With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard III
As the likelihood of impeachment draws closer, one has to wonder what was Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and others thinking about in their attempt to undermine the candidacy of a political opponent in the 2020 Presidential election? Did they actually believe that a single allegation of corruption would bring down the Biden candidacy and no one would see the incongruity of this notion to Trump's own history of corruptible behavior?
If ever there were a model for the pot calling the kettle black it is Donald J. Trump trying to paint someone as unworthy to vote for. From the early 1970's to the present he has epitomized an unsavory and illicit persona, and it's all a matter of record. From 1973 when the Department of Justice sued Trump and his father for housing discrimination at 39 sites around New York, to the 2005 Access Hollywood tapes and the Trump University scam that robbed students of millions of dollars.
And now he’s embroiled in what’s becoming more and more apparent in a cover up for his part in a deal to withhold military weapons to Ukraine to find unfounded corruption evidence on Joe Biden
Trump has avoided jail time for his past miscreant acts, as many wealthy people are able to do, with a source of wealth that allows him to settle out of court or intimidate plaintiffs with bogus counter-suits. Much of what he's been able to avoid in legal fights results from his tutoring by the infamous attorney Roy Cohn, who had worked for Joe McCarthy and who taught Trump the art of denial, blame shifting and inflating your own importance.
So I am confused why Trump and his coterie would think voters would find that any allegation of corruption as a cause not to vote for someone after many of them did that very thing back in 2016.
As perhaps the most corrupt administration in the last 100 years, Trump’s actions have set a new low for what passes as electability. He has demeaned the press, offended our allies while aligning with autocrats and uses his office for personal gain. Our prestige around the world will take years to recover, especially after he abandoned our Kurdish allies in Syria who fought and died to take out the ISIS terror threat there and giving Russia a foothold in Mideast territory they have heretofore never had. Has the U.S. under Trump gone down the path of other rogue states.
It's inconceivable that voters can be mislead once again after seeing the real Trump these last four years, whose hypocrisy and hyperbole have become legendary outside his staged performance as a reality TV character. But I could be wrong. There is still that disturbing element in his rallies that cheers on the man who once said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”
Can enough voters be fooled twice and allow a double standard to prevail when selecting someone to fill the highest office in the land? The bar has been set low. Our democracy, I fear, is at risk of being lost to those who feel they only have to answer to themselves.
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