(The majority of what follows is verbatim from an op-ed in
the WaPo by Greg Sargent. As a subscriber, I can read it, but many who might wish
to see it cannot, so as advertised, this is most of what it says.)
Trump’s
unhinged Twitter meltdown
shows Michelle Obama drew blood.
Me: predictably, following the moving speech by Michelle
Obama at the DNC “mostly video” convention, Donald Trump responded in what
amounts to the only way he knows. I say that because, when he tweets, there is
no one to immediately “call bullshit” when he lies, which is most of the time.
It is unlikely that after the last disaster, when he was interviewed live on
camera and was adrift in a sea of his own falsehoods, pointed out in real time by
the interviewer, that Trump will avoid accountability if at all possible. Mrs.
Obama’s speech was measured, on point and contained factual analysis of the disaster
that is the Trump administration.
After a brief description of the speech, the op-ed writer compares
it to the Trump response, which, as expected, is fraught with outright falsehoods,
He says: Op-ed begins:
“Her case, boiled down, is that Trump inherited a country that, for all its deep problems and lingering inequalities, was on the mend following another previous crisis. Trump proceeded to utterly wreck the place through his incompetence, malevolence, corruption and depraved conviction that stoking as much civil conflict and racial incitement as possible helps him.
Trump’s substitute tale, reflected in a series of tweets,
runs as follows: Trump won the White House only as a reaction to Barack Obama’s
failures — to “the job done by your husband,” as he sneered. Trump then built
the “greatest economy” in the known universe, then voluntarily turned off that
economy in a benevolent and responsible effort to save “millions of lives.”
Now, goes this story, Trump is “building an even greater
economy.” And the real failure in handling pandemics was by “ObamaBiden” on
H1N1. Obama and Joe Biden presided over the “most corrupt” administration ever,
including launching the Russia investigation.”
And the truth:
“Trump’s story is pure disinformation
Here’s the
reality: Trump largely inherited the economic trends he enjoyed for three
years. Trump was compelled into acting on the novel coronavirus only when his
efforts to lie the crisis out of existence grew impossible to sustain. His
dithering helped cost tens of thousands of lives, while the handling of H1N1
was relatively smooth and effective.
The fundamental
premises of his alternate history are rejected by large majorities, who
disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, say it is not under control,
believe Trump acted too slowly on it, view the recovery negatively and
prioritize containing the virus over herding people back to work, which Trump
wants to do.
Which brings us to one last way the former first lady told
the truth: “Right now, folks who know they cannot win fair and square at the
ballot box are doing everything they can to stop us from voting. They’re
closing down polling places in minority neighborhoods. They’re purging voter
rolls. They’re sending people out to intimidate voters, and they’re lying about
the security of our ballots.
And this means:
We’ve got to vote early, in person if we can. We’ve got to
request our mail-in ballots right now, tonight, and send them back immediately
and follow-up to make sure they’re received. And then, make sure our friends
and families do the same.”
After the speech, Trump retweeted a bunch of nonsense
purporting to debunk claims that he’s trying to sabotage mail balloting. But
Trump himself confirmed the truth of her allegation when he said on Monday:
“The only way we lose the election is if the election is rigged.”
Even as the U.S. Postal Service pursues operational changes
that the USPS itself says could delay the delivery of mail ballots, Trump is
telegraphing that he will seek to dismiss all late-arriving ballots as
illegitimate. Meanwhile, GOP lawyers are working to protect laws that will
invalidate those ballots, even if they arrive late due to pandemic conditions
and operational delays — through no fault of the voters.
So, Mrs. Obama’s ultimate claim, stated indirectly, is
right: Faced with his inability to make his catastrophic record disappear with
lies, Trump is plainly persuaded he cannot win a free and fair election. So
he’s trying to corrupt it.
As she noted,
to overcome that effort to evade an uncorrupted election, Democrats may have to
win overwhelmingly. That this may be required is a terrible thing to
contemplate. But that very fact itself stands as searing an indictment of
Trump’s record — and his efforts to evade accountability for it at the hands of
the voters — that anyone could ask for.”
End of WaPo op-ed.
Me: It is truly puzzling to me that any rational human,
aware of the monstrous untruths that Trump has continued to spout can support the
man. He reaches out to so called Christians yet is the most irreligious man ever
to hold the presidency. The tragic truth is that those too blind to realize/admit
what he has done to our nation at home
and, just as bad, what he has done to our relations with the rest if the world,
are blind to these fatal flaws because of
what’s left: Xenophobia and :
White supremacist bigotry. At this point no other
explanation works for the mainstream Trump supporter.
Of course, his wealthy (I almost typed “friends”
but he has none) supporters are themselves on the side of deregulation of many,
if not most, legislative protections of the middle class and the environment.
For them, bigotry, while real, is secondary to the bottom line. All Trump deregulation
is heralded as being “pro-business” and good for all Americans. If reducing
clean water protections is “good” for anyone, I’d like to know who.
As far as
the wild “economy” claims, the list of Trump lies about numbers of “new factories”
and “new businesses” is a matter of record and “fact checked” to death. What
Trump will never admit is that he simply built on the Obama recovery from the
2007-2008 (who was President?) housing bubble fraud collapse. In fact, 2015 saw
record economic growth under Obama policies.
Some of the
mysteries of the current political situation are explained in both John Bolton’s
and Dr. Mary Trump’s books. Bolton describes a loose cannon, poor reader and even
poorer listener, yet convinced he’s always right, and cites the ways this has damaged
foreign policy. Dr. Trump describes in depth the family dysfunction and personal
damage which explains it.
I have asked numerous Trump supporters for a measured,
respectful, dialogue to try to wrap my head around their blind adherence to the
man, even at the price of the US no longer being the respected leader of the free
world. I’m still waiting. It’s almost as if they believe that if they dress in the
right tee shirt and wear the MAGA hat everywhere that it will hide their own innate
flaws.
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