Charles Blow, a New York Times columnist, laments that President Trump is a bad, bad influence on our kids. In a column entitled, “What Trump is Teaching Our Children,” he writes:

“Part of the President’s job is to inspire young Americans to be better citizens. Trump is doing the opposite.”

I suppose we could get into the constitutional weeds to search for these words in a Presidential job description. We wouldn’t find them, however. Article II of the Constitution lists the president’s responsibilities, and inspiring children is not one of them.

But aside from that, I would remind Mr. Blow that the ship SS Bad Influences set sail a long time ago, and Trump wasn’t its captain.

Remember the phrase that campaign strategist James Carville cooked up when Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992? “It’s the economy, stupid.”

I would rephrase that for Mr. Blow with: “It’s the culture, stupid.” 

Let’s start with Blow’s first sentence:

“When our children are young, we work doggedly to foster in them a deep and abiding sense of morality, ethics and character.”

Who’s this “we” in “we work” when 41% of children are born to single mothers? Moreover, in minority communities the illegitimacy rates are even higher: 77% among blacks and 49% among Hispanic immigrants. So where are the fathers who are working “doggedly” to “foster” this “sense of morality, ethics, and character”?

I worked for seventeen years as a speech pathologist in a public school district, and I can tell you that the kids with the worst behavior problems came from single parent homes. It didn’t matter if they were black, white, or Hispanic. A fatherless home was the great equalizer among ethnic groups.

Blow continues:

“. . .but there are many tangential teachers as well, at family gatherings, at school, at places of worship, on playgrounds, and also in literature, on television and on social media.”

Yes, let’s go there, shall we? Let’s talk about the cultural cesspool in which too many children learn their lessons, especially when both parents aren’t around to guide them.

For example, here’s the latest Miley Cyrus video, “Mother’s Daughter.” I’ll also give you a warning — it’s not safe for work, children, or your elderly parents, either.

By the way, that’s Cyrus’s mother whom we see in the video, cuddling with her freakish daughter. Yeah, she’s no candidate for Mother of the Year, except among the Teen Vogue crowd.

But continuing on, Blow has another accusation about Trump:

“He is teaching little boys that women’s bodies exist as playgrounds for privileged men, and that there is no price to be paid if you are popular enough or rich enough.”

“Women’s bodies exist as playgrounds. . . ”

Credit: giphy.com.

“. . . for privileged men, and that there is no price to be paid if you are popular enough or rich enough.” Now of course Blow is referring to Trump, but how strange that he overlooked Democrat donors Jeffrey Epstein or Harvey Weinstein. He also failed to mention rapper R. Kelly, who’s being held without bond in Chicago for a ton of sex crime charges — with underage girls. What’s more, this isn’t Kelly’s first rodeo either — he escaped conviction in a 2008 trial for child pornography.

Popular or rich enough, Mr. Blow?

Blow then praises President Obama.

“My own children came of age in their political awareness under President Obama. I didn’t always agree with his policy, but he was an honorable man whom I could point to as an honorable example.”

But maybe Blow should point to one of Obama’s predecessors who was anything but an “honorable man.”

I’m speaking, of course, of one William Jefferson Clinton.

Perhaps he could advise his kids to not act like Clinton, who took sexual advantage of intern Monica Lewinsky in the White House. He could also regale them with the story of how Bill Clinton escaped Paula Jones’s sexual harassment charge. There’s also the sordid rape account of Juanita Broddrick, of whom Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently wrote: “I thought Juanita Broaddrick wasn’t credible. I was wrong.”

But Bill Clinton was a Democrat President, so never mind.

I’m sure we can all agree that President Trump is no saint. Perhaps some of you cheer that aspect of him, or maybe you’re like me and cringe at many of his comments. But let’s not kid ourselves: Donald Trump is not the cause of All The Bad Things our children and grandchildren witness. Rather the Bad Things emerge from a culture saturated in illegitimacy, raunchy entertainment, and elites getting away with stuff that would destroy our reputations — maybe even put us in the slammer. Sorry, but President Trump is not driving that boat.

Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Featured image: Rondo Estrello/flickr/altered/CC BY-SA 2.0.