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.<\/p>\n
On Dec, 4, 2022, Trump wrote on Truth Social,\u00a0 \u201cDo 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\u201d (<\/em>italics are mine).<\/p>\n Trump wrote that while he was admitting privately that he had lost.<\/p>\n And then, just a few days ago, commenting on the growing demand that the 14th<\/sup> Amendment prohibits him from running for president or any other public office, he accused his enemies of \u201cusing the Constitution against me.\u201d<\/p>\n Wow!\u00a0 Using the Constitution against him!\u00a0 What horrid people we are.<\/p>\n That\u2019s one reason I hope Republicans\u00a0 will nominate Trump as their candidate for president.\u00a0 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\u2019s winning, who\u2019s losing, who wants to be vice president, who has a chance, who doesn\u2019t, why\u2026<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 When that happens the unfairness of the College of Electors will not matter.\u00a0 Americans will turn out in numbers more overwhelming than ever before to throw the bum out.<\/p>\n And more good news. \u00a0He\u2019ll 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.\u00a0 Extreme gerrymandering will allow Republicans to retain power in many of the state legislatures, but they\u2019ll be on notice.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s fans are loyal, active, loud and can be violent.\u00a0 They don\u2019t care about who and what he is.\u00a0 But they\u2019ll be a stark minority come Election Day.\u00a0 I have more faith in the American people than to believe they would even come close to electing a thug like Trump.<\/p>\n Remember: The People have never elected Trump to anything.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Despite that, Trump won the Electoral College vote by 12.1 percent.\u00a0 He said he won by a landslide.<\/p>\n Four years later Biden stomped Trump by more than 7 million\u00a0 votes and won the Electoral College vote by 12.5 percent, about the same percentage as Trump had defeated Clinton.\u00a0 Trump said he won the election.<\/p>\n And that was before Trump was charged with \u2013 here we go again \u2013 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.\u00a0 (Quick sidelight: Although it\u2019s been flying pretty much under the radar, if Trump is guilty of any of those conspiracies, so are a lot of other people.)<\/em><\/p>\n And those are just the federal charges. In Georgia he\u2019s charged with 13 counts including racketeering, forgery, perjury, filing false documents, making false statements, and more. In New York he\u2019s charged with financial fraud.\u00a0 All felonies.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Since Biden beat Trump by an overwhelming majority before Trump carried all that baggage, why shouldn\u2019t Biden \u2013 like him or not — clobber Trump even worse now?\u00a0 Once Trump\u2019s true character is impossible not to look at it, it would seem it would be humiliating to vote for him.<\/p>\n There are a lot of Republicans out there who tried to get Hillary because she might have wrongly\u00a0 used her personal email.\u00a0 Surely they can see how obviously hypocritical it would be for them to support Trump now, after all he\u2019s done.\u00a0 Surely there are more \u201creal\u201d 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.<\/p>\n But the election is not just about Trump.\u00a0 It\u2019s also about the House and Senate elections as well, and look what the Republicans are running on:<\/p>\n And the House\u2019s far-right Republican branch is willing\u00a0 to shut down government unless Congress adopts some ridiculous laws.<\/p>\n Look at what Republicans are doing right now.\u00a0 They\u2019re publicly using an array of tricks to keep Democrats from voting.\u00a0 They\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n They are doing these things because they have to if they are to win.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Add then there\u2019s 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\u2019s committed, damage the environment with his drill-baby-drill attitude, build that medieval fence, ignore the suffering people in all those \u201cshithouse countries,\u201d and more.\u00a0\u00a0 What real American could possibly vote for him or anyone who supports him?<\/p>\n British writer Nate White summed it up quite well when he said Brits don\u2019t like Trump because \u201che 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\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Compare all that with what Joe Biden has done.\u00a0 Joe Biden does have his own problems and his own baggage.\u00a0 He is far from perfect.\u00a0 But compare him with Trump.\u00a0 In his first year in office Biden got $1.6 trillion approved to repair our nation\u2019s crumbling infrastructure, got $1.9 million for Covid relief; halted federal executions, combatted climate change and supported the rights of transgender people.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s response to Russia\u2019s illegal invasion, confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and persons of diverse backgrounds to federal judgeships,\u00a0 wrote executive orders protecting every woman\u2019s 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,<\/p>\n And so much more.\u00a0 He\u2019s leading the world in countering China\u2019s influence in southeastern Asia by working with several countries in that region that are seeking stronger ties either with the United States or China.\u00a0 Vice President Kamala Harris is playing a crucial role in that effort.<\/p>\n And just yesterday Biden completed leading the Group of 20 Leaders\u2019 Summit in New Delhi, India, as it focused on competing with China\u2019s Belt and Road initiative, which America sees as an initiative to strengthen authoritarianism around the world.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n So please, Republicans.\u00a0 Give us Trump.\u00a0 Don\u2019t back down on us now.\u00a0 Show us who you really are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Correction:\u00a0 Last week, I wrote that Trump had been convicted of raping a woman.\u00a0 Trump was charged with raping her but he was only convicted of sexual assaulting her.\u00a0 I regret the error.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. 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