If the toxic mix of arrogance and certainty could be captured on film, it would look like the faces of Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The slang phrase, “I can’t even,” with its abrupt stop implying an expression of surprise or frustration, so perfectly fits the emergence of this “issue,” it’s as if the phrase was coined specifically with fluoride in mind.
It hardly matters whose collapsing brain pan the idea of removing fluoride from the nation’s water “on day one” came from. There is already so much planned for “day one” of a potential Trump presidency that Trump will have to issue an additional executive order rejiggering the calendar to fit everything in. That the fluoride thing landed on the list alongside proposed orders to deport tens of millions of immigrants and “round up” Trump enemies like special counsel Jack Smith and Rep. Nancy Pelosi adds a certain absurd perfection to the rest of those planned for Trump to sign. Fluoridated water isn’t even a national policy. Individual city or county water systems can decide whether to add it or not, and neither the president nor a cowed Congress has the authority to end the practice in the places where fluoride is added to the water.
