A few days ago we learned, without surprise, that President Elect Trump receives only weekly briefings. The current President is briefed daily, and Vice President Elect Michael Pence is briefed six days per week.

There is no requirement that Mr. Trump be briefed daily, but a decades old custom has the President Elect receive the same daily briefing as the President. This election has broken many traditions, not the least of which is the election of someone who has never held office.

Others in his position have recognized the awesome responsibility of the office and the steep learning curve. They’ve recognized that on their first day in office the buck stops here.

Mr. Trump, on the other hand, bragged that I know more about Isis than the generals do and brags about not reading books.

In five and a half weeks he will be the leader of the free world. He will be awakened in the middle of the night and tasked to make incredibly important decisions in a matter of minutes. His decisions will impact the lives of members of our military, the population of our nation, and indeed everyone on earth.

And if his actions so far indicate anything, they indicate that he will be woefully unprepared. He claims that experience negotiating real estate contracts gives him the tools he needs, but it doesn’t. The President can’t suspend negotiations or ask the judge for a continuance. He can do his job only if he comes to the crisis with the background and understanding for the decisions he will need to make.

I pray he comes to an understanding of this before he stumbles too badly.

Last Week I expressed surprise that President Elect Donald Trump was thinking of nominating David Petraeus for Secretary of State. He’s been convicted of the same crime that Trump (and others) falsely accused Hillary Clinton of. I suspected he wouldn’t be the last pick that would stun me.

Fast forward to December 5th. Mr. Trump chose Dr. Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD.

I’m not the only one I know who asked about Dr. Carson’s qualifications for the job. And we’re still wondering. He has an impressive resume: He was born in Detroit, Michigan and was raised by a single mother (his father abandoned his mother when Ben was eight). He was seen as a promising student and attended Yale University.

From there he graduated medical school at the University of Michigan and eventually became a neurosurgeon (yes, a brain surgeon).

But what qualifies him to develop policies to house poor people and urban centers? Well…nothing. Despite stories to the contrary he didn’t grow up in public housing. It was a poor neighborhood but his mother worked hard enough to keep them in housing without government assistance.

So here’s when I wander into the weeds. I think Mr. Trump nominated Dr. Carson not because he grew up poor, but because he’s black. I think Trump sees poverty as essentially a racial issue and he thinks Carson can best work with “the blacks”.

During the campaign he famously attracted, and even courted, the white supremacist vote. When speaking to minority communities he said this: What do you have to lose?

All this speaks to a latent racism that Mr. Trump denies. But we’re not fooled. He was born to wealth and wants us to believe that his ability to add to this wealth makes him smarter and will make him a better President. We elect a leader for all of us, but our next President makes it clear he cares only for those who look like him.

We all need to pray for those who are in need of affordable housing or who live in urban areas.

In the last few days we’ve heard a great deal about President Elect Donald Trump and possible conflicts of interest.

But one small aspect caught my attention. Donald owns or licenses properties all over the world, and one of them is a Golf Course in Ireland. It’s located on the west coast of Ireland, right on the ocean.

You can read about this here, but basically Donald hopes to build a seawall. And he wants to build it to protect his investment from rising sea levels due to climate change.

And of course we all know that Donald famously claimed four years ago that climate change is a hoax perpetuated by China to make us non-competitive.

I guess he wants climate change to be true for him and false for the rest of us.

Yep, he’s at it again. Yesterday morning, in response to a decision by students at Hampshire College to not raise the flag on November 18th after it was burned by unnamed students, he did it again.

President Elect Trump tweeted “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

Burning the American flag offends many of us. Lots of us, like me, grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the school day. We recognized how fortunate we were to live in a country that was based on the proposition that all of us were created equal. And we learned to revere the Constitution.

Well, most of us. The first 10 amendments compose the Bill of Rights and the first amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In her brilliant book The Words We Live By by Linda Monk speaks of free speech not solely as spoken words but also “symbolic speech.” For example, in 1968 the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. O’Brien that burning a draft card is a form of protected speech.

In 1989 the Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson in 1989 that flag burning is also protected speech.

And so Don cannot jail someone for burning a flag, no matter how offended he (and I) find it. We’re joined by Justice Antonin Scalia who said: “If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag but I am not king.”

So can he revoke someone’s citizenship? No. If you’re a citizen because you, or one of your parents, were born here, you cannot lose your citizenship unless you renounce it. You can read about it here. The same article shows that naturalized citizens can have their citizenship revoked in only the narrowest of reasons.

None of them allow anyone to revoke our citizenship by exercising our 1st amendment right to free speech.

Sorry Don, maybe your rant will gain you popularity but it just makes you look more uneducated on the job you’ll assume in January.

In my last post I wrote about the ongoing reality show to find our next Secretary of State. At the time it appeared to be a cage match between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

But wait! Yesterday we learned that the President Elect played a wild card by interviewing General David Petraeus for the position.

In fairness, General Petraeus was an excellent soldier and (according to my sister who knows him) a brilliant man. But here’s the thing: he has a criminal record. After completing his military service he was named director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2011 by President Obama.

But, as a married man, he began an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell who was writing his biography. In the course of their relationship General Petreaus shared with Ms. Broadwell his calendar which contained classified information.

When this was discovered, General Petraeus was charged with a felony but plead it down to a misdomeanor.

So here’s my irony: For most of the campaign, Don has charged Secretary Clinton as “Crooked Hillary” on the false charge that she shared classified information. It’s not true and an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed that.

But now, Don wants us to approve someone for Secretary of State who has been convicted of the crime he falsely accused his opponent of doing.

It’s going to be a long four years.

Certain truths are given. The sun rises in the East. Climate change is real. And the transition team for a new president is a messy, competitive, complicated mess. The President Elect attempts to develop a team who will implement his plans. His transition team also has desires and loyalties, both for themselves and their allies. And a large pool of people from various places imagine themselves in positions of power. It happens every four years.

But as we know, nothing about this campaign or transition is normal. At first blush it appears normal, but there is one aspect that causes me concern: the choice for Secretary of State. At this point it appears to be a race between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

It appears the job will belong to one of these two men. And it shows a split among the Republicans. Rudy’s supporters point to last March when Mitt called Don a phony and a fraud, and urged Republicans to oppose him. They believe Rudy will be loyal to Don’s agenda. Mitt’s supporters point to Rudy’s paychecks from foreign nations and claim he cannot fully advocate this county’s foreign policy while ignoring his own agenda.

But my concern is different: I’m afraid President Elect Trump is treating this as a reality show.

For over a decade before his presidential run, Don starred in a “reality show” called The Apprentice. In different seasons he pitted ordinary people and washed up celebrities against each other and personally chose the winner. The show did well because he was able to manipulate and play off the drama of people competing for his favor. It was good for the ratings but it was also good for his ego. I suspect the enjoyment he received from being the decider first gave him the idea of running for President.

And when I read the news reports of Rudy v. Mitt, I fear Don is doing the same thing. I fear that Don’s choice won’t rest on the question of who will better form and implement our foreign policy, but on who can best grovel to Don.

I hope I’m wrong.

Dozens of times on the campaign trail President Elect Donald Trump encouraged the chant: “Lock her up!” He was, of course, speaking about Hillary Clinton.

His campaign, and much of the Republican Party, insisted that she was guilty of various crimes even though multiple investigations found no wrongdoing.

In the course of the third debate, on October 9th, he pledged that he would direct his Attorney General to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate her use of a private email server.

Today he responded by telling the New York Times “never mind.”

So what’s a Trump supporter supposed to do? As I write this, if you google “lock her up” you’ll get 9,990,000 responses. It’s actually kind of fun to read some of the articles.

The National Review, a conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley said this: “If there is anything more to Donald Trump than bluster, we have yet to see it. Trump has not even been sworn in as president, and he already is walking away from campaign promises that are too hard to keep, starting with his pledge to pursue the case against Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

The conservative website Heat Street announced that the swamp won. In a previous post I spoke about his promise to “drain the swamp.” Clearly they are not happy.

Here’s what I’ll say: If you voted for Mr. Trump this is far from your last betrayal. All Presidents make promises they find they can’t keep once they get in office (and in humility I’ll recognize President Obama promised to close the prison at Guantanamo).

But I always believed President Obama was sincere in his promises. Mr. Trump, to my thinking, makes promises not because he expected to keep them, but to gain popularity. I think his enthusiasm for phrases like “lock her up,” “build the wall” and others were never true campaign promises and he never really meant to keep them.

In the next four years I believe that Mr. Trump’s supporters are going to find it more and more difficult and painful to support him.

By the way, I encourage everyone to read this article from Robert Reich.

During the campaign many of us worried that President Elect Donald Trump was too thin skinned to be our President. His middle of the night tweets and name calling of his opponents caused us to worry that he didn’t have the temperament to lead our nation.

We were told that once elected he would become more presidential and in the immediate days after the election we did not see the rants that caused us concern. He wanted us to believe that he had matured and gained a respect for the office he will soon occupy.

Despite our skepticism we hoped he was right. This past Friday, Vice President Elect Michael Pence attended the Broadway play Hamilton and Mr. Trump fed our gravest concerns.

History buffs like me celebrate the fact that a play about Alexander Hamilton creates buzz. Anything that informs Americans about our history is a good thing.

And I applaud Mr. Pence for attending. At the end of the play, during the curtain call, the actor who played Aaron Burr, Brandon Victor Dixon, read this to Mr. Pence:

Vice President Elect Pence, we welcome you and truly thank you for joining us here at “Hamilton: An American Musical.” We really do. We, sir, we, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. Again we truly thank you for sharing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds and orientations.

While Mr. Pence was gracious, Mr. Trump was not. Once again he took to Twitter to charge that the cast was “very rude” and demanded that they apologize.

When asked about this, Kellyanne Conway responded by asking why anyone should care.

Ms. Conway, here’s why we should care: Mr. Trump has shown us again and again that his thin skin occupies too much of his attention. The job of President will require him to “keep his eye on the ball” and not be distracted by the petty events.

Frankly I believe that Mr. Dixon showed incredible respect and restraint and I applaud him and the cast of Hamilton.

Starting on January 20, 2017 Mr. Trump take on a responsibility that should consume his attention 24/7. I, along with the cast of Hamilton, and many other Americans, fear that he will focus his attention on settling petty scores instead of ruling our nation.