Trump for President? A joke?

By Shauna Dobbie

Let me be unequivocal in my answer to this question: No.

If you can get past all of the stuff about private payments to hookers (1), about keeping classified documents at home (2), about habitual lying (3), about his bizarre response to the pandemic (4), and his two impeachments – and that’s a very big if – you have to consider the January 6, 2021, activities in Washington DC.

Some of my friends who are more sympathetic to Trump have suggested that Trump had noting to do with the riots. Let’s just have a look at the evidence. On the day of the Capitol attack, Trump held a rally near the White House where he reiterated claims of a stolen election (5) and made statements that incited the crowd. For instance, he told his supporters to “fight like hell” and encouraged them to march to the Capitol to give Republicans the “boldness they need to take back our country.” Which is pretty much what they did or tried to do.

Then Trump spent the afternoon watching the riots on television. He did not call a press conference or head to the Capitol with a megaphone to say, “Stop killing everything we hold dear!” He did tweet a few times, saying things like “Stay peaceful,” and urging the rioters to respect law and order. At no point did he condemn their actions. He also tweeted: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.”

Really? Sacred landslide election victory?

Now, if you do believe that the generally accepted outcome of the 2020 election is not an accurate representation of the feelings of the people or how they voted – if you believe the election was stolen in any way, give your head a shake and reread endnote 5 below. I went looking for evidence that it was rigged; there is really nothing credible. Only what Donald Trump says.

And this is part of what bothers me so much about Lying Donald Trump (to borrow his method of referring to people). In order to make a case that he is unsuitable as president, sensible people need to go back and refute all of his outlandish claims. What a time suck.

There are a few reasons that otherwise thoughtful people will support a second Trump presidency. Some think disliking Trump would be bad for the Canadian Conservative Party. I see no reason for that; you can like apples without liking oranges. Some believe the repeated lies that he tells because he stays on message so well that they seem to be true. And some people are just contrarians.

Now, Mom and I don’t read each other’s stories for this segment before writing our own, but I’m pretty sure I know what she’s going to say for this one: “He’s just an old blow hard.”

I don’t accept that as exoneration. The President of the United States is a very powerful position that can affect people all over the world. There are some weak ones and some great ones, but most of them have something to offer, something that makes about half of the American populace put their faith in them, even if you disagree with it.

This candidate, though… this candidate is his own personal circus. And what’s worse is that he had four years in power, trying to subvert the entire system in his favour, followed by four years to think about how to succeed where he failed.

I don’t want to see what Trump will do if he goes back to Washington, this time prepared.

Notes:

1. Stormy Daniels has said Trump paid her “hush money” through his lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen later admitted it and was sentenced to three years in prison over that and other dealings with Trump.
2. Fifteen boxes of presidential records, including classified documents and some highly classified documents, were retrieved from one of Trump’s homes in 2023. Presidential records are considered the property of the US government.
3. Several fact-checking organizations, including PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, have found that Trump lies frequently. The Washington Post counted up 30,573 lies during his four years in office.
4. He started by shutting down public briefings from the Centers for Disease Control and followed up by recommending goofy cures.
5. Multiple recounts in several states, extensive legal challenges, audits, and investigations, including those conducted in battleground states where the margins were slim, have confirmed the integrity and outcomes of the election. Courts at various levels, including those with judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents, found no evidence of widespread fraud that could change the election results.

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The visceral hate of Donald Trump