The American people have spoken and the worst President in the history of our country has been given his pink slip.
The only question left is how much mischief Mr. Trump can get into before he leaves office on January 20th.
There will be lawsuits, claiming that he was illegally defeated in the election. There will be Trumpian reprisals, against White House and GOP campaign officials for sure, because someone has to be held accountable, and it can’t be the Boss. And, there will be some scorched earth, to hamper incoming President Joe Biden as much as possible, probably in the form of a raft of Executive Orders (that will, of course, be voided as soon as Trump leaves town.)
And there will be Presidential pardons; probably a lot of them. Bill Barr, Rudy Giuliani, Stephen Miller, Brad Wolf, and Jared Kushner will get them, for sure. Trump himself will likely need one for four years of corruption. It remains to be seen if he will have the audacity to pardon himself or will pull a Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford maneuver; i.e. resign so that his successor can pardon him.
Speaking of corruption, illegal acts, extortion, bribery, tax evasion, kickbacks, and horrible things that we don’t yet know about that happened in the Trump Administration and which will come to light when the Don leaves office…the Democratic Party could have a gay time investigating shadowy goings on since 2016. There is a lot of resentment, anger, and bottled up malice just waiting to be released.
For good reason.
However, Joe Biden, the new head of the Democratic Party and a leader who wants to unite the Nation, would be smart to tamper down the reprisals and mud-throwing because he has more important things to do than look in the rear view mirror. He’s got to get the pandemic under control, he’s got to re-ignite the economy, he’s got to start a legitimate national dialogue on racism in the country, and he’s got to seriously address global warming.
It’s time for thinking big, not small.
All of these efforts will require getting buy-in from tens of millions of Republicans who voted against him.
So, spending valuable time taking (well deserved) pot shots at the former President would be counterproductive. The focus needs to be on fixing our country and repairing the damage done by the outgoing Administration.
Seventy million Americans voted for Donald Trump in a losing effort. That fact amazes me and reveals a disturbing reality about my country that I have failed to come to grips with: small-thinking is extremely prevalent throughout the Nation.
Lots of one-issue folks voted for Trump: racists, religious fundamentalists, gun enthusiasts, anti-democratic libertarians, conspiracy theorists, blame throwers, and people who focus on the stock market to the exclusion of everything else.
Essentially, they are people with a small world view. They want to believe that every problem has a simple, easily understood solution. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work like that.
Most of these voters think that they’re “patriotic Americans” but don’t really understand or respect the system of government that they live under or the economic model that they appear to revere. The fact that this bloc of United States’ citizens voted twice for an anti-democratic, would-be dictator doesn’t seem to faze them. They are unapologetically mesmerized by a Pied Piper whose policy failures and political blunders while in office would humble a normal President.
We can expect narcissist Trump to remain on the public stage, probably as a talking head on some right-wing television news network, assuming Rush Limbaugh’s position when he finally succumbs to cancer, or starting up his own broadcasting network…to continually feed his 70 million followers a diet of lies, exaggerations and conspiracy theories meant to undermine Joe Biden and the American democratic form of government.
America in the 21st century…it is what it is, thanks to social media and a lot of small-thinking people.