In the Spirit of Jefferson Davis (part two)

 

Part two.

 

Donald Trump’s racism was publicly demonstrated in 1975 when he lost a Federal Housing Discrimination case after a wasteful two-year court battle. His love of vigilante violence was demonstrated when calling for the death penalty for not-yet-convicted, under-aged defendants, in the Central Park Rape case in 1989 (the defendants were ultimately, definitively, exonerated, but even decades later, Trump still wanted them lynched). His hatred of Democracy was demonstrated when he Tweeted a call for violent revolution on Election Night 2012 because the Electoral Vote wasn’t going the way he wanted it. He repeatedly expressed open contempt for the Constitution during his own run for President in 2016 and before that election night he proclaimed that any conclusion other than his victory must be viewed as fraud -- the phrase most associated with Trump-inspired violence in 2021, “Stop the Steal” was, in fact, coined in 2016 by his close advisor Roger Stone.

 

Later, in 2019, Stone was arrested, indicted, and convicted of seven criminal charges that came out of an investigation of several Trump associates with improper ties/interactions with agents of a hostile foreign power, Russia, that was actively engaging in a large and sustained campaign to change the course of the 2016 election in Trump’s favor (that scandal would not become public until 2017). For his crimes, one count of Obstructing an Official Proceeding, five counts of False Statements to Congress, and one count of Witness Tampering, Stone was sentenced to nine years in jail. Trump proceeded to create a crisis within the Dept of Justice when his pressuring Attorney General of the Department of Justice, William Barr, to push for a sentence reduction, and even after the sentence was reduced to slightly less than two years. Barr’s acquiesce to Trump’s demands brought disgrace down upon the DoJ, but Trump wasn’t satisfied and first commuted the sentence, then gave Stone a full pardon, all before Stone spent a single night in jail. (It was broadly assumed that Stone had dirt on Trump, and used it as leverage to get his special treatment.)

 

Only a year later, Stone, through his association with the Terrorist Group the Proud Boys, would be a leading player in the attempted Coup of January 6^th, 2021.

 

 

Even before he was elected, he was already a proven fraud regarding his charities, businesses, and taxes, had demonstrated Mafia contacts, encouraged vigilante violence, bragged about a proclivity for sexual assault, was so in debt to foreign banks that he couldn’t pass a National Security background check, etc, yet almost 63 million people (out of a country of 321 million) still voted for him.

 

Even after his 2016 victory, Trump still claimed voter fraud, because he didn’t like that he secured the Office through the Electoral Vote, but he lost the Popular Vote by millions.

 

We should forever feel ashamed for that, but then, in 2020, when Trump decisively lost both the Electoral and Popular Votes, he still earned more votes than 2016, now more than 74 million. What happened was that far more people voted in 2020, more for him, but many, many, more against him. The larger turn-out likely saved this Republic from perdition, but it also demonstrated how many of our neighbors are soul-less, cultist, traitorous, drones.

 

Highlights of his four years in power included the exposure of the Russia scandal even before he took the oath of office, a scandal that got more of Trump’s aides and associates arrested, indicted, and convicted than just Stone, nor was Stone the only one of the conspirators that Trump would dubiously pardon. A strong case was made that Trump, himself, engaged in the crime of Obstruction of Justice related to that scandal, and there were calls for his impeachment. He wasn’t impeached then, but he was later when it was exposed that he attempted to blackmail a foreign power into supporting his re-election schemes (his Presidency only survived because Impeachment require two guilty verdicts by two separate Houses of Congress, and the Senate, then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, failed to take the House trial even remotely seriously). Trump pandered to White Nationalists guilty of murder, intimidation, and general disgustingness, best demonstrated in his reaction to the Charlottesville violence in 2017 and how many hysterical racists he gave White House jobs to. He threatened to use Federal Law Enforcement and Regulators to crush enemies, some being political rivals, some business rivals, and some just satirists on a popular TV programs. On the US/Mexico border, He engaged in kidnapping and child-abuse on a grand scale. He trashed the Public Health system during the CV19 Pandemic, the worst Pandemic in a century and our hour of greatest need. He embracing the Conspiracy Masturbations that attempted to pervert the legitimacy of any Democracy anywhere throughout the world, specifically he pandered to the lunatic QAnon, all the while encouraging Nativist Terrorist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, to new extremes of criminality during the 2020 election. Oh, and I almost forgot, there was that thing about him paying hush-money to a Porn-star that his bagman went to jail for, but he remained unscathed.

 

Having already won after losing the Popular Vote in 2016, Trump was in a difficult position in the 2020 Presidential election. He was plagued by self-created scandals and facing Joe Biden, a candidate with less baggage than Hillary Clinton. Again, even before the first vote was cast, he was claiming Election Fraud. He encouraged last-minute changes in state laws restricting the Citizen’s right to vote, especially targeting mail-in ballots, an increasing necessary as we were knee-deep in the CV19 Pandemic, which he had monumentally mismanaged. Once again, he claimed that any result other than his victory would have to be fraud.

 

Less than four months before the Election, Trump called for it to be delayed, something completely outside his powers.

 

Less than two months before the Election, Donald Trump was asked on national TV to explicitly condemn the violence of extremist groups representing far-Right ideologies, he said, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by, but I’ll tell you what, somebody has got to do something about Antifa and the Left.”

 

Though violence from Left-leaning groups had been on the rise since the previous summer, it was impossible for any rational person to ignore that the Right-leaning violence came from larger, better organized, better funded, groups, who committed many more criminal acts, and many, many, more homicides, and had been the more serious Terrorist threat within USA borders for the last several decades.

 

A Prominent Proud Boy, Joe Biggs, who was later arrested for his role in the January attempted Coup, posted on the Right-wing Social Media platform Parler: “Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy.”

 

At the end of election night, November 3^rd, 2020, there was no clear winner because of the (by law) mail-ins could not be counted until Election-Day itself, so those would take time to calculate, while the numbers from in-person voting were released essentially instantaneously. Trump chose to claim a victory he hadn’t earned and demand that the counting be stopped, a power he didn’t legally have. He knew he needed to, even though he couldn’t and shouldn’t, because Biden was expected to be overwhelemingly favored in the slower-counted mail-ins.

 

Trump was constantly accusing innocent people of crimes, it had his modus operandi for decades, I’ve already mentioned his calling for lynching of minors in the Central Park Five case. Then in 2016 he accused the father of a competing Republican Primary candidate of being part of a fantastical conspiracy to murder former President John F. Kennedy. In 2019, after the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein (an old, close friend that Trump had a serious falling out with decades before and was now indicted for child sex-trafficking) while in Federal custody, was in fact murdered by Clinton, ignoring the fact that Clinton never had any jurisdiction over Epstein, but while in Federal custody, Trump did. As 2020’s Election Conspiracy Masturbation emerged, Trump was suddenly accusing hundreds of people at a time, many of whom were named, many of whom were members of his party and had even voted for him, of serious felonies without a shred of proof, alleging that was all party of an on-going fantasy-Coup from which he laid the groundwork for what would become a very real, and deadly, attempted Coup.