I often ask myself — either because it’s my job or I’m just that neurotic — why Donald Trump hasn’t yet sent the National Guard into Denver to, uh, clean up the city. Or if not Denver, at least Aurora, which Trump has repeatedly claimed to be in thrall of Venezuelan gangs.
Are we not as Guardsman-worthy as L.A. or D.C. or Chicago?
I asked the same question — because that definitely is my job — of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, who suggested if Trump looked at, say, the renovated 16th Street and all the new street cleaners at work, he’d know there wasn’t that much cleaning up for the National Guard to do.
Or maybe — and this is my idea — Trump decided that Denver’s rebranding of the 16th Street Mall as just 16th Street is a bid to show the Denver Mall was not in competition with Trump’s personal D.C. Mall.
To be fair, the mayor also pointed to lower crime rates and progress in dealing with homelessness and immigration issues as possible reasons why Trump hasn’t shown up. But let me suggest that crime rates, even if they’d fallen by 400 or 500 or 600% — which, by the way, is the new, new, never-before-seen Trumpian math — that Trump couldn’t care less about Denver’s various statistical goals and how close the city is (or isn’t) to reaching them.
Meanwhile, he’s a very busy man. What other president would have had the time to rush onto social media to trash the legendary actor and director Rob Reiner just hours after he was murdered? I’m surprised — OK, not surprised — that he has the time to do much of anything, other than acing MRI exams and chopping down the East Wing and replacing it with the most vulgar White House room since Trump’s gilded Oval Office.
That’s when he’s not causing millions to lose their health care or cheering on RFK Jr.’s unending assault on childhood vaccines. Or when he’s cutting SNAP payments to American children and USAID support for poor and sick children around the world.
Want early access to
Mike’s columns?
Subscribe to get an
exclusive first look at
his columns twice a week.
Or, for that matter, when he’s busily accepting the great honor of having his name placed alongside — actually in front of — John F. Kennedy’s name in rebranding the Kennedy Center as the Trump Kennedy Center? Because whose culture and erudition reminds you more of JFK’s than Donald Trump’s?
(Excuse me while I throw up a little in my mouth … OK, I’m back. Teeth brushed, mouth washed, MRI aced, and ready to go.)
I think the reason Trump is ignoring Denver and Aurora is that he’s spending so much of his shortened work day trashing the state of Colorado. What are a few homeless migrants, more or less, when judged against Gov. Jared “SLEAZEBAG” Polis’ refusal to release former Mesa County elections clerk Tina Peters from state prison?
I’m not alone in that opinion. If you bump into just about any Colorado Democratic politician, you’ll hear the same thing.
Trump got so desperate that he decided, illegally of course, to pardon Peters himself, which also didn’t work because, you know, the Constitution. It doesn’t allow presidents to pardon those charged with state crimes — even if the crimes were committed to promote Trump’s delusion that the 2020 election was rigged.
So, instead, as I’m sure you’ve heard, Trump dropped the big one on Colorado, sending out his henchman, Russell Vought, to announce the dismantling of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), otherwise known as the “global mothership” of climate research.
This is a big deal and not just because NCAR is located in Boulder — although that is a big deal all by itself — but also because NCAR is so damn good and provides such critical scientific services.
Why would he do such a thing, I ask, rhetorically of course.
There are two theories, and I don’t know which is more disturbing.
Vought’s job as budget director and self-styled Grim Reaper is to not-so-surgically slice away large sections of the budget, starting, it seems, with those parts that help prevent the most harm to the most people. And so, naturally, he says the Trump administration is closing NCAR because “this facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
He’s not all wrong. That may be because research on climate change often is, in fact, alarming, and NCAR actually studies climate issues.
In other words, if NCAR weren’t out there pulling in all the data, we could more easily ignore all the data. And if you have to sacrifice NCAR’s invaluable role in predicting the weather (wind, anyone?) and analyzing climate disasters, then that’s just what must be done. Vought says he’ll move NCAR’s role in weather and climate predictions to someplace else. He didn’t say where. Just someplace not in Colorado, we’ll assume.
There’s a trend here. We’ve seen Trump and Vought and Kennedy cut funding for, say, cancer research, presumably because if no one does the research and publishes it for all to see, we could pretend that cancer isn’t so bad after all.
This is part and parcel of Trump’s war on science. On NCAR and on Colorado, which has lost funding for research before. They are Trump and Vought’s victims, along with the rest of us.
The other theory is that closing NCAR is simply Trump’s way to avenge Polis’ refusal to pardon Peters.
Sens. Hickenlooper and Bennet issued a joint statement saying they were holding up a funding bill because of Trump’s action against NCAR. In a news conference later in the day, Bennet said there was no question in his mind that Trump’s move against NCAR is in revenge for Polis’ refusal to bow to Trump on Peters. Hick has said much the same.
☀️ MORE FROM MIKE LITTWIN
Trump does have a long history of trashing and questioning Colorado, including moving the Space Command to Alabama because our state uses mail-in ballots. I don’t know what the reason is for moving a patent office to not-so-high-tech Montana, but that just happened, too. You may remember that the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters were supposed to go to Grand Junction. And then didn’t.
The funny thing is that Polis, sleazebag or not, has spent much of Trump’s second term trying to find middle ground with the president. We’ve seen how well that has worked out.
So which do you think is worse — Trump dismantling NCAR because he can’t stand science or Trump’s dismantling one of the world’s premier climate research institutions simply to show Polis who’s boss?
It’s probably too late to save NCAR whichever way you vote. But maybe this would work:
Someone raises the money — maybe a bunch of laid-off scientists — to put up a gold-plated sign proudly announcing The Donald J. Trump Center for Excellent Never Before Seen Research.
Or would that be too alarmist?
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.