This Is Just Too Much

As deaths from Covid-19 continue to increase and as 30 million Americans draw perilously close to losing their enhanced unemployment benefits (full disclosure: I'm one of them), what critical issue or issues did the President deal with today?

None, as far as anyone can tell. What the President of the United States of America did see fit to use his time for was posting a photo to his Instagram account. The photo shows him holding his thumbs up with an assortment of Goya products arrayed on his desk.

Okay, you may be asking, what's up with that?

Last Thursday, Goya CEO Robert Unanue, while attending a press conference in the Rose Garden at the White House, said “We are all truly blessed … to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder.”

Robert Unanue is a private citizen. Goya, the family owned company that he heads up, is privately owned. Mister Unanue has every right to say what he said.

And we who now boycott his company have every right to do that, as well. But as so often happens, a backlash to such actions occurs, and occurs soon after such actions begin.

First, Mister Unanue accused boycott supporters of violating his First Amendment right to free speech. This is patently absurd. When I choose to no longer buy his company's products, I am exercising my right to do business with his company's competitors. I am not issuing a court order forbidding him to make any statements regarding the situation. I am not issuing an order forbidding newspapers from running paid advertisements for the company.

But it didn't end there, of course. Yesterday, Ivanka Trump posted an image of herself holding a can of Goya black beans to her Twitter account. This may be a violation of government regulations concerning "the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise" by executive branch employees.

The President is exempt from those regulations.

But even though what Donald Trump did today is legal, that doesn't change the fact that he wasted his time doing it. This country is on the edge of collapsing economically, politically, and socially.

And this is what our leader chooses to care about.