Two Words Trump Cannot Abide
And he’ll do anything not to hear them
After nearly four years of chaos and disaster, America is finally at the point where the voters are having their say on the performance of Don Trump as president.
A few things are clear about Trump:
- He is hiding something in his tax returns that he doesn’t want to share with the voters
- Vladimir Putin has something on Trump. Something Trump doesn’t want the voters to know
- Trump has a breath-taking ability to lie. He simply cannot tell the truth. Not to the media, not to world leaders, not to the voters.
- He has no vision of America’s future and how he plans to get there
- He claims credit for the successes of others
- He blames others for his own failings
- He is a crass bully
- Trump has never enjoyed a positive approval rating. Never ever.
Trump’s tax
The New York Times revealed that far from being a self-made billionaire, Don Trump was simply handed hundreds of millions of dollars by his father in a series of tax-avoidance schemes.
Trump, unlike every other American president in recent history, has refused to release his tax returns. He kept them hidden in 2016, he has played an extraordinary legal game in the four years since to keep them secret, and has no intention of ever letting the voters see them.
This from a man who has used every conceivable opportunity to tell the world how rich he is and how much money he makes. So what, in the official records, is so damning that Trump dare not reveal the facts to the voting public?
Putin
Simply put, Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election to put Don Trump in power and has reaped the benefits ever since. Trump routinely defers to Putin, refusing to do anything that impedes Russian interests, even at the expense of American security. The sickening lack of response to the news that Russia pays bounties to the Taliban for every American they kill underscores the relationship.
At the very least, Putin wins by having Russia’s longstanding Cold War opponent led by an incompetent clown. But Trump behaves as if he were a Russian agent, routinely acting to advance Russian interests ahead of America’s. The withdrawal of American forces from Syria is a case in point. The Russians simply walked into hastily-vacated American bases. Not a shot fired, not a rouble paid.
Putin clearly has some hold over Trump. There is talk of compromising material of a sexual nature — which would surprise nobody — but most likely Trump owes vast sums of money to Russian interests which he cannot afford to pay. Possibly — probably — both.
Putin is interfering in the 2020 election, this time with no opposition from the American government. Of course.
Trump and truth
Don Trump routinely lies. The Washington Post has recorded 20 000 lies in the course of this presidency. That’s not the occasional porky. That’s like fifteen a day, and that’s serious commitment. Books have been published on the topic.
Perhaps the most offensive — resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans — have been his false claims about Covid-19. Simply being honest about the nature of the pandemic, the severity of the threat, and the best ways to counter it — like, you know, wearing masks — would have saved more Americans than died in WW2.
He began his term with lies about winning the popular vote, the number of people attending the inauguration ceremony, the nature of his relationship with Russia, and continued every day since then. His lying insistence that he did not attempt to threaten a foreign power into attacking his political opponent led to his impeachment earlier this year.
Bill Clinton lied about sex. Trump lies about sex and everything else. He has cheated with every one of his wives, for example, and brags about it. As if he is some sort of unstoppable sex bomb instead of just a man paying for sex.
There is no truth to the claim that this choir has been booked for the 2021 inauguration ceremony. No, don’t quote me on that. I’m guessing. It may well be true.
The bottom line is that nobody can believe anything Trump says. America’s long-term allies have been deceived, the voters are lied to, we are told the media is reporting fake news if they tell the truth. In Trump’s White House, it is not so much whether the Press Secretary is lying, but how inventive they can be about it.
No idea
Most presidents lay out a policy platform for election. Here is Donald J Trump’s exact response to that exact question on his plan for a second term:
But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done. — Don Trump
You’d vote for that plan, right? It’s solid.
This is the guy who was going to lock up Hillary Clinton, drain the Washington swamp, pay off the national debt, overturn Obamacare, and get Mexico to pay for a border wall. Notable failures on every point.
Steals credit
Trump’s big boast was that he had delivered a strong economy. Weeeell, maybe.
If there is good news, Don Trump claims it is his genius administration. It will be the hard work of others, but Trump will steal the credit.
The Democrats worked hard on a stimulus bill to boost the economy failing under Covid-45. Guess whose name was on the cheques sent out?
It wasn’t even a legal signature. Government cheques must be signed by a Treasury official. Trump merely added his name as a decoration.
Don Trump has, like every other lazybones incompetent before him, found that instead of doing any productive work, it is far easier to take credit for that of others. You know anybody like that where you work? Met someone like that in school?
Blames others
The flip side is that if something goes wrong, it is never Don Trump’s fault. It was that evil Chinese empire that sent Covid-19 out into the world. Right.
Just like it isn’t your fault if someone crashes into your car while you are serenely driving along, thumb in bum, mind in neutral. Suddenly out of nowhere a pandemic runs into you and takes you out. Not your fault.
But if you didn’t take out insurance and have no plan to handle the disaster and your passengers die because you didn’t call an ambulance, that’s on you, buster.
The simple fact is that Trump never admits an error, never apologises, never even accepts the truth of the American presidency that “The Buck Stops Here.”
It’s always someone else’s fault, and he is simply doing his best to repair the damage. Right. The chaos, the failures, the deaths, the scandals, none of it down to Don Trump.
Bullies opponents
In a graceless government, this is the mark of the Coward in Chief. Don Trump avoided service in Vietnam by arranging for a false medical exemption. And yet he has called those who served suckers and losers. He reserved his strongest contempt for those who paid the highest price.
Senator John McCain, a strong critic of Don Trump, actually served in Vietnam with honour and courage, but because he was shot down over North Vietnam and spent years in captivity, he was a loser, according to Trump, who galloped away from the conflict as fast as bone spurs could carry him.
Oh yeah. Trump claimed credit for the veteran’s bill that McCain sponsored. What a surprise.
Trump has used his position and immense visibility to belittle his critics. Making up offensive names is his speciality. He has given new meaning to Theodore Roosevelt’s “bully pulpit” term.
Bullies are always cowards, and Trump has a remarkably thin skin when others criticise him.
No positive appeal
Every American president since pollsters began tracking approval ratings has enjoyed at least some time in that happy zone where most voters approve of them. Some — like JFK or Eisenhower — have never left that smiling realm. Even Nixon enjoyed majority support for most of his time in office, only falling below 50% for brief periods. When Watergate caught up to him and he chose to resign, he was at well over 60%.
Don Trump, in stark contrast, began at a high of 45.5% when he failed to win a majority of the vote in 2016 and has never climbed any higher. His approval is remarkably steady, never deviating more than a few points from 42%.
Every other president has seen their approval ratings rise and fall, often by significant amounts. George W Bush, for example, reached nearly 90% approval after 9/11 and only dropped below 50% near the end of his second term.
But Trump’s approval is as close to a straight line as these things come. His support amongst the voters has been steady, dismal, and in all but a few instances, worse than any other president at any other time since the 1940s.
He was handed a golden opportunity with Covid-19. With a strong and positive leadership role, uniting the country against a common threat, he could have climbed to a genuine high and entered the election period in an unbeatable position.
In New Zealand, Australia, Germany, a positive response to the crisis has seen leaders soar in approval. In contrast, Trump’s response has been inept, incompetent, and ineffective. Seven million Americans contracted the virus — probably far more, given the inadequacy of testing — 206 000 Americans have died (and counting), and the economy sank like a rock.
Trump is on track to lose in 50 days.
Those two words?
The most likely headline in America’s newspapers the morning after the election will be:
You’re Fired!
Trump’s signature phrase from his reality TV days. He loves to hand it out, but he simply cannot take it. He will do anything — and I mean anything — to avoid what appears to be a certainty.
He is doing his best to avoid hearing those words. His energies are focused on the election. Not on rebuilding the economy, nor on keeping Americans safe from Covid-45, but on lying, cheating, bullying, misleading, and conniving to subvert the democratic will of the people.
His position is clear. He will not concede. If defeated, he will not yield. He has been preparing the ground to dispute the result, ever since it became clear that in this plague election, Americans would be voting by mail in unprecedented numbers.
In a country where it is routine to gerrymander, legislate, and threaten away the votes of opponents, Trump and the Republicans have been doing everything possible to reduce Democratic turnout. When early voting began in Virginia, Trump supporters obstructed and intimidated voters.
My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk. — Don Trump
A free and fair vote is the last thing that Trump wants. He can see the writing on the wall. Using lawyers and courts to intimidate, delay, and subvert justice is his standard practice over decades in business, and as president, he is in a unique position to use the resources of government to make things as difficult as possible for his opponent. He — in company with Mitch McConnell — has spent four years packing the courts with conservative judges.
The breathtaking hypocrisy with which McConnell blocked Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee nine months before the 2016 election and the indecent haste to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg a few weeks before this year’s election brings the ploy into bright visibility.
History, precedent, decency, fairness; they all get tossed aside when there’s a chance to steal an election.
One — out of many — tactic that has been floated is using uncertainty over voting legitimacy to have States controlled by Republicans simply ignore the vote and appoint Trump-supporting representatives to the Electoral College. Trump could lose the election in key states and — legally, mind you — have those states appoint Electoral College representatives to vote for him. 58 votes in Florida alone. That’s over ten percent of the Electoral College right there; enough to swing the election from Biden to Trump, and be backed up by courts full of Trump appointees.
Don Trump cannot handle the truth. The American voters don’t like him, they want him gone, they are lining up seven weeks out from the election to boot him out of the job, and Don Trump does not have the balls to accept their decision.
As an Australian, this does not affect me in the slightest — apart from America’s impact on the world’s economy, climate, security, and health, of course — but I shall certainly be watching the ongoing train wreck of a once-great nation running off the rails with great interest.
Britni
