Joseph Sabino Mistick: Pennies, straws distract from Trump's big news

I don’t use straws much, but I have to say President Donald Trump hit a home run last week with his executive order banning paper straws at all federal government facilities. Trump was right when he said they “don’t work.”

“It’s a ridiculous situation. We’re going back to plastic straws,” he added.

And we are certainly not going to dwell on all of the excellent recent studies showing the radical increase in microplastics in human brains.

Trump is not new to this battle. In 2019, his online campaign store sold out when they offered a 10-pack of recyclable laser-engraved plastic “Trump Straws” for $15. According to his campaign manager at the time, the plastic straw ban and the adoption of paper straws was a bunch of liberal nonsense.

About the same time that Trump reintroduced plastic straws, he ordered the U.S. Treasury to stop minting new pennies. The nettlesome coin may have more detractors than paper straws. It is a one-cent coin that costs four cents to produce, and other than coin collectors and the zinc lobby, it has few friends.

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe — no fan of Trump — endorsed the elimination of the penny as “entirely lawful and fully constitutional.” He said this action is “unlike a lot of what the new administration has been doing pursuant to the flood of executive orders since Jan. 20.”

Despite Trump’s desire to annex Canada — which he asserted is a “real thing” in an interview that aired before the Super Bowl — he is following Canada’s lead when it comes to pennies. Canada started eliminating their pennies years ago, and it has been recycling them ever since.

Both decisions — the banning of paper straws and the elimination of the penny — can be enough light news for some people, giving them more than their fill, distracting them from the real news coming out of the Trump administration. Maybe that’s Trump’s point.

Last week, Trump took the first step in the betrayal of Ukraine and its freedom fighters. After a call with Vladimir Putin, Trump informed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Trump and Putin would be meeting soon in Saudi Arabia to discuss the future of Ukraine — without Zelenskyy.

It was left to Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to fill in the details of the betrayal at a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels. He said Ukraine can forget about recovering the Ukrainian territory that Russia invaded and now occupies.

Hegseth said Ukraine would not be given NATO membership nor given the equivalent security guarantees that would come from American troops on the ground as part of a ceasefire agreement. There was only talk of what Ukraine would give up, and no talk about anything Russia would give up.

According to The Washington Post, Moscow “has been practically gleeful since the call” between Trump and Putin. Former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton said that, because of Trump’s capitulation to Putin, “they’re drinking vodka straight out of the bottle in the Kremlin tonight. It was a great day for Moscow.”

But one Ukrainian front-line battlefield commander described the stakes regardless of what Trump does. “Whether the U.S. and Trump help us or not, I understand that we must continue fighting. Because for us, this is a question of survival.”

And that will always be somewhat more important than paper straws and pennies.