Is Trump Sulking Or Is He Leading a Seditious Conspiracy?

The Guardian calls Trump's current behavior "a monumental sulk" as if he were a 10 year old who's locked himself in his room because he didn't get a PlayStation 5 for his birthday.  Trump's behavior is childish, but it needs to be called out in adult terms.  After all, Trump has a rather important job and he is completely derelict in attending to that job.  In military terms, which is appropriate as he is the commander in chief of the US military, Trump is absent without leave (AWOL).   

“I don’t think we’ve had a president since Richard Nixon who is as far in the bunker and detached from the country as Donald Trump is right now,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota.

Trump reportedly spends mornings in the White House residence bingeing on television. Then he goes down to the Oval Office in the afternoon, moving between it and an adjoining dining room which has a big TV. He broods there until night, conferring with lawyers in increasingly desperate efforts to overturn the election even as Biden nears a record 80m votes.

A critical component of leadership is the assumption of responsibility.  Trump has never taken responsibility for any negative consequences of his behavior as president.   

Jacobs commented: “Here’s the captain of the ship who’s missing, and the ship is really listing badly to the side, taking on water as more and more people are getting ill and dying. The president is not only missing from his post, but he’s encouraging a mutiny. There’s no precedent in American history for this kind of deranged behaviour.”

In Jacobs' comment, the word mutiny fits his analogy, but it is an imprecise description of Trump's current behavior.  Trump is currently flirting with behavior that comes close to meeting the definition of forming a "seditious conspiracy."  If Trump continues to encourage violence against political opponents and actively thwart the technical transition of power to the president elect after the certification of Joe Biden's election by the Electoral College, then Trump and his associates will be engaging in such a conspiracy.

Ronald Brownstein, a senior political analyst for CNN, tweeted on Thursday: “1,869 deaths in a day, heading into Thanksgiving. And the president, without a peep of complaint from his party, has gone AWOL, abandoning his responsibility to protect the country & leaving those in his charge to fend for themselves. What would happen to any military commander?”

Trump is not acting alone.  All but a handful of Republican politicians are supporting him by their silence.  Those Republicans are in violation of the oath of office that virtually every one of them swore with their hand upon a Bible.