Loose Leaf Notes

Following the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden decisively won the electoral college and more than 5 million more popular votes than Trump, the few Trump voters that I’ve spoken with seem incredulous that Trump lost the election. They deny he lost and parrot his baseless claims about widespread voter fraud, even though national, state and private election officials, the Department of Homeland Security and the top federal cybersecurity official have stated that it “was the most secure in American history,” and extensive research shows that voter fraud is very rare.

Trump is known for making preposterous claims, starting with the size of his inaugural crowd and claiming that Clinton’s popular vote win in 2016 were votes stolen from him. Legal experts have referred to Trump’s current campaign lawsuits as meritless, and dozens of judges have already dismissed them for lack of evidence. None of the lawsuits have the potential to change the result of the election, yet Trump and his followers continue to sow mistrust in the election process and have demanded that legal vote counting stop in some states and be counted and re-counted in other states.

Trump’s presidency has shown that he knows more about undoing than doing and about dividing Americans than uniting them. He verifiably lies on a regular basis and perceives the presidency as transactional, partisan and about his own petty grievances.  He punishes “blue states” as if he isn’t the president of the United States. He’s made the U.S. a laughing stock on the world stage, been impeached for withholding foreign aid to get “a favor,” calls Democrats, our allies and the press “the enemy” but kisses up to dictators and allowed Putin to put bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan without any consequences. He has caged kids, abandoned Kurds to be killed and left taxpaid military bases in Syria for Russia to occupy.

Trump undermines our system of checks and balances. He fires honest and experienced appointees and public servants and replaces them with loyalists to do his bidding. He appointed Scott Pruitt, a lobbyist and climate change denier with a history of suing the EPA, as the EPA head, and Republican donor Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General. DeJoy, whose cost cutting measures have degraded the Post Office and been investigated by Congressional committees, has no previous postal service experience, just as controversial Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has no experience in education.

Trump has threatened to make the payroll tax reduction permanent, which would break Social Security. He is suing to end the Affordable Care Act and the pre-existing condition protection it guarantees while having nothing to replace it. He’s given permanent tax breaks to the rich and reduced oversight on corporations that already get corporate welfare. He’s hurt manufacturing and farmers with his tariff wars and is now subsidizing farmers with tax payer money. He’s blown up the deficit and his record on the economy is mostly hyperbole. It was the Obama/Biden administration that brought the country back from the economic collapse created under President Bush and Trump rode on those coattails.

Trump tweets, watches TV, golfs and barely does anything that isn’t a photo-op. He spreads false narratives and has retweeted QAnon conspiracies. He’s embraced the “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, which included marching neo-Nazis. He embraced as “very good people” armed protesters who stormed the Michigan Capitol after he told them (his base) to “liberate” the state. Later, he had nothing to say when some of them planned to kidnap that state’s governor and threatened to kill her. He embraced his supporter who killed two people at a protest in Wisconsin, inflated the threat of Antifa, activists who protest fascism but don’t kill people, while remaining silent about white supremacists who regularly do.

Trump has totally mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic which has cost more than 250,000 American lives (and counting) and has led to economic crisis.  He played favorites with red states and then urged them to open from lockdowns too early, left governors on their own to bid against the government for medical supplies, undermined health experts, made fun of people wearing masks and hosted super-spreader rallies and events at the White House.

Ironically, Trump has manifested the U.S. carnage that he raised as a scare tactic in his inaugural address. It has happened for real under his watch. For all these reasons and more, the majority of Americans have voted to fire him. He has no one to blame but himself.