaster, confident that the crowd will still cheer as he exits the stage.

For a nation starved for leadership, that’s the real betrayal the warm scent of hypocrisy, wafting from Washington all the way to wherever Trump lands next.

Special shoutout to the hardworking folks at the Huffpost who originally broke this story.