8/17/20: We rarely quote Democrats to make
a case against Mr. Trump. Republican voices normally suffice, including people
Trump chose to work in his administration.
First, let’s quote the most damning voice of all, that of Donald
Trump. At present (and we realize this can change), he trails badly in polls showing which candidate voters
prefer in the coming election.
____________________
“The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
President Trump
____________________
You can compare numbers with previous elections if you doubt the accuracy of such polls. Trump likes to say the numbers are rigged.
Past polls weren’t rigged. Clinton had a lead of 3.2 points in 2016, in a final average of all polls. She won the popular vote by 2.1 points.
The average of polls four years earlier had Obama ahead by .7 of a point. He prevailed by 3.9, the biggest polling miss since at least 1996. Obama was expected to win easily, by 7.6 points, in 2008, and did, by 7.3.
Bush 43 had a 1.5 point lead in the final polling average in 2004, and won by 2.4 points.
I am unable to find an aggregate of polls for 2000. Gallup, however, had Bush 43 with a 46% to 44% lead with two weeks to go before the election.
In the end, Gore captured 48.4 percent of the popular vote, to Bush 43’s 47.9%; but Bush squeaked by in the electoral vote.
None of the candidates in any of these elections, all but one of which was much closer than this election looks (as of now) to be, ever complained, and said the process in this country was “rigged.”
Save one. Trump may be the only candidate in American history
to complain ahead of time that an election was “rigged,” and then win (2016).
Now with polls looking ugly, he seems bent on taking a dangerous turn. If he
loses, he’s not going to accept defeat gracefully. He may not accept defeat at
all.
So it was, Monday, that we had Tin Pot Don railing against the system. At a campaign rally in Minnesota, he was clear. He was going to win. There was only one way he could lose. “We have to win the election. We can’t play games. Go out and vote,” he shouted. “Do those beautiful absentee ballots [emphasis added], or just make sure your vote gets counted,” he told a red-hatted crowd. “Make sure because the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. Remember that. It’s the only way we’re going to lose this election, so we have to be very careful.”
You could almost image his supporters fingering the triggers on their guns. And they have a lot of guns. The polls are rigged. He can’t lose. Unless. Unless the vote is rigged. “The only way they’re going to win,” he says of Biden and the Democrats, “is that way. And we can’t let that happen.”
The man is nuts.
*
“What we saw week in and week out…was terrifying.”
In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Taylor offers withering assessment of the man he was at first glad to serve. The “frequent follies” of Trumpian behavior, Taylor warns, put “the safety of Americans at risk.”
“I can attest that the country is less secure as a direct result of the president’s actions,” he adds.
If the broad strokes Taylor paints are depressing, the details reveal
Trump in all his petty ugliness. In a separate video, Taylor tells the story of
a meeting DHS officials had with the president after California suffered
through a devastating summer of forest fires. “He told
us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down [emphasis
added] from a wildfire because he was so rageful that people in the state of
California didn’t support him and that politically it wasn’t a base for him.”
Even when Trump wasn’t plotting revenge against segments of the American people, all of whom he was elected to serve, it was hard to keep him focused on important issues. Taylor explains:
Top DHS officials were regularly diverted from dealing with
genuine security threats by the chore of responding to…inappropriate and
often absurd executive requests, at all hours of the day and night. One
morning it might be a demand to shut off congressionally appropriated funds to
a foreign ally that had angered him, and that evening it might be a request to
sharpen the spikes atop the border wall so they’d be more damaging to human
flesh. (“How much would that cost us?”).
Meanwhile, Trump showed vanishingly little interest in subjects
of vital national security interest, including cybersecurity, domestic
terrorism and malicious foreign interference in U.S. affairs.
Finally, he notes:
The president’s bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic is
the ultimate example. In his cavalier disregard for the seriousness of the
threat, Trump failed to make effective use of the federal crisis response
system painstakingly built after 9/11. Years of DHS planning for a pandemic
threat have been largely wasted.
“What we saw week in and week out, for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying,” Taylor recalls in the video out this week. That video is the work of a group of Republicans who support Joe Biden in the coming election. For Miles Taylor, the choice is clear:
Given what I have experienced in
the administration, I have to support Joe Biden for president and even though I
am not a Democrat, even though I disagree on key issues, I’m confident that Joe
Biden will protect the country and I’m confident that he won’t make the same
mistakes as this President.
*
IN RELATED NEWS, we learn that in July 2019 both the Republican and Democratic heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee notified the Department of Justice that it was believed several witnesses may have provided misleading testimony during the Russian investigation.
Those witnesses:
Donald Trump Jr.
Jared Kushner
Hope Hicks
Steve Bannon (see also: 8/20/20)
We do know, beyond all doubt that Jr. and Jared met with Russians in June 2016. They did not disclose that meeting until July 2017, and only after it became clear the free press was going to blow their cover.
We also know what Hope Hicks said on November 10, 2016, two days after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. “We are not aware of any campaign representatives that were in touch with any foreign entities before yesterday, when Mr. Trump spoke with many world leaders,” she claimed.
She was lying.
Blatantly.
*
WITH CAMPAIGN SEASON in full swing, the president tells an adoring crowd in Mankato, Minnesota, on Monday that he’s been talking to God. Naturally, God has been answering.
“We built the greatest economy in the history of the world, and now I have to do it again,” he tells worshippers.
COVID-19 has set him back, he admits. He will need a second term (maybe a third!) to work his magic once more..
“You know what that is?” Trump asked, referring to a disease that has killed tens of thousands of the people he was elected to serve. “That’s God testing me. He said, ‘You know, you did it once.’ And I said, ‘Did I do a great job, God? I’m the only one that could do it.’”
Well, that didn’t sit well with the Lord. Trump continued, “[God]
said, ‘That, you shouldn’t say. Now we’re going to have you do it again.’” The
crowd broke out in laughter and worshipped the Golden Calf.
*
“That’s for the evangelicals.”
SPEAKING OF: Every so often, Trump tells the truth by mistake. Today, he told another crowd, at another campaign rally, “We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals.”
You would think that in foreign policy, Trump would be taking actions to benefit U.S. security and interests. What Trump really had in mind with this move was shoring up his religious base. “You know it’s amazing with that, the evangelicals are more excited about that than Jewish people. It’s really – right? It’s incredible,” Mr. Trump continued. This has something to do, of course, with the fact many evangelicals believe that when the Jews regain the Holy Land it will fulfill biblical prophecy and indicate that the Second Coming of Jesus is at hand.
*
WHEN NOT TALKING TO GOD, the president has a new advisor telling him everything is going great, as far as COVID-19 is concerned. Dr. Scott Atlas has been added to the White House team.
His main qualification for the post? He will tell Trump what Trump wants to hear, including the idea that Americans should resume normal life, get the economy going full blast again, and not worry about dying. For example, Dr. Atlas, has insisted we can get all the kids back in school, and they don’t even need masks, because children rarely get sick from the coronavirus.
Teachers? Bus drivers? Cafeteria workers? School administrators? Dr. Atlas wants them to take their chances. Take a few germs for the team! We know Trump won’t care how many educators – or even children – die, so long as he gets a second term in the White House.
POSTSCRIPT:
Speaking at the Democratic National Convention, Kristin
Urquiza talks about losing her father to the coronavirus.
“His only preexisting
condition was trusting Donald Trump.”
"After
five agonizing days,” she explained, “he died alone in the ICU with a nurse
holding his hand. My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only preexisting
condition was trusting Donald Trump and for that, he paid with his life.”
When the president told America this disease was going away soon – that it was no worse than the flu – her father believed her, caught COVID-19, and paid with his life for trusting a con artist.
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