I've tried.
I've tried really hard.
It's been awhile since I wrote about President Trump. I don't think it will come as a surprise to many that I am not a fan. But I made the decision that we are playing right into his hands by writing about it every time he says or does something outrageous, or goes on Twitter to lash out at another foe.
It feeds his narcissism and his No. 1 craving: Attention.
I cringed when when he attacked four new Democratic congresswomen who have been critical of his policies, urging them to go "back where they came from." The president said that if these lawmakers "hate our country," they can go back to their "broken and crime-infested" countries.
A few nights later an adoring crowd chanted "Send Them Back," while Trump stood smugly at the podium, never once offering an opposing point of view or possibly a teaching moment, informing the crowd that in America this is not what we do. He simply smiled and soaked in the adulation, feeding his enormous ego.
The "infested" theme would return last week, when the president took to Twitter to upbraid another political foe. this time longtime Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore. Cummings had the temerity to criticize conditions at the southern border where families and children are being held. Cummings is the son of a South Carolina sharecropper who has represented parts of Baltimore in Congress since 1996.
The president excoriated Cummings and in doing so spilled his bile all over Baltimore, referring to it as a "rat and rodent infested mess," a "very dangerous & filty place," somewhere "no human being would want to live."
This kind of hate was not dripping from a schoolyard bully. Or a beer-fueled bigot in a bar room. It was not a third-world dictator. This was the president of the United States, talking not about some foreign land, but the 26th largest city in the country.
This wasn't even the "sh------" countries he once egregiously disparaged in an Oval Office tirade. This was a city that sits not 40 miles up I-95 from the White House.
It followed a theme that the president has visited repeatedly as commander-in-chief. It is the gospel of "them," as opposed to us. It stokes fear of others, in particular anyone who opposes "us." And it invariably targets women and those of color, as if "they" are somehow separate - and lesser - than "us."
And still I bit my tongue.
Right up until I checked my email one last time before bed last night.
A longtime reader, a longtime foe of the Obamas, Clintons and seemingly all Democrats, and a constant critic of me and his belief that this newspaper bends to the extreme Left, sent me a cartoon with a disparaging image of former First Lady Michelle Obama.
He added a note, "does this make me a racist?"
I'm sure he thought it was funny.
I did not.
This is Donald Trump's America. This is the sentiment the president is not only condoning, but empowering. It is hate, pure and simple.
But it is more than that. It is a wedge that is dividing the country.
It is not unusual for me to disagree with Republican leaders. There are those who constantly point to the media's treatment of former President George W. Bush. They say the media savaged Bush 44. There is some truth to what they say. I believe the former president was treated badly, attacked personally for his public policies.
But nothing Bush did ever approaches the kind of hate the president is sowing.
At this point I have have no great expectations for President Trump. I have said in the past that all I really would like for him to do is act presidential.
That's not going to happen.
Not with this kind of divisive force sitting in the Oval Office.
If anyplace in this country is "infested," it is the White House.
It's infested with a spirit that is the antithesis of what this country was founded on, and what binds us together.
It reminds us instead of what divides us, and it seeks only to grow that chasm wider, for no reason other than to appease the narcissist in chief and those who hail his hateful words.
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