Month: August 2020

President Trump has turned in the most incompetent and destructive presidential performance ever in the last four years, indeed worse than anyone could have imagined in 2016. As a result, a sizeable majority of Americans are “strongly opposed” to giving him a second term. A majority of the country does not want four more years of a coronavirus response engineered by Trump’s overpowering ignorance and incompetence. They want an end to the scandals, the trashing of American institutions and principles, the steady weakening of the country and precipitous drop in our reputation as a country that can get things done and which actually does have principles. The only way to reverse course is to show Trump the door on January 20, 2021. Four more years of monumental misrule would be beyond catastrophe for America.

Recognizing how widely he is disliked and how likely he is to lose a fair election, Trump by his own acknowledgement is trying to steal the election by defunding the Post Office to prevent mail-in votes from being counted, among other plans. He has set out to undercut postal services in the midst of a dangerous viral pandemic—for the mismanagement of which he bears primary responsibility. Trump’s winning the election in a fair vote is one thing. His blatantly stealing the election is quite a different thing. That way lies violence, insurrection, civil war and secession. The American people won’t stand for such a thing and they will make sure any such usurpation doesn’t last long. No one should even want to be president under such conditions. A stolen election is Nixon’s last year times 10 and then some.

Almost everything Trump says is a lie or (assuming he knows what truth is) a shading of the truth. An excellent book documenting Trump’s lies has been published by the Fact Checker reporter at the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler.  The Fact Checker and his two assistants Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly begin their book, Donald Trump and his Assault on Truth” with a quotation from Jonathan Swift’s The Art of Political Lying published in 1710: “As the vilest writer hath his readers, so the greatest liar hath his believers, and it often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work.” From the start of Trump’s presidency, The Washington Post authors have “catalogued every false or misleading statement he has made.” As of January 20, 2020, three years after Trump took the oath of office, the count stood at 16,241, making Him the greatest and the most mendacious of political liars in the history of this country. “That works out to 15 [false] claims a day. But the pace of deception has quickened exponentially. He averaged about six claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018 and since then 22 a day in 2019,” say the factcheckers.

Trump lies to cover up (among other failures) his sorry leadership during the pandemic. As of August 15^, the U.S. has recorded well over five million cases and seen 170,000 consequent deaths—approximately a quarter of the world total, with only five percent of the world’s population. Were one to look at the scope and moment of Trump’s lying on a scale of artistic political lying, it would not be inappropriate to refer to Trump as the Mona Lisa of political lying. If there were a Nobel prize for mendacity, this politician would win it every year. Nothing he says can ever be believed.

To drive home the magnitude of harm Trump’s lying has occasioned, I turn to Dana Milbank’s August 9 column in The Washington Post, “Suffering the Consequences of Trump.” In mid-March when there was a relatively small number of COVID cases, Trump said that his program was the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history. (Viruses do not have nationalities. Trump now calls COVID-19 the China virus.) Milbank cites an extensive new study conducted by British and Malaysian researchers, rating countries in terms of active cases of the virus, tests, detection, reporting, mitigation and infrastructure. Based on the ratings, countries are assigned a “Recovery Index.” On the Recovery Index, the U.S. ranked 127 of 184 countries. Quoting Milbank, “Here in the United States, testing, isolation and tracing capability lag badly while (as we contemplate opening schools again) Trump falsely claims children are ‘almost immune’ from the virus and his so-called education secretary claims children are ‘stoppers’ of the disease. How was the most powerful and advanced nation on earth brought so low? Of the various possible causes one rises above all: the incompetence and selfishness of just one man.”

There are many reasons for voters to say no to a Trump second term.

• Trump is trying to rig the election by defunding and destroying the Post Office in an attempt to make voting by mail impossible during a deadly pandemic. The Washington Post notes in an editorial on August 14 that rather than helping to make the democratic process stronger, “A desperate demagogic president, behind in the polls, would sow confusion and conspiracy theories, trying to delegitimize in advance any result other than a victory for him. That is what Mr. Trump is doing.”
• Trump is wrecking the effort in this country to mitigate the effects of climate change, thereby ensuring that the world will not be able to mount a defense against this terrible existential threat. The result will quite likely be a fiery end to human civilization as we know it, in a few decades. Trump’s latest move is the repeal of the rules controlling methane leaks during operations in the energy sector. The Washington Post denounced such actions in its August 15 editorial: “With climate change an ever-growing threat, and the United States paralyzed in its response, the willful negation of a useful and obviously needed remedy is perverse almost beyond imagination.”
• Trump endangers Americans by his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic as described above, with a resulting approx. 5,325,000 cases and 170,000 deaths by August 15, most of which might have been avoided but for Trump’s failure to lead.
• Trump has mismanaged our national economy, reducing its operations to near Great Depression levels, and necessitating a long recovery ahead and ultimately a serious effect on the stock market, which is currently holding (at least at the Dow Jones level) close to pre-pandemic numbers on the basis of hope and computer manipulation.
• Trump lies incessantly, cannot be believed and, as a result, has neither the capability nor the credibility to advise and lead the American people.
• As Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose argues, “After nearly four years of turbulence [under Trump], the country’s enemies are stronger, its friends are weaker, and the United States itself is increasingly isolated and prostrate. . . . Most of the world looks at Washington with horror and pity rather than admiration and respect and the one thing many of Trump’s domestic supporters and critics agree to there is no going back.”
• Ben Rhodes, another author of the September-October Foreign Affairs, “agrees that the liberal international order is defunct. Rather than try to revive it, he [Rhodes] warns Washington to shape a new and better one [order] by checking its privilege, avoiding hypocrisy and attacking global inequality.” Obviously, this would have to be done under new management after January 20.

Other reasons: Mr. Trump’s racist and fascist policies and attempted elimination of American democracy; his urging foreign countries to illegally intervene in the election on his behalf; the seemingly daily scandals and endless corruption; his belittlement of women; the degradation of immigration policy into savagery at our southern border with attacks on minority citizens, and policies to eject hard working residents who have lived in the United States for years—but not as citizens—who have nonetheless contributed much to our society and economy. Then, there is the deliberate encouragement of hatred and mistrust among us all.

There is yet one more issue worth discussing here—one Michael Gerson lays out in his August 11 Washington Post column, “See no Russia, hear no Russia.” Gerson writes, “President Trump’s ongoing attempt to dismiss or minimize Russian interference in U.S. elections is self-serving to the point of subversion. It is difficult to determine where vanity ends and betrayal begins.” Trump in public invited Russia to interfere in the 2016 election and in a public press conference with President Putin in 2018 accepted Putin’s denials over the considered consensus view of his own intelligence community. He said, standing beside Putin in front of the world press, “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.” In 2020 he dismissed as a hoax the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia offered bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan for killing American soldiers and refused to even ask Putin about the subject. Gerson asks, “Why has an American president ceased to defend his own country from sustained aggression?” And in the wake of all that had been revealed about 2016, how does the fact that the Russians are doing the same thing and perhaps more in 2020 and Trump’s indifference to such activity square with President Trump’s constitutional oath to protect the nation? Gerson concludes, “As much as anything, this is the reason Trump must be defeated in November.”

America has had many different types of people as her president, but never until now has she had a chief executive who behaves like an employee of the chief executive of our country’s principal enemy. Why Trump’s subservience to Putin? Some have suggested ego, others admiration of dictators, still others speculate about financial reasons. Noting Trump’s refusal to make his tax returns public as all other presidents and presidential candidates in the last 30 years have done, can we assume that Trump and his company are substantially indebted to Putin?

Whatever the cause, think of the terrible influence on the younger generation of seeing our country regarded as a tool of our principal enemy. Think of the impact on the morale of career government officials, indeed on all citizens of seeing our beloved America dragged through Russian mud and not defended by our own president. Such debasement must change and hopefully it will begin to do so after the third of November. Trump’s accession and performance is exactly what Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper, Number 68 warned against in 1788 as one of the greatest dangers that our Republic must always be on guard against:

“Nothing was more to be desired than that every practical obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally to have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our counsels. How could they better gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistery of the Union?” – Alexander Hamilton, 1788

November 3^rd is now not far away. Many fear that President Trump will undermine the integrity of our elections. He knows that a decisive majority “strongly opposes” him and he has refused to pledge that he will accept the outcome of the election, claiming without evidence that it will be rigged. David Ignatius in his July 24 Post column gives some advice on “How to avoid the worst in November.” He advances two guiding principles:

Be prepared. Assume that there might be one or more attempts to overturn or steal the election. State election officials must take every precaution to ensure that every citizen has a safe and secure way to cast his or her vote in person or by mail and also to provide safe, secure and reliable means to accurately and promptly count the vote.

Be patient. It may take a week or more to confirm a reliable national count. Partisans on both sides should remain calm, “law and order—and their essential companion,—justice, will be the people’s friend.

The people have two other allies—the military’s allegiance to the Constitution and the independence of the courts. No matter what president-for-life fantasies President Trump may entertain, the United States isn’t Russia or China. Our top military leaders—from General Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down—have stated emphatically that their oath is to the Constitution, not to Trump. The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. this year reaffirmed the independence and the integrity of our judicial system.

Fellow Citizens, as we consider our November 3^rd elections and its significance, let us remember what distinguishes us as Americans: our adherence to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;—that, to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

And when approaching the voting booth or putting our signature on our mail-in ballot, let us remember Abraham Lincoln speaking on the field of Gettysburg. We must “highly resolve” “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Do these things, trust one another and all will be well.

John Jay

 

I am trying to get inside the minds of congressional Republicans, but it is nearly impossible to discover what is squirreling around in there. Why do they continue to stand behind our President of little brain and no conscience? He may be the leader of the Republican Party, but he also has caused untold numbers of deaths by his ineptitude and apparent lack of interest in the current pandemic. He has disgraced the United States by pulling out of such international efforts as the Paris Climate talks and the World Health Organization, and he threatens to withdraw from NATO.

Perhaps most dangerous for our democracy, he has sent, uninvited, his unmarked stormtroopers deep into some of our cities—far beyond the federal buildings they were ostensibly sent to protect. He has put our elections at risk by concealing the danger of foreign threats and disabling the effectiveness of the United States Post Office just as the pandemic has encouraged the use of mail-in ballots.

Yet, Republicans do nothing. Does their desire for re-election “trump” character, conscience, and the risks to the very survival of our democracy? Where are you, Lindsey Graham? Before his 2016 nomination, you referred to Trump as a “jackass, kook, and race-baiting bigot.” Now you act as if he could do no wrong. Is being re-elected in 2020 more important than saving your country from this would-be autocrat? We are reminded of James Madison’s cautionary note: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. . . . When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, . . . enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” – Federalist Paper, Number 10

Mitch McConnell? Are you hiding behind that mask you have finally donned? Rumor has it that you despise our President. But you are two of a kind when it comes to your sole interest, that of winning at all costs. We are told that you are unpopular in Kentucky and need the President’s coattails to win there. But the rest of us need our country back.

Asked by Anderson Cooper in April 2018 whether he had ever heard President Trump tell a lie, Representative Jim Jordan said, “I have not” and “nothing comes to mind.” He also said, “I don’t know that [Mr. Trump has ever] said something wrong that he needs to apologize for.” Really?

Mitt Romney dares to speak out, and Liz Cheney has risked a dissenting position or two, but most of the rest of the Grand Old Party is not behaving in such grand style as its name would suggest. As Samuel Adams said, “If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest Seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” – to James Warren, October 24, 1780

The President and his party continue to break laws and thwart our venerable Constitution. Who among this faction will have the moral fiber to stand up for our democracy?  Remember Alexander Hamilton, who said, “If  it be asked, what is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a republic? the answer would be, an inviolable respect for the constitution and laws – the first growing out of the last. . . . A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.” – Tully No. III, August 28, 1794

Mercy Warren

As we pass the 100-day mark before the election, President Trump’s political standing continues to grow weaker. A majority of the country has been unhappy with him and his corrupt, incompetent, would-be authoritarian rule since his inauguration in 2017. Now the opposition has become much stronger and opposition continues to grow. Some weeks ago a highly respected poll found that 57% of American potential voters oppose him and 49%-—an unprecedented number—“strongly” oppose him. His management of the coronavirus pandemic has been catastrophically inept. The United States, with well more than four million cases and more than 150,000 deaths, except for Brazil whose leader is a Trump clone, has managed the pandemic—with all of our scientific talent—worse than any other country in the world. America is no longer admired and is pitied around the world. Former Vice President Biden leads Trump nationally and in some of the swing states by double digits. Trump appears to be on track for a significant defeat. Trump is doing many things to try to counteract what is likely to be the will of the people on voting day.

Since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter peaceful demonstrations around the country—demonstrations responding to the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis and many previous such incidents—Trump has been scheming to utilize the protests to improve his political prospects. His initial idea was to use U.S. professional army units in cities around the country, while declaring himself the law-and-order president, saving the cities from violence. But the Pentagon and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs declared that to be inappropriate. So, Trump signed an executive order mobilizing Federal Marshalls, border guards and such other forces—mostly housed in the Department of Homeland Security. But, by this time, many of the demonstrations had ceased. When he discovered longer running demonstrations in front of federal buildings in both Portland and Seattle, Trump and his administration—with the strong support of Attorney General Barr—put together what they called “Operation Diligent Valor” (to make the exercise sound like a battle) and dispatched federal agents. Largely from the Department of Homeland Security, these federal agents were dressed in camouflage uniforms and armed with tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray. They were initially sent to Portland, Oregon to “protect” the federal courthouse, in front of which there had been 49 consecutive days of protests—almost entirely by white protestors with very few people of color. Ironically, by the time the so-called “troops” were there ready for action in the latter part of July, the protests had almost died out. But the presence of federal agents in combat camouflage uniforms, snatching up protesters in unmarked cars and firing tear gas and rubber bullets vastly increased the intensity of the protests. Many were tear-gassed, including the mayor. A Navy veteran who had walked toward these threatening visitors asking them why they were violating the Constitution was clubbed and a peaceful protestor was shot in the head by the “troops”—perhaps with a rubber bullet—causing a skull fracture, which necessitated his being rushed him to the hospital.

Trump exulted over Mayor Wheeler’s being tear-gassed, as one might over the capture of a major terrorist. Elsewhere the reaction to the federal troops was intense and wholly unfriendly. Larry Tribe, the famous constitutional lawyer, called the agents “storm-troopers” in a tweet, thus evoking Nazi memories. Before and after he was tear-gassed, the Mayor demanded that the federal troops end their “occupation” and Governor Kate Brown stated publicly that the presence of the “troops” and their ruthlessness only “escalated” the confrontation, throwing “gasoline on the fire.” Even after their arrival, the demonstration remained overwhelmingly peaceful though the federal forces maintained a drumfire of tear gas and less-than-lethal munitions. In the end, all that the federal forces accomplished was to greatly increase the size of the crowd. The people saw their city—or at least the limited area surrounding the federal courthouse—invaded.

Sean Hannity of Fox News declared that Portland looked like a “war zone” and Tucker Carlson of the same network pronounced Portland “destroyed by the mob.” They talked this way because they didn’t go to Portland where everything remained peaceful except a few blocks around the courthouse. Had they gone, they would have seen the “Wall of Moms”—mothers, arms linked, surrounding the protestors, a feature one doesn’t often see on battlefields. The Governor continued to express her unhappiness, “We cannot have secret police abducting people into unmarked vehicles… This is a democracy and not a dictatorship.” Finally on the July 29 Governor Brown negotiated the withdrawal of the federal “troops” and they prepared to leave for Seattle, another city where Mayor and Governor don’t want them. “So let’s be real,” wrote Nicholas Kristof in his New York Times column of July 26 titled  “Portland’s ‘War Zone’, Troops Menace.” “Trump isn’t trying to quell violence in Portland. No, he’s provoking it to divert attention from 150,000 plus COVID-19 deaths in the United States. He’s tear-gassing peaceful protestors to generate a photo op—and he’s doing this every night in downtown Portland. This is a reckless campaign tactic to bolster his own narrative as a law-and-order candidate….”

Other mayors and governors around the country have publicly told the White House not to send “troops” to their city or state, reminding him that that we live in a democracy not a dictatorship. Governor Brown’s agreement with the federal officers was based on the assumption that the tension will diminish. The Governor expected them to leave Thursday, July 30 and go on to their next pasture. However, the feds would only leave if the protests have diminished as they see it. The hope is the White House will figure that Portland has been drained of as much political milk as possible.

The New York Times reported that “Portland’s battle-scarred downtown was calm much of Friday (July 31) after federal agents withdrew from the streets where they had faced off with protestors for days…,” just as the Mayor Wheeler and Governor Brown had predicted. It was the presence of the Feds that galvanized the protesters as Trump wanted. The Governor wrote on Twitter “Federal troops left downtown. Local officials protected free speech. And Oregonians spoke out for Black Lives Matter, social justice, and police accountability through peaceful non-violent protest.” The administration will continue to incite violence in cities around the country until election day so that Republicans can pretend to be the advocates of “law and order.”

Republican attempts to disable the U.S. Postal Service is another front in the war of the Trump campaign against the American people. Trump has frequently denounced mail-in balloting as inherently subject to significant fraud. The Covid-19 pandemic makes such balloting essential. In fact, mail-in voting has never been subject to significant fraud and has been used in a number of states for many years. Nevertheless, mail-in voting has been denounced consistently by Trump, with Attorney General Barr supporting such claims in lockstep, thus laying the basis for Trump to refuse to accept the results of the election if it goes against him.

The American system of voting is highly decentralized and this year the election system will be facing intense problems of a new kind given the expected massive use of mail-in ballots due to the pandemic. There are diverse ways that mail-in votes could fail to be counted but, there is one large institution whose performance will be critical to a positive outcome, the United States Postal Service. Some states have a rule that mailed votes will be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day. But the majority of states, including important battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, only count those mailed ballots that arrive by Election Day.

Compounding all of this is the appointment of major Trump donor Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General. DeJoy has cut back on overtime for employees and adopted other measures such as limiting the time the mail sorter machine can be in operation, even though it will likely mean a substantial delay in mail delivery to Trump’s benefit. Steve Coll in the New Yorker Magazine of July 29, 2020 states that “Trump has sought repeatedly to delegitimize the November vote by claiming falsely that mail-in voting is susceptible to significant fraud. His demagoguery and the appointment of Louis DeJoy raise obvious questions about whether the management of voting by mail will be manipulated in the service of Trump’s election.” The same day that this article was released, Trump tweeted, “With universal mail-in voting (not absentee voting which is good) 2020 will be the MOST INACCURATE & FRADULENT election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the election until people can properly, securely and safely vote. ???” Steven C. Calabrese, a Cofounder of the Federalist Society said in response: “Until recently I had taken as political hyperbole the Democratic assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But the latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the President’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and removal from office by the Senate.” The next day the Trump proposal was denounced by Republicans and Democrats alike.

What Trump appears to overlook is that, if there is no inaugurated president sitting in the White House by January 20, 2021, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi automatically becomes president. The Constitution empowered the Congress to set the national election date, which it did in 1845. As president, Trump has no power to set the election date. A federal election can only be postponed by the passage of a law by both Houses of Congress. The 20^th Amendment puts a hard stop to his presidential ter, in any case, on January 20, 2021 at noon. On that day his term ends. And if no one has been elected by then, the Speaker of the House becomes Acting President until someone is elected and inaugurated.

The Washington Post of July 31 noted that no president has ever suggested postponing the presidential election, no matter what crisis our nation happens to be in. When postponement was suggested to Abraham Lincoln, his response was that it would mean that the “Southern Rebellion” would have “Defeated” the American governmental system. When it was proposed to FDR during World War II, his response was to do postpone voting while we were fighting the fascists, would mean that “we had become fascists ourselves.” On July 30^, Senate Majority Leader Mitchell McConnell said, “Never in the history of the country, through wars, depressions and the Civil War, have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time. We’ll find a way to do that again this November 3^rd.”

Trump is claiming untruthfully that widespread mail balloting will lead to fraudulent results in order to lay the groundwork for a refusal to accept election results in November if the vote goes against him. By now, he has made this claim 70 times including 17 times in July. Attorney General Barr supported this lie in Congressional testimony earlier this week before the House Judiciary Committee. Barr told the committee that there was a “high risk” that voting by mail would lead to fraud but, he admitted, he had no evidence to support such a claim. Indeed, as indicated above, the evidence is to the contrary as the United States has been using mail balloting for years.

On the one hand Trump is arguing that the mail ballot is inherently corrupt and a reasonable basis to declare the election invalid. Additionally he is manipulating the United States Postal Service by limiting its funding and placing his stooge in the position of Postmaster General to create sufficient confusion and delay so as to make a mail-in vote unreliable. Attention needs to be paid to this by the Congress and the public to ensure that the postal service has sufficient funds to carry out its duties on a comprehensive, reliable and efficient basis. And the actual mail vote must be protected so as to defend against other Trump anti-democratic tricks yet not known.

Along the same line, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and associated government security officials briefed a number of senior members of Congress on July 31 on the advanced degree to which Russia is currently engaged (once again) in a full-scale effort to keep Trump in the White House. The purpose of such interference is to weaken the United States even more than has been done during the last four years. They undoubtedly are working with Trump and White House staff as the White House would not disclose any specifics about Russian electoral manipulation. It is widely suspected that Trump is seriously in debt to the Russians, a situation building up over many years, as Putin was the only source that would lend Trump’s company money. As a result, Trump has to more or less do what Putin tells him to do over a wide range of national security subjects.

Trump likes to ask foreign states to intervene in American elections in his favor. Indeed, he has asked Ukraine and China to do the same as Russia. Such requests are an abomination and a disgrace. The American people must exert maximum effort to destroy the Russian shackles with which Trump would make America a Russian slave. Here is the importance of November 3^rd: it will show whether we have the strength and determination to drive Trump’s would-be tyranny from our shores and terminate Trump’s corrupt Manchurian Candidate regime.

Trump does not seem to be able to distinguish between lies and truth. He is very anxious to reopen schools to bring more workers back to their jobs and help revive the sinking economy. He regards this as important to his re-election and is not particularly interested in how the health of Americans is affected by such a move. At a news conference on July 24, Trump used a truly big lie reportedly (and ironically) given to him by his Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos. According to the Washington Post on July 25, Trump said, “They do say that [children] don’t transmit [Covid-19] very easily and a lot of people are saying they don’t transmit. They don’t bring it home with them. They don’t catch it easily; they don’t bring it home easily.” The Post mentioned that a large study using contact tracing found that children 10-19 can spread the virus at least as much as adults do and children under 10 are half as likely to transmit the virus. Israel reopened its entire school system believing it had overcome the virus on May 17. After a few weeks had some 1,385 students and 691 staff members infected with Covid-19. By mid-July Israel had closed 125 schools and 258 kindergartens because of Covid-19 infections; in the United States, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported 241,904 children with Covid-19 as of July 16, representing 8 percent of all cases. Trump’s lies don’t seem to affect the virus.

Frank Bruni in his New York Times column of July 26 notes that effectively Donald Trump’s life is simply one continual lie but, it is no longer useful to point this out. He lied without stop during the 2016 election. His inauguration speech was one big lie. His lies only expanded after that. And that is the question at the heart of his reelection campaign. “His strategy isn’t so much law and order or racism or a demonization of liberals as monument-phobic wackadoodles or a diminution of Joe Biden as a doddering wreck. All of these gambits are there; but they spring from a larger scheme. His strategy is fiction. His strategy is lies.” His recent interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News was a “trial run” of this all-out lying approach “up was down, black was white… A superficial check of his cognitive coherence was a profound spelunking of his cerebral glory… He claimed that Joe Biden had pledged to defund—no abolish—the police when it was well known that Biden had done nothing of the kind. He boasted that America’s management of the pandemic made us ‘the envy of the world’ when in fact we’re so densely diseased that we’re banned from entering most of Europe.”

Then Bruni mentions some of his ads. To support his defense of statues; a statue of Jesus is shown. The ad pronounces in bold capital letters: “We Will Protect This.” The only problem is that the statue shown in the ad is the Christ the Redeemer monument atop a mountain near Rio de Janeiro. Another ad shows an image of Trump with the words “public safety” along with a separate image of a policeman crumpled on the ground surrounded by protesters. Only problem here is that it’s not Portland; the picture was taken in Ukraine six years ago. Or, consider Trump’s repeated statement in news conference that he had done more for Black Americans than possibly, Abraham Lincoln. Examples abound.

A similar, but more dangerous, step by Trump and his campaign is his embrace of the fringe, conspiracy theory and organization, QAnon, which holds that Trump is a messianic figure fighting the so-called deep state; that he alone can be trusted; that his opponents include both Democrats and Republicans complicit in wrongdoing and that his rivals are not just misguided but criminals and illegitimate. This wrongdoing includes deep state saboteurs who worship Satan and traffic children for sex. Trump’s agenda for his campaign and his messaging is increasingly indistinguishable from some key elements of these misguided extremist ideas, according to reporting in The New York Times, August 3 article, “Trump, Aides lift extreme QAnon group from fringes”. More and more QAnon is part of the Trump campaign and a political ally. While QAnon supports a salvation, which includes a military takeover and mass arrests of Democrats, they also support the use of hydroxychloroquine to prevent Covid-19 infections and view Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, as a deep state plant. Such allies are attracted to Trump who has been taken over by lies and evil.

In his Washington Post column on July 24 entitled the “King of Lies,” Michael Gerson begins by noting that President Trump “constantly” and “falsely” claims that he is the superlative best over time at nearly every field of human endeavor. Such claims are “shameless, sometimes laughable, often malicious, always self-serving falsehoods. It is reminiscent of Mao Tse Tung being observed late in life by a Chinese reporter swimming up the Yangtze at 45 miles per hour to underscore his continued vitality. Or Kim Jong Il of North Korea claiming to score 18 successive holes in one the first time he played golf. This is all wonderfully chronicled and explained by The Washington Post fact checker, Glen Kessler, and his two assistants in their superb book “Donald Trump and his Assault on Truth.” Lies are who Trump is. Deception is his way of life. “The lies are the shape of the man,” says Gerson. “Their composite reveals a type of truth about his goals and character.”

“But there are practical and compelling civic reasons, reasons that truth makes a difference. As the pandemic has shown, we need reliable information to make national health choices. Deceptive optimism, distrust of experts and the cumulation of myths have a human cost measured in lost lives and delayed national recovery.” With the help of compliant right-wing media, Trump uses repeated lies and conspiracy thinking to create an alternative moral universe for his followers to live in and from which they can serve him. In this universe “the United States is on the edge of ruin by scheming subversives. Political opponents are not fellow citizens, but traitors plotting against the country. Political dialogue and shared democratic purpose become almost impossible. Such distortions are dangerous culmination of polarization—the polarization of truth itself.” Gerson closes by saying, “Reading ‘Donald Trump and his Assault on Truth’ is an exercise in civic awareness. This is what happens when a great many Americans ignore character and dismiss deception. We can’t expect our leaders to be perfect men and women. But we have every right and reason to demand that they are honest and decent. Fortunately, an election result, like a lie can be corrected.”

Frank Bruni takes this important point a little further. “So while this election is indeed a contest between two men with two visions, it’s also something else. It’s the tallest tale Trump has ever scaled, the greatest story ever told. It is a referendum in the reaches of his persuasion. It’s a judgment of the depths of American gullibility. Have we cut the cord to reality? Then Trump has a chance. And America hasn’t a prayer.”

The poem “Invictus” by William Henley describes the state of the solid majority of Americans today who defy Trump: “My head is bloody, but unbowed…I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

In addition, our Founders had a lot to say about these kinds of issues.

“A lie stands on one leg. Truth on 2.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1735

“The first of qualities for a great statesman is to be honest.” – John Adams, 1809

“There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible as he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second or third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1785

“Facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence…” – John Adams, 1770

“I hate deception even when the imagination only is concerned.” – George Washington, 1770

“It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1758

“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that have not the wit enough to be honest.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1740

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied upon to set them right.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1789

“If there be a principle which ought not to be questioned in the United States, it is that every man has the right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs; but it is the only lawful tenure by which the United States holds their existence as a nation.” – James Madison, 1793

“If the federal government shall overpass the bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have found and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.” – Alexander Hamilton, 1788

“If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” – Samuel Adams, 1780

“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1774

“We must support our rights or lose our character, and with it perhaps our liberties.”— James Monroe, 1817

“A people, fired like the Romans with love of their country and their liberty, a zeal for the public good, and a noble emulation of glory, will not be disheartened or be dispirited by a succession of unfortunate events. But like them may we learn by defeat the power of becoming invincible.” – Abigail Adams, 1776

A lady asked Dr. Franklin, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy? A republic, replied the Doctor, if you can keep it.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1787

“That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue… Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves.” – John Hancock, 1774

“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks…” – Samuel Adams, 1771

 

John Jay