Donad Trump: Madman, moron and monster. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Incredibly, America heads into ther final two weeks of a Presdential election that involves a real possibility of electing a convicted felon, sexual predator and documented fraud as president.
He promises retribution against his enemies, promises use of federa troops to deliver violence in “a bloodbath” that will follows. In a detaioed New York Times article, reporter Peter Baker delivers alll the news that, sadly, must be printed:
When the history of the 2024 election is written, one of the iconic images illustrating it will surely be the mug shot taken of Donald J. Trump after one of his four indictments, staring into the camera with his signature glare. It is an image not of shame but of defiance, the image of a man who would be a convicted felon before Election Day and yet possibly president of the United States again afterward.
Sometimes lost amid all the shouting of a high-octane campaign heading into its final couple of weeks is that simple if mind-bending fact. America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office and entrust him with the nuclear codes. What would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow Mr. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to “retribution.”
In all the different ways that Mr. Trump has upended the traditional rules of American politics, that may be one of the most striking. He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived. He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.
Mr. Trump got an early start learning how to cut corners. As a high school student at New York Military Academy, he knowingly borrowed a friend’s dress jacket with a dozen medals attached to wear for his yearbook photo, in effect appropriating medals that he did not win himself, according to a new book, “Lucky Loser,” by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig of The New York Times.
He likewise cheated to get into college, according to his estranged niece, Mary L. Trump. The future president paid a friend to take the SAT for him, Ms. Trump asserted in her own book, earning a score that later helped him transfer to Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania, a credential he has boasted about ever since.
In my 60+ years re[porting on presidental elections and other news, large and small, I never thought imminent downfall of our democratic republic would ever be a final thing I might ask.
As Baker notes in his report, Trump’s record as a grifter and a fraud dates back to his youth. He hired someone to take his college board tests, used his father’s contacts to obtain a fake medical report of “bone spurs” to obtain a disqualification from ther draft during the Vietnam years and routinely stiffed people did work and services for him.
His persecution defense, the notion that he gets in so much trouble only because everyone is out to get him, resonates at his rallies where he says “they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in the way.” But that of course belies a record of scandal stretching across his 78 years starting long before politics. Whether in his personal life or his public life, he has been accused of so many acts of wrongdoing, investigated by so many prosecutors and agencies, sued by so many plaintiffs and claimants that it requires a scorecard just to remember them all.
His businesses went bankrupt repeatedly and multiple others failed. He was taken to court for stiffing his vendors, stiffing his bankers and even stiffing his own family. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam War and avoided paying any income taxes for years. He was forced to shell out tens of millions of dollars to students who accused him of scamming them, found liable for wide-scale business fraud and had his real estate firm convicted in criminal court of tax crimes.
He has boasted of grabbing women by their private parts, been reported to have cheated on all three of his wives and been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, including one whose account was validated by a jury that found him liable for sexual abuse after a civil trial.
He is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact). He used the authority of his office to punish his adversaries and tried to hold onto power on the basis of a brazen lie.
Mr. Trump beat some of the investigations and lawsuits against him and some proved unfounded, but the sheer volume is remarkable. Any one of those scandals by itself would typically have been enough to derail another politician. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first bid for the presidency collapsed when he lifted some words from another politician’s speech. George W. Bush came close to losing after the last-minute revelation of a long-ago drunken-driving arrest. Hillary Rodham Clinton fell short at least in part because of an F.B.I. investigation into emails that led to no charges.
Yet the Republican Party that has backed him for what is now a third try for the presidency ignores his lies, his crimes and his tatal lack of decency or morality. His followers shout out his lies and obscenieis at rallies and stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, trashing the landmark, attacked and inhjured police officers, threatened elected representatives and took actions that brought deaths.
Trump’s upset win in the 2016 presidential election sent the norms of leadersip of the nation into a chaotic spin until voters woke up and sent him packing in 2020 but he is a cacer infecting the American body politic and he is back with more lies, more threats, mpre cons and more dangers to democracy and our way of life.
Voters have their chance to take America back from the hell he delivers.
Let’s hope we cn stop him for good this time so he can be tried in the courts, convicted of his many crimes and sent to prison for the rest of his toxic, criminal life.
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