letters2america

Dear America,

 The most frustrating aspect of Donald Trump's ascendance is that he keeps getting caught doing things that should lead to castigation, but he never loses the support of the constituency that let him serve his first term, though he didn't win that election, and then elected him to his second term, albeit by a slim margin.  The first time he was caught being flagrant Trump was when he was taped on "Access Hollywood" talking about grabbing women by their genitals in the belief that there was nothing they could do about it.  But he won anyway.  Then there was the episode in Saks 5th Avenue when he did just that, but years later got sued for it and a jury of his peers awarded the woman he had abused $85 million.  Notably, he never took the stand in that trial (my lawyer's guess is that his lawyers reminded him that perjury is a high crime or misdemeanor) but he continued to call her a liar, and she sued him again...winning another big judgment from him for the relatively trivial commission of slander.  He still got elected in 2024 after those two cases went against him.  There was the porn-star episode, which cost him tens of thousands in the form of a pay-off so the woman wouldn't go public and then the conviction he suffered for trying to cover up the payment in his business records calling it a campaign contribution.  Apparently he did so because he thought it might cost him votes which it apparently didn't because he won anyway.  But in 2023, he was indicted for it and later convicted of 34 felony counts, again by a jury of his peers.  He served no time and won the 2024 election in spite of his criminal record.  Now there's all this Jeffrey Epstein business, and his "base," which includes, it is worth noting, evangelical Christians, continues to support him.  Not only that, his Party, the Repoltroon Party, continues to genuflect when he enters the room and defers to him when he demands something from those of them who are supposed to serve all of us in congress.

I don't understand the blind fealty from which he benefits, and I wonder if there is anything that his constituency would hold him accountable for.  He boasted during the 2016 campaign that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and he wouldn't lose a single vote, and he was right.  His supporters seem to have a moral blind spot when Trump crosses the line.  But now with this Epstein thing, he apparently isn't so confident about the obeisance from which he has benefited in the past, though he is trying to show a brave face.  When the rumors of Trump's possible utilization of Jeffrey Epstein's "social services," let's say, his attorney general was at the center of it all.  First she said of some purported file with a list that Epstein supposedly kept of his "clients,"  that it was on her desk for review.  Then she said there was no list.  But there were files that could be reviewed and made public, which became known despite her apparent attempts to ignore them.  Her subterfuge failed again, and now there is impetus behind the political demands that they be brought out into the light for public scrutiny.  My guess is that Pam Bondi's tenure as attorney general won't be long term, but Trump continues to wear his brave face while he apparently scrambles to find a distraction from the issue.  Now, he has apparently suborned Tulsi Gabbard, his DNI, or Director of National Intelligence, into bringing public scrutiny back to an issue that died a decade ago; Barrack Obama's purported (according to Gabbard) role in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which she suggests never occurred.  But first of all, who cares about that.  Our intelligence agencies found that Russia had done what it could to influence public opinion in Trump's favor, which makes sense.  Apparently Putin saw right away that he could use Trump like a lap dog and thus avoid any complications regarding his own nefarious intentions and actions on the world scene, and Trump proved him right.  Who knows whether Obama directed the intelligence inquiry into the matter, but who cares.  Trump is grasping at straws in order to divert attention from what may be more evidence of his own scandalous improprieties, and I think he may fear that this Epstein thing is a bridge to far for his loyalists, both in congress and in the electorate.  He's obviously scrambling.

Of course he can't run for office again unless he can either get the constitution changed or run a scam campaign as a candidate for vice-president with a presidential candidate like Jimmie Vance who will resign and let Trump become president in lieu of him.  Vance is cheesy enough to do such a thing, but I wouldn't plan on him keeping his promise to do so if I were Donald Trump.  But Trump could still be impeached...again, and I think he has done enough dubious things that a high crime or misdemeanor could be found in it all, or if not, will be committed by Trump soon: that is his wont.  I really do think he is scared and he is reaching for anything to get Epstein out of the public consciousness.  He's even given up on Bondi and recruited another shill to do his dirty work, he's that desperate.  We'll just have to see how it goes...and keep our fingers crossed like Trump is doing.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

 I don't recall the Republicans wringing their hands over Trump's loss in 2020 the way that the Democrats did in 2016 and are now after the 2024 election.  Trump lost in 2020 no matter what the bloviator in chief insists, and even though they failed to retake control of The Senate, the Republicans concentrated their puling on the fraud claims despite the complete lack of evidence to support it.  They simply went forward and when Trump declared he intended to return for 2024, they missed not a step in moving toward what ultimately became their victory: Trump beat Harris, the Republicans retook the Senate and, while their hegemony in The House turned out to be by as slim a margin as would allow them to maintain control, they wound up in complete control of our national government.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are doing their own puling about their loss in 2024 as they did in 2016, but just as was the case in 2016, they are misguided in doing so and thus failing to appropriately survey their party and capitalize on its strengths.  Don't get me wrong; there are reasons for Democratic hand wringing, but they are behind us, not an element of the future.  For example, Joe Biden is probably the central cause of the Democrats' losses in both the executive and the legislative branches.  His procrastination in facing what would have certainly been his humiliating defeat in the presidential election cost the Democrats the opportunity to nominate a formidable candidate to run against Trump.  Because he saw the light just a little more than a hundred days before the election, Harris took the nomination by default, and she was clearly not the best choice for the party.  Of all the dubious claims Trump made during the campaign, there was one that had some merit.  Harris is not that formidable intellectually.  I don't say that out of spite or even sarcasm, but I remember her on a senate committee questioning a Trump operative and asking him about conversations he had had with a group associated in some way with Trump and asking the witness if during his interview with them they had "inferred" anything on a given subject.  What she meant was implied, or even intimated, but not inferred.  The point is that much of what she did to evince formidability as a senator was superficial, not substantial.  That showed in the way in which she clung to her allegiance to Biden when it was at best imprudent, and in her reluctance to be interviewed by the media.  Her weak performance when she finally opted to take the opportunity to demonstrate formidability was more like a death knell than a declaration of adequacy for the challenge that is the presidency.  My purpose is not to be cruel or contemning but rather to point out that Harris' loss wasn't what her party is intimating it to be.  Consider these facts.

Trump has claimed an enormous victory in the 2024 popular election, but he beat Harris by less than Hillary Clinton beat Trump by.  Biden, on the other hand, a somewhat compromise candidate as a function not of superiority but rather of political savvy in his campaign organization and the concession (on which he tried to renege) that he was a "transitional" candidate, beat Trump in what looks in retrospect like the landslide that Trump claims, but never won, over Harris.  And all the while Trump ignores the fact that if he trounced Harris, Clinton trounced him, and we all know how Trump hates to admit when he loses.  But setting the Trump debacle aside, Clinton won everything in 2016 but the electoral college, and the Democrats gained seats in both houses of congress, so while her party was whining about the future of the party, the effect of their effort was to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Similarly, in 2024 when the Democrats were hamstrung by a leader afflicted with an unmerited ego, the reason that their presidential opponent won was probably by default rather than the merit of his ideas.

The fact is that the income divide between the top of our economic pyramid, overpaid corporate executives for example, has grown under Republican leadership to the point that those who actually work for a living can't earn an adequate wage because the plutocracy controls everything from the board room to the annual corporate share holders' meeting by dint of law that locks them in when votes are taken.  The most remunerated executive in this country made $6.7 billion last year.  That's obscene, especially when you consider that the people who keep their houses clean can't afford houses of their own.  Democrats should be talking about that.  And the insistence of the Republicans on further fattening the purses of those rich and powerful gluttons by reducing their taxes does not redound to the benefit of anyone other than the greedy who already can't spend all they have but who insist that they get more, including Donald Trump and his meretricious sons.  That's another point the Democrats should be making.  And this business about the disenfranchised middle-class work force who think that the Democrats have done them no service is nothing but self-serving drivel propounded by those who can't come up with a better campaign strategy.  All in all, what the Democrats' ineptitude at this point in time demonstrates is that they insist on keeping their heads up in a very dark place, if you know what I mean, and refuse to go out and make the point: the other party is robbing the people blind and running up the kind of debt for us as a nation that almost crippled Greece a few years ago.  Trump once declared himself the "king of debt" as if going bankrupt and leaving others holding the bag is some kind of virtue.  Why don't you make that point, Democrats?  And there're lots more where those came from.


Your friend,

Mike