We could say many, many things about Donald Trump and the nearly four years he’s spent as president of the United States, but we didn’t think we’d be able to unequivocally state the following: Trump doesn’t give one damn about America.
It’s a strong statement, we know. But it’s true.
Practically every day since the election, via his noxious Twitter, Trump has ferociously attacked our cherished democracy in which We The People, every four years, vote for who we want to be president.
But because “Sleepy Joe” cleaned Trump’s clock electorally and in the popular vote – President-elect Biden is up by more than six million there – the 2020 election, in Trump’s warped view, must have been rife with fraud.
That makes sense, right? How could we possibly have voted against such an incredible, enlightened president who “fell in love” with the dictator Kim Jong-un, and maintains some weird bromance with Vladimir Putin?
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Who said that some “very fine people” were among the tiki-torch wielding, white supremacist nutjobs spewing anti-Semitic bile in Charlottesville in 2017?
Who happily stood by as desperate little kids were separated from their parents at our southern border?
Who aligned himself with mentally unstable conspiracy traffickers like QAnon?
Who deliberately hid his tax returns, lest we discover that his “assets” are mostly liabilities and that he finagled a miniscule tax bill that most of us little people can only dream of?
Who used the presidency to secure billings for his businesses, including a tidy six-figure sum for his Doonbeg golf resort in Co. Clare during a two-day presidential visit in 2019?
Who disgustingly disrespected our war heroes, most notably the late Senator John McCain?
Who, in the middle of a pandemic, encouraged his un-masked supporters in their thousands to attend his rallies and chant puerile slogans like “Fire Fauci”?
Who cruised around the streets adjacent to Walter Reed Medical Center – COVID-19 diagnosis be damned – to prove what a tough guy he was, with no regard for the health of the Secret Service agents in the car with him?
Who told the public that the coronavirus would just “disappear,” even though he knew it was highly contagious and lethal?
We could go on, and on, and on, but you get the drift.
The American people, by a wide margin, have spoken, and our message was loud and clear: Donald Trump, you’re fired.
In normal times, those who vote for the winning president rejoice; those who don’t lament for a while and move on. Our country – NOT any one politician -- is first and foremost, and we have many chances in local, state, and federal elections to make our political opinions count.
If Trump truly cared about our country, even a little bit, he’d take his defeat like a man, focus on the positives – incredibly, he earned 10 million more votes than he did against Hillary Clinton in 2016 – go make some sorely-needed cash on the speech circuit, and sure, plan a 2024 run, at 78 years of age, to keep the base awake and his ego flying high.
But trashing our democracy and tarring our elections as rigged just because he lost? Whipping up his supporters to believe that the election was actually stolen? Deliberately denying the incoming administration an orderly transition? What a profoundly un-American, treasonous yet typically "Trumpian" tantrum.
The wreckage of “America’s Mayor,” the heaving, sweaty mess known as Rudy Giuliani, surfacing to allege widespread fraud in the election, without a scintilla of proof, is just repulsive. A “national embarrassment,” as Chris Christie put it on Sunday.
Equally repellent is the silence of many in the GOP leadership – hello, Mitch McConnell – who refuse to publicly acknowledge what’s so obvious: Trump lost. “Like a dog,” to quote one of his favorite tweet insults.
The “fake news” networks, though, are still obsessed with Trump. It’s understandable to a degree – the “obese turtle,” as Anderson Cooper recently called 45, is still president and will surely leave a trail of fresh damage after he’s gone – but Trump craves their attention and they seem willing to give it to him.
It’s time to focus on President-elect Joe Biden. His plans, his appointments, his immediate goals – no doubt, lots of executive orders just like his predecessor – and how he sees us finally coming to terms with COVID-19 and the horror it continues to inflict.
Until January 20, 2021, let’s do our best to tune out the sulker-in-chief, and hope that the shame he’ll continue to cause us will eventually disappear, like COVID.
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