Here’s a snippet of the article. To read the whole thing, go here.
We’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a truth-teller and a healer in the White House.
By Thomas L. Friedman
This is my last regular column before Election Day, so what is there left to say? Instead of giving you an answer, let me leave you with a question, which I think is the question. What would you do if your kid came home from school and said:
“Mom, Dad, my teacher said President Obama ordered the killing of the U.S. Special Forces team that supposedly killed Osama bin Laden. My teacher said Bin Laden is actually still alive, that the guy the Navy SEALs killed was a ‘body double.’ He also claimed that Obama’s aides got Iran to send Bin Laden to Pakistan so Obama could have a ‘trophy kill.’ What’s a trophy kill? My teacher said he had heard all of this somewhere on the internet and he just thought he’d pass it along to our class. Mom, Dad, is this true?”
I know how I’d respond. I’d immediately call the school principal and ask how someone peddling such vile and fraudulent conspiracy stuff could be teaching in any classroom in America. Who wouldn’t? It violates the most basic judgment and norms of decency that we expect of anyone teaching in public school or serving in public office.
And that is really the question Donald Trump’s voters can’t ignore: Why would you be ready to fire your kid’s teacher for passing along such disgusting nonsense but be willing to rehire the nation’s teacher in chief — our president, the man with the most-read blackboard in the world — after he peddled exactly these crazy conspiracy theories to some 87 million people on Twitter the other day? Is there anything more warped?
