This weekend as friends and I conversed about the 2016 election, a person at the next table must have heard a buzz phrase. “Don’t like Trump? Move to Costa Rica or Vermont.” I started to reply, but he muttered something about “fake news,” turned away, and refused to listen.
Trump has set the tone for the 38 percent who ignore reality. Trump now believes the Access Hollywood video, released a year ago, in which he boasts about grabbing women by the genitals, is not authentic. Billy Bush, who interviewed Trump on the tape, says it is real. In 2016 Trump acknowledged, and apologized for, what he had said.
There are parallels to be drawn between other figures in history and Trump. Mao Zhe Dong possibly was as close to a nihilistic solipsist—someone who believes nothing exists outside that person’s self—as any recent World leader. Mao, contrary to popular belief, was not a communist. He glommed onto communism as a means to grab power. On the Long March, 1934-35, Mao was carried in a sedan chair. Once in power, he acquired some 17 palaces. Mao said, “What is good for me is good for China.”
Trump smothers things in faux gold. He views reality through a lens of “self” and ad hoc. In 2016 he admitted the Access Hollywood tape was real because that helped him. A year removed, he denies its authenticity. He pushes a budget that boosts national debt by $1.5 trillion. Trump is no more a Republican than Mao was a communist.
Trump boasts of his huge victory in the 2016 election, the huge crowds he drew for his inauguration, and his fantastic achievements in the Oval Office. If he believes what he says, he is delusional. People who believe his rants merely repeat delusions.
One of the findings adopted by the August, 2017, Russian sanctions bill passed by Congress is Putin planned to influence the 2016 elections. Putin’s goals are to destroy democratic institutions and to destroy the United States. Putin’s interference with the 2016 elections is much greater as a crisis than was Watergate. Richard Nixon’s White House sought to undermine its political opponents. Trump’s people colluded with a hostile foreign power to steal the election, adhered to Russia, and undermined President Obama. Those acts constitute treason.
Some see parallels between Adolf Hitler and Trump, but there is an important distinction. Hitler’s party actually won, by plurality, in the 1933 elections. Hitler was made Chancellor of the Reich. Trump lost the popular vote by some 3 ½ million votes, but took the Oval Office with help from Putin.
Hitler solidified his hold on office through crises. Putin benefitted from a series of bombings shortly after he took office. We only can hope Trump is not allowed to create faux crises to match his faux platinum cuff links and faux gold trappings in the White House.
Our Federal courts possess the equitable power to void the election of a President whose margin of victory was provided by illegal means.” Donohue v. Board of Elections of New York State, 435 F.Supp. 957, 967 (E.D.N.Y. 1976).
An action will filed in a U.S. to set aside the 2016 election results. We face a constitutional crisis like none other in our history. This is a valid legal procedure by which to remedy the injustices wrought by the 2016 elections.
The person who said “move to Costa Rica or Vermont” used a variation of “Love it or leave it,” a phrase of the Nixon era, to which I say: go to the infernal regions.