No. of Recommendations: 19
And while some might disagree, Trump didn't really color that far out of the lines until after the last election. Yes, there was some degree of crossing lines, but he didn't rip up the coloring book and toss it out until after the election.
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This, I do not agree with.
Before Trump ever took the oath of office in January 2017, it was clear his administration would be the most inept, corrupt, unhinged and grift-prone in history, solely from the cabinet appointments and his staff selections, including: Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Betsy DeVoss, Ben Carson (a doctor in charge of Housing and Urban Development?), just to name a few.
There was the fact that Trump never released his tax returns prior to the election. Or an audited summary of his financial positions. But we were given assurances operation of the Trump Organization would be handed over to the equivalent of a blind trust. Until about January 11, 2017, when Trump announced he changed his mind. Instead of relinquishing operational control of his business to a third party as promised prior to the election, he announced he would transfer operational control of the business to his two sons for THEM to operate during his Presidency. That is NOT divestment, that is NOT a blind trust and it isn't an arms-length separation of conflicting interests.
Then there was Michael Flynn, a man appointed to serve as a national security advisor and was chased out after only 22 days due to his involvement in with a variety of Russian contacts and likely due to the fact he could not gain the required security clearances. This is a guy who pocketed nearly a half million dollars giving a speech at a party for RT, the Russian news "outlet", in Moscow, sitting at Putin's table.
Then there was the revolving door of press secretaries whose sole qualification for the position was their willingness to look at the noon sun and declare it midnight... Because that's what Trump wanted to convey. Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee, Stephanie Grisham, Kayleigh McEnany...
Once he entered office, it became apparent that he had no understanding of the nature of the power of the Presidency. As the owner of a privately held business (and a thoroughly corrupt one at that), Trump had zero prior experience with operating in an environment where other parties to a dispute had alternate powers to achieve their aims or thwart his aims unless concessions were made. One hundred percent of his life experience involved situations where his wealth created a lopsided playing field with opposing parties and his side of an issue was under his sole control as head of his business entity. Nothing in American politics resembles that situation or was ever MEANT to resemble a corporate dictatorship.
As he began clashing with his own hand-picked staff and cabinet and the churn began, his other lifelong pattern of simply ignoring laws and ethics that conflicted with his goals became apparent and the churn in personnel began making it clear that it is impossible for a man with flawed character to excel at hiring competent, ethical people around him. Partly because a man with no ethics or morality has none to leverage in selecting others in the first place and partly because his policies and communications were so beyond the pale, no reasonably sane person in approximate touch with reality would agree to enter his sphere.
Upon his inauguration in 2017, his inauguration speech made the paranoid, hateful, fear-mongering vibe of his term clear from literally his first act as President. How unhinged was his inauguaral address? Three different people who attended the event on the rostrum said former President George W Bush was heard at the conclusion of the speech turning to his neighbor and saying "That was some wierd shit." This isn't someone commenting on some random YouTuber's video or podcaster's rant, this is an EX PRESIDENT commenting on the words of a newly sworn-in President addressing the American nation for the first time.
The inauguration also made it crystal clear how disconnected Trump was from reality when he insisted his press secretary LIE to the press and the public in his very first press conference. And not just lie about some subtle interpretation of an ambiguous word in a proposed bill that could be interpreted multiple ways. Trump instructed his press secretary to lie that his inauguration crowd was the "largest in history" and "larger than Obama's"... Even though a child of five could view public photographs of the two events and instantly conclude with zero ambiguity that Trump's crowd was vastly SMALLER than any in recent memory. Because by 2017, Trump DESPISED Barack Obama. Obama had griled Trump to his face in the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner and again in the 2016 edition:
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Sitting at the same table, I see Mike Bloomberg. (Applause.) Mike, a combative, controversial New York billionaire is leading the GOP primary and it is not you. (Laughter.) That’s has to sting a little bit. (Laughter.) Although it’s not an entirely fair comparison between you and the Donald. After all, Mike was a big-city mayor. He knows policy in depth. And he’s actually worth the amount of money that he says he is.
The Republican establishment is incredulous that he is their most likely nominee -- incredulous, shocking. They say Donald lacks the foreign policy experience to be President. But, in fairness, he has spent years meeting with leaders from around the world: Miss Sweden, Miss Argentina, Miss Azerbaijan. (Laughter and applause.)
And there's one area where Donald’s experience could be invaluable -– and that’s closing Guantanamo. Because Trump knows a thing or two about running waterfront properties into the ground. (Laughter and applause.)
All right, that’s probably enough. I mean, I've got more material -- (applause) -- no, no, I don’t want to spend too much time on The Donald. Following your lead, I want to show some restraint. (Laughter.) Because I think we can all agree that from the start, he’s gotten the appropriate amount of coverage, befitting the seriousness of his candidacy. (Laughter and applause.)
I hope you all are proud of yourselves. (Laughter.) The guy wanted to give his hotel business a boost, and now we’re praying that Cleveland makes it through July. (Laughter.)
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Trump could not admit Obama had outdrawn him. By hundreds of thousands. It was that point at which anyone else connected to reality should have realized "we just put a man this petty and disconnnected from reality in the Situation Room."
Those that voted for Trump in 2016 might be plausibly due an electoral mulligan. Maybe they weren't followers of his business ventures in east coast real estate to understand his financial track record was one of consistent FAILURES, not SUCCESSES. Maybe they didn't understand his thirty year track record of cheating his various contractors, refusing to pay bills, forcing others to sue him for money he owed them, etc. Maybe they had some sense of that financial / ethical past but were so wrapped up in disgust that YET ANOTHER CLINTON was leading the Democrats and that neither party had been able to widen its talent search for someone seemingly outside traditional, sclerotic party norms in either party. Maybe they thought voting for a "billionaire" who financially didn't have to care what ANYONE thought would have enough independence to break some policy logjams and materially combat the captive corruption of both parties.
All of those rationales for "forgiving" a 2016 vote for Trump no longer applied after his first term.
Anyone who voted for Trump in 2020 saw how his reluctance to accept the fact that large numbers were at risk with COVID led to over ONE MILLION Americans dying when perhaps it could have only been 250,000 or 400,000. They saw his administration push and enable a policy of separating children of incoming immigrants (legal or otherwise, it doesn't matter) as a means of inflicting cruelty as an incentive to discourage additional immigrants from coming. They saw a President rightly impeached (and wrongly acquited by a corrupt Republican-controlled Senate) for attempting to extort a foreign leader by withholding weapons and material already approved for delivery by Congress in exchange for publicly announcing an investigation in to Hunter Biden as an attempt to smear Trump's likely 2020 Presidential rival. As of November 2020, Trump was already easily the most corrupt and flawed President in history.
And then there are the months of plotting by Trump and his advisors (official and outsiders) regarding the 2020 election. Trump's plans for distorting election results through media confusion and actual manipulation of electoral votes began BEFORE the actual election. His efforts were NOT merely the result of realizing he lost the election AFTER LOSING the election. Trump knew the outcome was at risk well before November and had arranged conversations and strategies for doing exactly what he did BEFORE voting began. The mechinations and manipulations pursued by Trump and his staff between roughly September 2020 and January 6 to flip enough electoral votes to steal the 2020 election were ALONE enough to justify a second impeachment and justify him being banned from office for life. His actions on January 6 -- to promote and attend a rally outside the White House under the premise of "stopping the steal", pointing that mob at the Capital building, then doing NOTHING for HOURS as that mob violently attacked the Capital itself and attacked hundreds of Capital Police -- themselves are worthy of impeachment, conviction, a ban from office, and criminal prosecution, conviction and punishment.
At this point, anyone still supporting Trump in 2024 falls into one of these buckets:
A) Thinks they are in a special financial category slated to extract enormous financial gains from tax cuts or other spending policies and doesn't care about any other carnage resulting from all of Trump's other baggage. People in this category don't care about abortion bans cuz they assume the rich will always be able to find any treatment they need - price is no object, right? People in this category don't care about workplace safety, they don't work in a chemical factory or Amazon warehouse.
B) Is literally clueless about the basics of economics, the basics of criminal law, the basics of separation of powers and the balance of powers within the US Constitution and is fortunate enough to not be in close proximity to the harm induced by Trump's actions to date to properly correlate his actions to his outcomes to know he will NEVER act in anyone ELSE'S best interest before ensuring his own interests are optimized first and then, maybe not even then. People in this category haven't been exposed to enough risk or actual loss to justify learning more about what is actually being proposed and why it will produce more harm than good. Let the good times roll...
C) Is literally clueless in all the same areas as (B) but is much closer to where the rubber hits the road when bad policies fail to correct long standing problems with housing, education, job opportunities, etc. Because they feel the IMPACTS of these failures personally, they are in a position where their literal ignorance can be manipulated to create fear and resentment that drive them to support people and policies which inevitably WORSEN their plight. Without purposely trying to psycho-diagnose an entire demographic, people in this category are -- for lack of a better term -- stuck in a low-information doom loop. The more they are exposed to simplistic solutions they THINK they understand, the more they are pulled into thinking that uses "otherism" to transfer "fault" to other groups. It's way easier to explain that illegal Mexican immigrants are taking all of our jobs when in fact it is American companies that are either offshoring jobs or eliminating them entirely OR that illegal Mexican immigrants are COMING to America because there are thousands of jobs in lettuce fields, slaughterhouses, road construction crews and roofing companies that NO AMERICANS seem to want, at ANY hourly rate. And when we have a consistent 4.5% unemployment rate, the actual problem is that US population growth has slowed, creating an actual shortage of labor.
So, no... I disagree. Trump was coloring well outside the normal boundaries well before he took office, did so continuously while IN office, even before January 6, and literally threw all of the crayons and the coloring book away with his actions on January 6, 2021 and beyond. There's no "reasonable minds can differ" space left given how far gone Trump has gone and knowing how much additional rope the Supreme Court has tossed to any President willing to use and abuse it.
WTH
