Donald Trump Elected President — Assault of Democracy Begins
To the surprise of nearly all political observers, Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States on this day.
Most observers knew, to one degree or another, that he was unfit to be president: on the basis of relevance experience; lack of grounding in issues of foreign policy, economic policy and other issues; personal temperament; ethics, particularly with regard to sexual conduct; questions about his career as a business executive (with many questions raised about his finanical ethics and his actual net worth), and some of his campaign promises (such as building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, which he claimed Mexico would pay for).
But no one anticipated his assault on the foundations of a democratic society which began even before he was sworn in.
The assaults included:
* His persistent lying (which some news media recorded in detail) which reflected a complete disregard for the truth;
* His assault on the news media and his routine habit of labeling news stories he did not like as “fake news;”
* His repeated claims of absolute power as president, which came up in his response to several legal questions that arose as he was president;
* His undermining of the rule of law by personally intervening in criminal investigations and prosecutions, particularly by appointing an Attorney General who acted as his personal attorney by intervening in cases
* His unseemly fawning over the most autocratic dictators in the world, including notably Vladimir Putin, President of the Soviet Union, and Kim Jong-un, Supreme Leader of North Korea;
* His parallel disdain for America’s traditional allies, most notably the countries of Western Europe and the NATO alliance;
* His abuse of the pardon power, which he either used, or threatened to use, or hinted at in important national security-related cases (as in the prosecution of Gen. Michael Flynn;
* His inability to manage the presidency in a professional and effective manner by repeatedly firing top officials such as the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Chief of Staff, and numerous other important positions.
* His elitist and racist disdain for the principle of equality, particularly with regard to equal protection of the law with regard to race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation;
* His endangering of the health of Americans by mishandling the coronavirus pandemic and undermining the confidence of the American people by repeatedly making false statements about the current state of the pandemic and the possibility of a vaccine cure.
* His secretiveness about his personal financial affairs, including notably his refusal to make pubic his federal income tax returns, something that all modern-day presidents have done.
* His degrading of the moral standing of the presidency by arranging hush money payments to a porn star with whom he had had a sexual relationship.
* And more . . . .