Donald Trump

President Donald Trump speaks about his trip to Asia in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

(Evan Vucci)

Clete Wetli is a liberal political activist living in Huntsville and a regular contributor to AL.com. Email Clete at decaturclete@gmail.com or visit cletewetli. com.

In every week of his presidency, Trump has found new and creative ways to enlarge the bitter political chasm between conservatives and liberals. This week, it's ending the program for Haitian refugees that have been living in the U.S. after massive earthquakes destroyed their homeland. Soon, it will be a contentious vote on taxes that will do nothing more than give the country's wealthiest more cash to stash in offshore accounts.

As we look over the last year, has Trump done anything to bring our country together?

Somehow, he failed to show any substantive leadership after the horrific Las Vegas shooting. His response to our nation's opioid epidemic has been underwhelmingly lukewarm and vastly ineffectual. Trump has done little to help the people of Puerto Rico while he has chosen to vilify AL Franken and, yet, remains silent on Roy Moore. Going over this last year's headlines, Trump's divisiveness is on constant display.

As Dana Milbanks recently pointed out in an op-ed for the Washington Post, Trump hysterically posits his every move as "historic", but the only thing he seems to really be doing is creating a historic divide in our country. He seems either unwilling or incapable of capitalizing on moments that could help partisan America find the smallest patch of common ground.

Trump supporters will claim that it has been an unfair and liberally-biased media that is behind the hyper-partisan divide. However, they can't name a single thing that Trump has done that could be objectively seen as promoting unity in our country. In fact, Trump has exacerbated dissension within his own ranks by castigating Mitch McConnell, Jeff Flake, John McCain, and host of others, whose support he needs to pass any meaningful legislation.

Speaking of legislation, perhaps it would be wise to genuinely find some common ground there, too. Wouldn't it be amazing to see a real tax reform package that got a true majority vote in Congress, instead of being forced through on a razor-thin party-line vote? Yes, Obama and the Democrats made this mistake with healthcare, but they paid a heavy political price for it. Now, it seems that Congress has accepted it as business as usual.

After the Republican debacle of trying to repeal and replace Obamacare, now Trump seems obsessively focused on undermining the legislation regardless of how many Americans lose healthcare in the process. Again, there's no Trump solution to bridge the divide and he's offered no plan that a majority of Americans can get behind. His syntax is always couched in "us and them" or "winners and losers".

As we enter the second year of Trump's presidency, he's still talking about the campaign and refuses to put it to rest. In spite of clear and ever-mounting evidence that Russia made serious attempts to interfere in our election, Trump's ego prevents him from doing anything to mitigate any future threats to our democracy. It's astounding that he doesn't recognize that as a substantive opportunity for bipartisanship and unity.

Trump won the presidency with divisive rhetoric and through vicious, personal attacks on his political foes. He beat the odds and he won. However, he's not done much of anything to "Make America Great Again." He continues to fail at articulating a unifying vision for America's future and he has shown that he is demonstrably ill-equipped to build consensus. His juvenile tweets aren't bringing Americans together and, in fact, they may provoke international conflicts that were easily avoidable.

So, as Americans get ready for Thanksgiving, hopefully the dinner conservations will avoid this new era of deeply divided politics. Hopefully, someone will remind Trump that "united we stand, divided we fall."