WE should be angry, not Trump!

Since Thursday’s election interference verdict, Trump’s been on a rampage. But it’s Americans who love democracy who should step up to the fight.

The Resistant Grandmother

Since the democracy-affirming election interference verdict Thursday in New York, predictably, a never grown up former and would-be president has been railing against the justice system, and, by extension, the country he wants to lead.

That’s rich, because it’s we who should be angry for the harm he’s caused, is causing, and will cause should he again be elected president. For that, it’s time to turn the angry tables on Donald Trump.

The Trump list of grievances
Typically, his complaints are self-serving and nonsensical, including the following.

• “They’re (the legal system) destroying my life over a legal expense!” (Actually, five weeks of exhaustive testimony and evidence shows his payments to Michael Cohen were to reimburse him for hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, thus interfering with and perhaps influencing the 2016 election, just days before the November vote.

•  “Juan Merchan looks like an angel, but is really a devil!” (C’mon. A childish ad hominem attack beneath the dignity of anyone running for president.)

• “This has all been done by Biden and his people.” (Fact check: Biden has no authorization or influence over the attorneys or the judge involved in a case under the Manhattan jurisdiction. And a former president should know that by now.)

A thrice-married New York hotelier and criminal as “savior” — ha!
The famously non-religious Trump (see three marriages and numerous infidelities) has also been couching his grievances in a lot of religious imagery, which is farcical.  

The “I’m sacrificing myself for you, so you don’t have to go through what I am” has become a familiar trope as Trump blasphemously parodies his criminality with the stations of the cross. 

For example, when in February a Manhattan civil court found him guilty of financial fraud and fined him $464M, Trump posted on Truth Social:
“It’s ironic how Christ walked through his greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you,” thus merging himself with both the persecuted Jesus and Trump’s acolytes (canadanews.yahoo.com).

The religious tropes extended to the only actual witness his legal team put forth was the thuggish and disrespectful Robert Costello, who, given the resounding verdict on all counts, was unpersuasive.

Instead of Costello’s obvious failing to convince the jury, in Trump’s mind Costello was “crucified!” That’s hard to conceive as Costello escaped the courtroom with his head, blood, and alligator loafers intact. 

No signs of the beatitudes here
If the meek shall inherit the earth as the real Jesus Christ promised, there has been nothing gentle and long-suffering about what Trump is saying and doing since the Thursday verdict.  Since then, he’s been on a rampage, accusing President Joe Biden and Democrats of all sorts of bad things.  Psychologists call such up-is-down-and-down-is-up utterings “projections,” meaning he’s ascribing to others what he actually is, does, and says.  

Since Thursday, Trump’s projections
“Biden is the most dishonest president we’ve ever had!” says a man clocked in as lying 30,573 times during his presidency (21 january 2021 washington post).

“Biden is faltering and senile,” says the man who couldn’t stay awake during the five weeks of the trial process and held a meandering, incoherent press-conference-without-questions following the verdict.

“We have a group of fascists trying to destroy our country!” says the man whose own 2025 plan has promised to do away with the Constitution and create a form of government where the people cede all fealty not to the rule of law, but to him  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025).

Republicans now fully against the rule of law
All of this follows the now-familiar pattern of Trump calling “foul” whenever he loses.  It’s just like Jan. 6, but with white-collar protestors.  Instead of the thugs who defecated throughout the Capitol, we now have Trump acolytes who work in the Capitol spewing foul attacks on American democracy through their mouths.

*Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Whether he is a free man or a prisoner of the Biden regime, I’m voting for Donald Trump.

*Representative Jim Jordan who chairs the “Weaponization of Government Sub Committee”: ”The unprecedented political prosecution” of Trump demands Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg be subpoenaed and brought before his committee for a June hearing, showing he, Jordan, and his Republican colleagues were themselves weaponizing the government. 

*Senator Ted Cruz: “This is a dark day” for America.  And, “America has become a
banana republic.”

*House Speaker Mike Johnson: (ominously) urging if not promising the Supreme Court to “fix” the verdict: “I think the Justices on the court – I know many of them personally – are deeply concerned about this, as we are.  So I think they’ll set this straight.” 

Et tu, Romney?
Even Republican Senator Mitt Romney, formerly a voice of sanity where there was none in his party, degraded the right of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to bring the case against Trump as if a grand jury’s decision to indict on 34 criminal counts for election interference was somehow un-American.  Romney said Sunday, “Bragg should have settled the case” instead of bringing it to trial.

Given that Trump and his attorneys never approached the D.A.’s office to do so, instead appealing unsuccessfully to a higher court to quash the trial before it began (9 april apnews.com), Romney’s fawning was disconcerting — and indicative of Romney and others Republicans’ conscious or unconscious now marching in lockstep to the “Authoritarian Playbook” beat.

A dangerous and familiar road
According to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, New York University professor of history and expert on authoritarianism, Romney and others have chosen no longer to be defenders of liberty, but just the opposite:
“It’s a symptom of the moral collapse of Republicans,” even among people who are not MAGA, like Romney, who now seem to be towing his party’s line.  She added, such capitulation “blunts the edges” of the authoritarianism Trump promises and represents.

March of the red-tied clones
As for Republican lawmakers who showed up at the Manhattan Courthouse dressed as Trump in blue suits and red ties, Ben-Ghiat said this too is a sign of how Republicans have full-on embraced Trump’s “strongman” ethos. “Those clones (show) they have to remake themselves in the image of their leader.”  And in a reference to other nations that have allowed their democracies to be taken over by dictators, she warned, “that’s how things happen over time.” 

Baked-in Criminality
Another way of saying it is that Republicans’ now willingness to go all-in on Trump’s criminality demonstrates the natural devolution of a political party that’s not only shaken hands with the devil, but has become in league with him — especially in terms of sanctioning criminality, which undemocratic societies, like Russia, do.

According to Mark Elias, the Democrats’ lead attorney who has successfully challenged gerrymandering and other voting impediments imposed by Republicans across the country, the eight years of Trump’s getting away with breaking the law has eventually taken over the GOP as a whole.
“(This) has hardened the Republican Party into believing that criminal acts were part of the political process. And so we now see a political party that brags about how much money it raises off of felony convictions.  And it has transformed the Republican Party into one led by a criminal boss who celebrates crimes.”

I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore
I don’t know about you, but I’m finding all this Trump anger galling.  

The man who never grew up is now polluting our lives and airwaves with his never-ending litany of outrages. But I contend it’s actually we who have the right to be angry, not Trump for whom many parts of the judicial system have for too long either not prosecuted him in a timely fashion, been dragging its feet to protect him, or offering a myriad of protections and privileges not offered to the average Joe or Jane who commits crimes.

Right now, for example, Trump remains free on appeal, instead of being immediately incarcerated, given his disrespectful behavior, in and out of court; threats to judge and jurors; and probability of recidivism and continuing to commit crime.  

The drama of the out-of-control child
I’m a senior citizen and have been fearful of and embarrassed by this man for eight years. Holidays have been spoiled because it was hard to forget the danger Trump posed. We could never really let go of the prospect of some new attack on democracy Trump was making or poised to make, such as destroying access to affordable health care, the dissolution of Social Security and Medicare, and the destruction of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to name just a few. Now, especially following the verdict, his attacks and those of the Trump acolytes in his party have metastasized against the rule of law.  

Looking back and forward
While my son grew up in relative security, I have not been able to count on that kind of world for my grandchildren.  Each day I worry about what Trump will do to harm their futures and those of all American children.  

Will they live in a free America or one more akin to Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Viktor Orban’s Hungary – one where all institutions – the courts, legislatures, government agencies, and media – must show fealty to him to survive? And will Trump and his followers destroy this country all at once or more gradually from  a thousand cuts? 

Cracks of sunlight
If there is one bright light, it may come from some of the latest polls.  Ones conducted by the Morning Consult/Ipsos canvassers had Biden trailing Trump by a few points in the days and weeks before the verdict.  But now the same pollster shows just the opposite. Since Friday, Biden is now leading Trump by the same amount.

The polls also show the all-important voting bloc of Independents showing signs of rejecting Trump in greater numbers after the verdict than before it. In latest polling after the verdict, 49 percent of Independents said Trump should end his campaign. Even in the once all-in Republican bloc, the poll shows 15 percent of GOP’ers feel the same (axios.com). This has been backed up two days later from an ABC/Ipsos poll that also showed Independents’ call for Trump to resign at 49 percent (538.com).

Given the presidential race is still close, even the movement of a few percentage points can be determinative of the election across the swath of swing states needed to ensure a Biden victory – Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada, to name a few (aaron blake, 30 may 2024 washington post). 

November’s victory is up to us
Bottom line, however, no one is going to save democracy between now and the election except us…neither the courts (specifically, the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Cannon’s federal court in South Florida), nor the legislative branches of government, one house of which remains in Republican hands until the election.  

Mark Elias and others call on Americans who care to do the following between now and November:

• Engage in conversations with family, friends, or neighbors who are MAGA-adjacent but no longer all-in for Trump due to the threat he poses to democracy. Include evidence of Trump’s promises to do away with the Constitution and remake the American government into one that must show fealty to him, not them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025). And frame those conversations in terms of personal liberties, not pressing allegiance to the Democratic Party, for example, but rather to vote for Biden just once this time because of Trump’s threat. 

• Engage actively with the electoral process.  Go to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) website (https://democrats.org/) and choose among the options for volunteering, maybe opting to get out the vote in a neighboring purple state if yours is reliably blue. For example, I live in reliably blue Illinois, so could help out in Wisconsin or Michigan where the outcome is less predictable.

• Donate money to the DNC – either by making a general donation whereby the DNC determines where your money can be best spent or by targeting where it will go yourself, such as to help out a Senatorial candidate in a red state, like Jon Tester in Montana (https://secure.actblue.com/

• On election day, volunteer to work at the polls as part of the voting process, handing out information or driving voters to their polling places.  Again, going to the DNC website can connect you to the right people to make this happen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025). 

It’s all of a piece of the wise advice for which former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is famous. Even after she saw her Speaker’s office ransacked and befouled with human waste on Jan. 6, Pelosi urged Americans: “Don’t get mad, get organized.”

I agree. Just as Trump is angry, let’s get angrier — and put an end to the ransacking and befouling of America on Nov. 5. 

–trg

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