I guess I really am a political \u201cjunkie\u201d. I read the Mueller report, cover to cover, and I watched almost every minute of Mueller\u2019s testimony (poor man). And I read the \u201cwhistleblower\u2019s report\u201d and sat through every step of the impeachment process. I can\u2019t say I started as an \u201cunbiased\u201d juror of the Trump Presidency, but I can definitely say that I found him guilty on every count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was with some reluctance and fatigue that I faced losing thirty minutes of my life, reading another transcript. This time it was of another \u201cperfect call\u201d, made to the Georgia Secretary of State. I would have just listened to it, but I knew that way led to somnambulism. So I sat and read through every \u201cum\u201d and misquoted figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first impression is the same that one that I got from the President\u2019s conversation with Zelensky of Ukraine: how can this be the PRESIDENT of the United States, the \u201cleader\u201d of the free world? The dialog wasn\u2019t diplomatic; it wasn\u2019t even professional. Mario Puzo should have written it for The Godfather <\/em>movie. There clearly was the gangster, \u201c\u2026I\u2019m making an offer you can\u2019t refuse,\u201d tone throughout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did President Trump commit a crime in this conversation? The answer is a firm \u201cmaybe\u201d. As Michael Cohen testified so long ago, Donald Trump never actually says what he\u2019ll do: he just implies it. So when he told the Georgia Secretary of State that he could \u201cbe in big trouble\u201d it implied a threat but didn\u2019t technically make one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At best, the conversation was that of a whiny loser begging for the counters to change the count. At worst, it was the President of the United States threatening a state official to get him to \u201crig\u201d an election. But after wading through the entire conversation, I\u2019d think there\u2019s a third conclusion that gets Trump \u201coff the criminal hook\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think Donald Trump believes everything that his sycophants are telling him. He believes that the Democrats pulled off the greatest election fraud in American history. And he also believes those Democrats were stupid enough to rig the election for Biden, but failed to bring the rest of the Democratic ticket along. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We always knew that the Trump staff scheduled rallies to make the President \u201cfeel better\u201d. We know he needed the adoration of the crowd, the MAGA hats and \u201clock her up\u201d chants. So it isn\u2019t a stretch to believe that Trump thinks that since thousands came to his rallies, he should have won the election. His thought process: it was true in 2016, why wouldn\u2019t it be true today. (That wasn\u2019t true then either).<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s scary in so many ways. It means that Trump\u2019s thinking completely discounts the pandemic\u2019s impact on the election. He compared his rallies to Biden\u2019s, when Biden specifically determined NOT to do rallies in order to control the spread of COVID. Sure the President ridiculed the \u201cdrive-in\u201d rallies of the Democrats, but that should have been just rhetoric. But it wasn\u2019t: Trump really didn\u2019t get it. He thought that Biden made a political decision that he couldn\u2019t compete in drawing the crowds, and so didn\u2019t try. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Donald Trump is the President of a United States that is losing over 3000 citizens a day to COVID. That\u2019s more than a Pearl Harbor or a 9-11, every day. But when it came to the campaign, Trump operated like it wasn\u2019t even happening. And now we can see that wasn\u2019t just a tactical decision, it was a denial of reality. And (sorry Trump haters) it wasn\u2019t a cold blooded \u201cI don\u2019t give a damn\u201d: it was a real belief that those deaths weren\u2019t important, and maybe not even happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the last days of Watergate back in the summer of 1974, Richard Nixon was drinking heavily. He wandered the halls of the White House, talking to the portraits of deceased Presidents. He told them how unfair the nation was, and how all \u201cthe good\u201d he could do was now gone. His Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, made sure that any military orders from the White House came through his office first. The executive staff made sure that a deluded or drunk President couldn\u2019t start a war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Donald Trump believes: he believes that he won the election, he believes that the Republicans in Georgia and Arizona and the other states are cheating for Biden, he believes that COVID should be ignored. The most powerful man in the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, the leader of the free world isn\u2019t a criminal: he\u2019s delusional. And his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is right there along with him, encouraging the delusion. Absolute Trump loyalists recently replaced the civilian leadership of the Defense Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That shouldn\u2019t make anyone feel better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Intent <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Feeding a Delusion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Worse than Criminal<\/h3>\n\n\n\n