Series | Trump Nation, Part 7: Dear Mr. Obama: You Are Still the President

• Trump Nation is an ongoing reader discussion led by James Fallows regarding Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency. (For a related series, see “Trump Time Capsule,” as well as “Will Trump Voters and Clinton Voters Ever Relate?”) To sound off in a substantive way, especially if you disagree with us, please send a note: hello@theatlantic.com.
• Seventh in a series
• Related: Trump’s lies are not the problem. It’s the millions who swallow them who really matter.

James Fallows, the Atlantic

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U.S. President Barack Obama holds a news conference in a packed White House press briefing room on November 14, 2016. (Jonathan Ernst / Reuters) 

December 6, 2016 | In the four weeks since the election, which seem like four centuries, Donald Trump has dominated the news and done real strategic and economic damage with his stream of intemperate tweets. For a reckoning of the chaos that his tweets about Taiwan and China have already induced, please see these Atlantic items: by Uri Friedman with Shen Dengli, by David Graham, by Chris Bodenner, and by Isaac Stone Fish, with links to many other analyses. The harm he petulantly inflicted today on Boeing, a company that is perennially the United States’s leading exporter and one of its most important high-tech manufacturing employers and standard-setters, is only the latest and most flagrant illustration.

This is not responsible behavior. This is not normal. This is not something the United States, or for that matter the world, can really withstand from a commander in chief. But this ungoverned, thin-skinned impetuosity is something the “responsible” GOP has decided, to its enduring shame, that it dare not criticize.

James Fallows is a national correspondent for the Atlantic> and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book is China Airborne.

Full story … 

Previously in this Series:

• Part 6: Landslide Donald
• Part 5: Which Department Should Rick Perry Head? The Answer Will Come to You.
• Part 4: This Is What the Resistance Sounds Like
• Part 3: A Video for the New Age
• Part 2: How the Vote Broke, in Historical Perspective
• Part 1: How to Deal With the Lies of Donald Trump: Guidelines for the Media

Related:

Trump’s lies are not the problem. It’s the millions who swallow them who really matter, Nick Cohen, the Guardian 

• As the alt-right continues to set the agenda in global politics at a frightening pace, has the world reverted to a 20th-century era of totalitarianism?
• Related: The Issue is Not Trump. It is Us.