Trump vs U.S. Democracy…
Donald Trump is, if nothing else, a damned lair.
The biggest problem with his telling lies is that all too often the people that he most wants to reach for support in his political ambitions believe him. Mostly because once the lie is out there and a matter of public record people tend to take it at its face value. They either don’t do their homework and check the veracity of what he claims or are simply satisfied to be following in lockstep everything he says… in essence the first thing they hear they tend to believe regardless of what later evidence or facts may prove or show.
Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in New Hampshire.
In May of 2023 Donald Trump, the inveterate pathological liar that he is, unleashed a torrent of falsehoods… aka lies… during a New Hampshire CNN town hall among them being…
“That was a rigged election, and it’s a shame that we had to go through it. … If you look at True the Vote, they found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras, where they were stuffing ballot boxes. … If you look at what happened in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, if you look at what happened in Detroit, Michigan, if you look at what happened in Atlanta, millions of votes, and all you have to do is take a look at government cameras.”
“The Constitution says that we’re supposed to have legal and well-maintained and well-looked-at elections.”
An outright lie at its worst and a misrepresentation if I want to be diplomatically kind…
The Constitution has a number of provisions on elections, such as “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” but it clearly and plainly does not say what Trump claimed.
“January 6, it was the largest crowd I have ever spoken to. That was prior to the walk down to the Capitol building. I don’t think — and I have spoken to hundreds of thousands of people. I have never spoken to a crowd as large as this.”
Bold-faced lie…
The Associated Press estimated the crowd at Trump’s rally was maybe 10,000 people.
Well, I offered them (Rep. Nancy Pelosi and District Mayor Muriel E. Bowser) National Guard. I said, we will give you soldiers. We will give you National Guard. We will give you whatever you want. … I offered them 10,000 soldiers. I said it could be 10,000. It could be more. But I offered them specifically 10,000 soldiers.”
Another bold-faced lie… the evidence… from almost all reputable media reports and the January 6 committee… shows Trump did not issue any formal request at any time meaning there was nothing for Pelosi or Bowser to consider or accept.
AND… when he ambiguously referenced bringing out the troops to his inner circle people it was not because he wanted to protect the Capitol but as the January 6 committee report related it was because he “floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats by left-wing counter-protesters.”
“We had the greatest economy in the history of our country, probably the greatest economy in the history of the world.”
Trump made a variation of this claim almost every other day in the last two years of his presidency, even after the pandemic tanked the economy… by the Washington Post’s count about 500 times… and it is flat out a lie.
“I got you the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country, bigger than the Reagan cuts.”
This is laughable at its best.
Not only was Trump’s tax cut far smaller than President Ronald Reagan’s tax cut in 1981 but it was also smaller than two tax cuts passed under Barack Obama. Besides the fact that his so-called tax cuts were heavily tilted toward the wealthy and corporations and did jack squat for working class or what are commonly referred to as the so-called middle class.
“I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes from China.”
Through the end of his presidency, Trump-imposed tariffs garnering about $75 billion on products from China. But tariffs… essentially a tax… are generally paid by importers, by and large U.S. companies, who in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or the producer of goods who use Chinese materials in their products. So, ultimately, we the people footed the bill for Trump’s tariffs, not the Chinese.
Moreover, the China tariff revenue was reduced by $28 billion in payments the government made to farmers who lost business and therefore their source of income because China stopped buying U.S. soybeans, hogs, cotton and other products in response to his tariffs.
“We were going to make so much money from oil, we were going to start paying off (the national) debt.”
Talk about another damn bold-faced lie… the federal budget deficit soared under Trump and the United States… meaning we the people… suffered because of his policies.
“Millions and millions of people are coming here. They’re being released from prisons. They’re being released from mental institutions. And we have millions of people pouring into our country.”
These are categorical and bullshit falsehoods that Trump has been spouting since at least 2015 when he was campaigning for the 2016 election and said that Mexico was “sending people that have lots of problems … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
He had no evidence to back up his claim then and has nothing now.
“If you look at Chicago, Chicago has the single toughest gun policies in the nation. They are so tough, you can’t breathe … All of those places are the worst and most dangerous places.”
The state of Illinois has tough gun laws, but several of the most restrictive laws, such as a ban on handguns and a gun registry, are no longer in use. And while it may be true that there is a high rate of gun violence in Chicago, it simply does not have the highest rate of gun violence of any major city in the U.S.
“We’ve given [to Ukraine] so far $171 billion. They’ve given — they, meaning European Union, which is approximately the same size, altogether, as our economy, they’ve given about 20.”
An exaggeration at its best or an outright lie… take your choice.
An April report by the Rand Corporation said: “Although U.S. military aid since the (Ukraine) war began exceeds Europe’s (about $45 billion to $20 billion), Europe has provided more financial and humanitarian aid (about $40 billion to $30 billion).”
And now add these new ones…
Fox News Town Hall
During a January 10 Fox News Town Hall meeting Trump said…
“We had no terrorist attacks at all during my four years.”
Simply put… Trump is wrong when he claims there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency.
Laying aside domestic terrorism by right-wing or left-wing groups, the authoritative Global Terrorism Database maintained by the University of Maryland shows two major incidents tied to Islamist militants that resulted in people dying on American soil…
On December 6, 2019: “A member of the Saudi Air Force, identified as Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, opened fire on a classroom in the Naval Air Base in Pensacola, Florida, United States. Four people, including the assailant, were killed and eight others were injured in the attack. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed responsibility for the incident. Alshamrani posted criticism of U.S. wars and quoted Osama bin Laden on social media hours before the attack.”
And…
On December 17, 2017: “An assailant driving a Home Depot rental truck entered a bike path in an attempt to run over civilians on the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. Following the initial attack, the assailant exited the vehicle and was shot by a police officer after displaying imitation firearms. At least eight people, including two citizens from the United States, five Argentinian tourists, and one Belgian tourist, were killed and 13 other people, including the assailant, were injured in the attack. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed that the assailant, identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, was ‘one of the caliphate soldiers;’ however, sources doubted the veracity of this claim. Authorities also recovered a note from the vehicle in which Saipov pledged allegiance to ISIL.”
When both incidents occurred they garnered enormous media attention… and the plain fact is Trump himself commented on the incidents when they happened, and during his 2018 State of the Union address he explicitly said that the 2017 event was a “terrorist attack.”
Plus, In an event prior to the December 17, 2017 terrorist occurrence was another incident that took place about a week earlier on December 11 when a suicide bomber detonated a pipe bomb at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. While there were no fatalities in that attack three people, plus the attacker, were injured in the blast. Akayed Ullah, a jihadi-inspired extremist, claimed responsibility for the incident and told authorities, “They’ve been bombing in my country, and I wanted to do damage here… I did it for the Islamic State.”
And during the same Town Hall…
“I had no wars. I’m the only president in 72 years, I didn’t have any wars.”
Trump said he was the first president in 72 years not to have any wars, which takes us back to 1948, when Harry S. Truman was elected in his own right after stepping up to finish Franklin D. Roosevelt’s final term months prior to the end of World War II.
Trump had previously made a similar claim in his farewell address as president but phrased it slightly differently by saying he had started no new wars. Now, during this Town Hall, he was being more definitive in his assertion.
First and foremost, when Jimmy Carter was president from 1977 to 1981, not only did he never formally declare a war, or sought authorization from Congress to wage a military operation on foreign lands during his presidency, but military records show not a single soldier died in hostile action while he was the country’s president.
So Trump’s claim he was the only president in 72 years to not have any wars is an abject lie.
Second: During Trump’s time in office at least 65 active duty military personnel died in armed action out of country as he ramped up commitments in Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS and in fact during this same Town Hall Trump actually said… “We beat ISIS, knocked them out.” Plus, Trump authorized airstrikes on Syria for an alleged chemical weapons attack on the Syrian government’s opponents during that country’s ongoing civil insurgency.
In addition, Trump escalated hostilities with Iran, including the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Trump claimed his authority to permit the strike was carried out in accordance with the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution of 2001.
Again the problem with his lies, as well as these two new lies, is that in general the first thing most people hear is what they tend to run with, and all too often take as the truth despite what the evidence may show upon further examination.
And that is part of the rationale that so many misguided folks and/or people who are satisfied to be ignorant (or just plain damned stupid) in this country and are willing to believe that Trump will be their savior from whatever problems they believe the U.S. government has foisted upon their lives.
Which leads me to this reality and what I contend is his most unethical and very arguably most immoral lie to date and the gravest and most dire danger to this country’s supposed democracy…
The revisionism of January 6…
Insurrectionism on January 6, 2021
Earlier this month the third anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob was recognized. And it comes with some extremely disturbing measures on public opinion regarding that event. Principally among those measures is that a sizable number of the population of the United States believe Trump’s lie about the 2020 election being stolen from him and that what transpired on January 6, 2021 was not an insurrection.
A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll recently published shows that a significant share of Americans accept Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.
The poll shows just 62% of those questioned believe that Biden’s victory in the 2020 election was legitimate. Which is down from the 69% who said he had won the election just two years ago… which in itself is a sad number believing the truth.
In addition 33% of we the people claim that there is “solid evidence” that there was “widespread voter fraud” in the 2020 election.
And regarding the January 6 activities that occurred at the Capitol, 28% say that Trump bears no responsibility… 21% say the people who stormed the Capitol were “mostly peaceful” … and… 25% say the FBI probably or definitely were the instigators of the violence that took place.
Among Republicans those number rise precipitously…
62% say that there is “solid evidence” of widespread voter fraud” in the 2020 election.
Regarding the January 6 insurgency a full 84% believe Trump bears little or no responsibility for what happened while 35% believe the people who invaded the Capitol building were peaceful with another 47% saying those people were equally peaceful and violent.
And finally 34% say tha the FBI instigated the violence that took place on January 6.
In addition to these numbers is that the poll also shows that 41% of we the people… 77% of Republicans… say that the Justice Department is unfairly targeting Mr. Trump for political reasons.
What it all come down to is this…
Those numbers prove how corrosive and destructive to the country and the supposed premise of democracy the country was founded upon that Trump’s repeated lies, amplified by a right-wing media sources such as Fox News, have been and currently are.
Plus, the dedication of the Republican Party base to his alternative history lessons explain why Trump is so far avoiding any meaningful accountability; why he is by far, at this time, in the lead to be the Republican nominee in 2024 and, if elected, the threat he would be to the Democratic-Republic of America as already he is promising full pardons of any convictions for the January 6 insurrectionists as well as “revenge” and “retribution” for unnamed others.
Republican’s aversion to truth
The facts and the plain truth is that Biden won the 2020 election, and no evidence has been discovered or emerged that there was any widespread voter fraud, in fact, no fraud of any discernible measure whatsoever. And that Trump, despite knowing he lost the election, summoned his most ardent supporters to come to Washington D.C. and fired them up with his lies and bullshit, then told them that he’d go with them to the Capitol and that they needed to “fight like hell” to save the country. But instead of accompanying the bamboozled fools he returned to the White House and relished watching them do his dirt as those supporters of his attacked the Capitol and threatened violence and harm upon the members of Congress, the Vice President and their staff and the Capitol police sworn to protect them for over three hours. VP Pence himself declared “(Trump’s) reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.”
174 cops were injured and at least 1,240 people have been charged with crimes for what transpired on that day the Capitol was attacked and the country’s government was threatened More than 1,200 persons have been charged with federal crimes arising from the attack. And as of December 2023… 728 had pleaded guilty, while at least another 165 have been convicted of federal charges.
In the simplest terms and words that I can express…
In 2016 Trump got 62,984,828 of we the people’s votes.
In 2020 he got even more, albeit in a losing cause, as 74,223,369 of we the people cast their ballots for him.
This is not the old Republican conservativism versus the liberalism of the Democrats anymore.
This is the threat of Trump’s lies and his fascism and people believing those lies and then his lies winning and endangering, if not destroying, our supposed democracy.
It has now become the struggle… the fight… to preserve truth, facts, science and history in the face of Trump’s fascist propaganda and cultism.
Time is getting short.
And I despise the fact I have to… need to… say this…
In the next presidential election either vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate, whoever it turns out to be, or suffer the real danger of Donald Trump’s being elected and establishing his dictatorship of the fascist state of America in 2024 and who knows for how long thereafter.
Another thousand words…
