On October 10, 2008, during the closing days of a presidential campaign that was slipping away from him, John McCain was addressing a town hall meeting in Lakeville, Minnesota when a middle-aged woman told him she was scared of Barack Obama because, “he’s an Arab.”
McCain could have easily let that ignorant slur hang in the air, but instead he corrected it. “No ma’am,” he said, “He’s a decent family man, a citizen, and I just happen to have disagreements with him on fundamental issues.”
In that moment, John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who refused to accept early release unless every prisoner taken before him was also released, established the modern high water mark of American politics. McCain, who died of brain cancer in 2018, was a true American hero, a distinguished U.S. Senator, and a man of impeccable principle and courage. Unlike Donald Trump, who meanwhile dodged the draft claiming to have bone spurs and never performed any kind of military or civilian service, continues attacking McCain today, even postmortem.
“He’s not a war hero,” Trump has insisted. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
How far we have fallen.
During the past decade of his political career, Donald Trump has routinely referred to his perceived political enemies – real or imagined – with an endless string of insulting nicknames. Hilary Clinton was Crazy Hilary, Crooked Hilary, Lyin’ Hilary; Joe Biden was “Crooked Joe, Sleepy Joe, Slow Joe; James Comey was Lyin’ James Comey or Slimeball James Comey; Ted Cruz was Lyin’ Ted; Betsy DeVos was Ditsy DeVos; Nikki Haley was Birdbrain; Kamala Harris was Comrade Kamala or Kamabla; Gavin Newsom was Governor Newscum; Nancy Pelosi was Crazy Nancy; Mike Pence was Liddle Mike Pence; Marco Rubio was Little Marco; Tim Walz was Tampon Tim.
The credentials Trump has brought to the presidency are reputed to be business acumen, toughness, leadership and concern for the everyday working class.
But Trump’s businesses have suffered staggering bankruptcies six times – involving billions of dollars of losses. His short-lived “university” was shuttered in 2011 following multiple lawsuits, investigations and student complaints.
His Trump Shuttle airline ran out of cash and defaulted on its debt after little more than a year of operation. His New Jersey Generals football team folded with the USFL when Trump forced the new league to switch to a fall schedule in direct competition with the NFL.
The Donald J. Trump Foundation was shut down after a suit filed by the New York State Attorney General raised a variety of legal and ethical violations, including self-dealing and tax evasion.
Meanwhile a parade of former political opponents has, at various times, heaped scorn and open hatred on Trump.
Said Lindsey Graham in 2015: “He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party, he doesn’t represent the values that the men and women in uniform are fighting for.”
Said former U.S. Senator, now Secretary of State, Marco Rubio in 2016: “A con artist is about to take over the Republican Party and the conservative movement. He (Donald Trump) has a record of sticking it to working people for 35 years.”
Ted Cruz, then competing to be the Republican candidate for president in 2016, went even further, sounding almost prescient: “This man (Trump) is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies with practically every word that comes out of his mouth …. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. Morality does not exist for him … He’s a serial philanderer. And he boasts about it. If (Trump is elected) this country could well plunge into the abyss.”
And, not to put too fine a point on all this, but it was former Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who is quoted in the 2024 book “The Price of Power,” as calling Trump, “A despicable human, stupid, unfit for office, ill- tempered…”
McConnell also condemned Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, saying, “Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a
disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty … There’s no question, none,
that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking
the events of the day.” And then McConnell voted for Trump again.
And finally, these are the words of Vice President JD Vance, before
becoming Trump’s vice president: “My god, what an idiot …” and, “…I go
back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon, who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful), or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
And just before the 2016 presidential election, Vance told Terry Gross on
Fresh Air, “ He’s talking about the opioid epidemic in a way that nobody
else is. But he’s not going to fix the problem. You know, better trade
deals is not going to make all of these problems just go away … I can’t
stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white
working class to a very dark place.”
What do all of these people have in common, what is the one word that unites them, binds them to each other and links them to the dystopian future unfolding now in Washington, D.C.?
Cowardice. They are all pathetic cowards, unwilling to own their beliefs because they are afraid of the bully they have themselves created by being cowards.
And so, with their cowardly silence, they continue to facilitate the political parade away from democracy and into the dark fog of autocracy and one- man rule.
Be First to Comment