Fact: Donald Trump projects everything that he is and that he’s doing – especially if it’s scummy, corrupt, perverse or treasonous – onto others. The GOP has made Trump’s corruption its own. That was why it was so easy for Republicans like Marco Rubio to insist that there was no way they were going to allow the party of Reagan to be taken over “by a con artist., That’s what Rubio called Trump on Good Morning America on February 6, 2016. Republican talk is always bargain basement cheap. By Summer’s end, Marco was showing everyone how good he was at giving Trump head in public.
Another fact: the Republican Party knew before they nominated Trump that he was 1) owned by Vladimir Putin and 2) therefore a national security threat. On June 25, 2016, current GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy entered a meeting of GOP leadership and said loud (it was recorded): “There’s two people I think Putin pays – Rohrbacher and Trump – swear to God!” The correct response to such a statement should have been “Whaaaaaat? Kevin, are you kidding? Why would you say such a thing? More to the point, do you know something?”
That regular Americans have lost track of the entirety of Trump’s treasonous behavior is a testament to our news media’s inadequacy and incompetence. A hostile foreign government inserted itself into an American presidential election and literally altered its outcome. If they so much as altered one vote, that should be the end of the whole idea that Trump could ever have been or ever was POTUS. Never mind one vote not overcoming the 77,000 votes that Trump “won” between the three states that gave him his victory – Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. When Paul Manafort handed Konstantin Kilimnik the proprietary polling data that he passed on to Oleg Deripaska and Russian military intelligence (all so that Manafort could make-good on the $17 million he owed Deripaska), he committed treason.
That’s another fact.
While we “gave” Trump the victory in 2016, that doesn’t mean he “won” it. What kind of democracy has it that you can cheat to win election? A democracy with zero future. That’s what kind. Cheating is corruption. The moment you attempt to corrupt democracy, you’re committing a crime. Against our democracy. That we’ve been reluctant to prosecute such crime, that’s not a reflection on democracy, that’s a reflection us. More to the point, it’s been a reflection on the pasty old white men who’ve held onto power all this time in America. One cheats to win when one knows one’s ideas won’t get ‘er done.
Republicans know from experience: no one who isn’t already them wants to see America become the country Republicans want it to be. That would be Want to know why Mitch McConnell has already said that in election 2022, Republicans won’t be arguing for any particular policies – you know, like a political party that wants to govern? Because the only idea they’re selling is regression. To 1850.
Consider just how hard Donald Trump and the GOP have worked to obstruct justice and keep the truth about Trump and Russia or Trump and the pandemic or Trump and the January 6 insurrection from ever coming out. But, that front is failing. Already more than 300 witnesses have testified before the January 6 Committee. Most have spilled their guts because they can’t afford to play bullshit kabuki like Steve Bannon or Mark Meadows. On January 7, Trump must sit for a deposition compliments of NY’s AG Tish James. Fulton County, GA DA Fani Willis has already put her case against Trump’s attempt to skew Georgia’s election results his way before two separate Grand Juries.
Our hope, the cases against Trump achieve enough of a critical mass to make any possibility that the Republicans take back the House and Senate laughable.
It’s a big lie that Trump was ever legitimate POTUS. It’s a big lie that were he ever to be POTUS again, America would carry on as it is. That absolutely won’t happen. If Trump and/or the GOP “win”, America will lose and completely at that.