Donald Trump's Boeing fiasco proves he's a clear and present danger to the American people

Corporate profits come before safety in Trump's America

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/Getty Images, SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Presidents, ideally speaking, have two sorts of duties. The first is pursuing one's political agenda, within constitutional norms: passing bills to boost or cut social welfare spending, adjusting regulations, fiddling with taxes, and so on. Then there are the daily maintenance tasks to keep the machinery of state ticking over: staffing the national bureaucracy with quality employees, maintaining national defense and infrastructure, dealing with natural disasters, and so on.

Obviously these are ideal categories and will tend to overlap in any presidency. But the recent story of Boeing's troubled new 737 Max 8 jet demonstrates without question that President Trump is absolutely wretched at the latter tasks. He doesn't care about the job and couldn't do it even if he tried. American lives are in danger as a result.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.