In the same week Wall Street was finally spooked by the sheer weight of Donald Trump's inadequacies as the 45th US President.....

.....and the Dow Jones Index indicated that financiers and big business might be seriously worried about possibly higher than expected interest rates, rising national debt and the size of the US federal budget deficit Trump created in his first twelve months in office - he also rather unwisely performed in front of the cameras on the subject of treason.

YouTube, Time, 5 February 2018:

CNN, 5 February 2018:

 (CNN)President Donald Trump wasn't -- and, apparently, still isn't -- happy that Democrats in Congress didn't stand to applaud him in his State of the Union address last week.

Here's what Trump told a crowd in Cincinnati in a speech on Monday afternoon:

"They were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, 'treasonous.' I mean, Yeah, I guess why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn't seem to love our country that much."

So, here we are. Again.

Let's quickly define "treason," shall we?

Here's how Merriam-Webster does it:

"The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family."

Trump loyalists will dismiss all of this as much ado over nothing. He was joking! He didn't even say that it was treasonous! He was just agreeing with people who said it was treasonous!

Fine. Also, wrong. And missing the point in a major way.

The point? It's this: Not standing during applause lines for the State of the Union isn't treasonous or un-American. Not even close.

If it was, all of the Republicans in that chamber are treasonous and un-American as well because when former President Barack Obama would tout his accomplishments in office -- as Trump was doing last Tuesday night -- lots and lots of Republican legislators would sit on their hands while the Democratic side of the aisle erupted in cheers. And so on and so forth for every president before him (and after).

The Washington Post, 6 February 2018:

This isn’t the first time Trump has used the T-word as president. Just last month, he accused FBI agent Peter Strzok of treason for sending negative text messages about him during the 2016 election to a lawyer at the FBI who he was having an affair with. “By the way, that’s a treasonous act,” the president told the Wall Street Journal. “What he tweeted to his lover is a treasonous act.”