Today is Patriot Day in the United States, and I can think of no better way to commemorate it than to quote the sterling words of our former President Donald John Trump.
On Dec, 4, 2022, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” (italics are mine).
Trump wrote that while he was admitting privately that he had lost.
And then, just a few days ago, commenting on the growing demand that the 14th Amendment prohibits him from running for president or any other public office, he accused his enemies of “using the Constitution against me.”
Wow! Using the Constitution against him! What horrid people we are.
That’s one reason I hope Republicans will nominate Trump as their candidate for president. I want people to be forced to look at him and see him clearly for what he is. Right now the news media is focusing on horserace stuff: who’s winning, who’s losing, who wants to be vice president, who has a chance, who doesn’t, why…
But once we get down to a two-person race, the media will focus such an unmercifully bright spotlight on Trump that decent Republicans will have no choice but to face up to who he is, and what he is. When that happens the unfairness of the College of Electors will not matter. Americans will turn out in numbers more overwhelming than ever before to throw the bum out.
And more good news. He’ll take plenty of Republican office seekers down with him, as he did four years ago, and Democrats will retain the Senate and regain the House. Extreme gerrymandering will allow Republicans to retain power in many of the state legislatures, but they’ll be on notice.
Trump’s fans are loyal, active, loud and can be violent. They don’t care about who and what he is. But they’ll be a stark minority come Election Day. I have more faith in the American people than to believe they would even come close to electing a thug like Trump.
Remember: The People have never elected Trump to anything. In 2016 Hillary Clinton beat him by nearly 3 million votes, and she did that even though the FBI announced just before the election that it was opening an investigation into the possibly she was using her private email account illegally. Despite that, Trump won the Electoral College vote by 12.1 percent. He said he won by a landslide.
Four years later Biden stomped Trump by more than 7 million votes and won the Electoral College vote by 12.5 percent, about the same percentage as Trump had defeated Clinton. Trump said he won the election.
And that was before Trump was charged with – here we go again – conspiracy to obstruct justice, 40 felony counts under the Espionage Act, 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. (Quick sidelight: Although it’s been flying pretty much under the radar, if Trump is guilty of any of those conspiracies, so are a lot of other people.)
And those are just the federal charges. In Georgia he’s charged with 13 counts including racketeering, forgery, perjury, filing false documents, making false statements, and more. In New York he’s charged with financial fraud. All felonies.
Also in New York, a federal judge just convicted Trump of defaming the character of a woman he had been convicted of sexually assaulting, and he told the jury it would only need to decide how much money he should pay her.
Since Biden beat Trump by an overwhelming majority before Trump carried all that baggage, why shouldn’t Biden – like him or not — clobber Trump even worse now? Once Trump’s true character is impossible not to look at it, it would seem it would be humiliating to vote for him.
There are a lot of Republicans out there who tried to get Hillary because she might have wrongly used her personal email. Surely they can see how obviously hypocritical it would be for them to support Trump now, after all he’s done. Surely there are more “real” Republicans out there than we think, people who will see Trump for what he is and vote for Biden even if they must hold their noses to do it.
But the election is not just about Trump. It’s also about the House and Senate elections as well, and look what the Republicans are running on:
- Find some way to impeach President Biden.
- Torture Hunter Biden, even though Hunter is a private citizen who holds no public office.
- Outlaw abortion nationwide.
- Get rid of anything woke (whatever “woke” is. To me the word means awake, and so being woke is a good thing. ).
- Racism. White supremacy. It’s at the heart of everything they do and are.
- Blame Biden for immigration across the southern border without admitting immigration is a worldwide problem, and without offering any solution other than setting up that stupid, useless, medieval fence.
- Blame Biden for inflation without admitting inflation is a worldwide problem.
- Blame Biden for whatever else they can think of.
And the House’s far-right Republican branch is willing to shut down government unless Congress adopts some ridiculous laws.
Look at what Republicans are doing right now. They’re publicly using an array of tricks to keep Democrats from voting. They’re gerrymandering like crazy to keep Black people out of office, and North Carolina at least is holding up a middle finger toward the court system.
They are doing these things because they have to if they are to win. If we had fair elections, no obsolete Electoral College, no gerrymandering, and everyone had access to the voting booth, Democrats would easily control the White House, the Senate, the House and a lot of state legislatures.
Add then there’s what Trump himself wants, which is: warm up to Russia, desert Ukraine, weaken or demolish our friendships with and influence over western European nations, destroy our democracy and establish a rightwing authoritarian form of government, pardon himself for all the crimes he’s committed, damage the environment with his drill-baby-drill attitude, build that medieval fence, ignore the suffering people in all those “shithouse countries,” and more. What real American could possibly vote for him or anyone who supports him?
British writer Nate White summed it up quite well when he said Brits don’t like Trump because “he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace…”
Compare all that with what Joe Biden has done. Joe Biden does have his own problems and his own baggage. He is far from perfect. But compare him with Trump. In his first year in office Biden got $1.6 trillion approved to repair our nation’s crumbling infrastructure, got $1.9 million for Covid relief; halted federal executions, combatted climate change and supported the rights of transgender people.
He passed the first meaningful gun violence reduction legislation in 30 years, delivered on the most aggressive climate and environmental justice agenda in American history, protected LGBTQ+ and interracial marriages, rallied the world to support Ukraine’s response to Russia’s illegal invasion, confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and persons of diverse backgrounds to federal judgeships, wrote executive orders protecting every woman’s reproductive rights, urged Congress to protect the rights of every woman to control her own body, advanced equity and racial justice, eliminated student debt for middle- and working-class families, expand benefits and services for veterans who were exposed to toxic smoke, protected our rights to vote and have our vote counted,
And so much more. He’s leading the world in countering China’s influence in southeastern Asia by working with several countries in that region that are seeking stronger ties either with the United States or China. Vice President Kamala Harris is playing a crucial role in that effort.
And just yesterday Biden completed leading the Group of 20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi, India, as it focused on competing with China’s Belt and Road initiative, which America sees as an initiative to strengthen authoritarianism around the world.
My fear is that Republicans will see the light in time to throw Trump under the bus and give us someone more likable, more palatable. Should that happen, all six of the most likely candidates to succeed him are on record as saying they would support Trump if he were convicted of a felony. So no matter who Republicans replaced Trump with, it would blur the issues, make it harder for Biden to win, and if that person won we would end up with a Trump Lite, possibly one who would be a puppet of someone on the outside, possibly someone in a prison cell.
So please, Republicans. Give us Trump. Don’t back down on us now. Show us who you really are.
Correction: Last week, I wrote that Trump had been convicted of raping a woman. Trump was charged with raping her but he was only convicted of sexual assaulting her. I regret the error.
