WS Chronicle

By Tom H. Hastings

The fake president in the White House is a traitor, a liar, a braggart, and a tool.

Trump is violating the Constitution every chance he gets, profiting from his office, which is illegal. He sells rooms in his hotels to government employees, such as Secret Service, for higher than retail rates. He diverts military maneuvers to force personnel to land sort of near his resorts and then compels them to travel to rent rooms from him. 

These sorts of violations of the emoluments clause seem minor, and perhaps they are in some sense, but they reveal Trump’s bottomless greed and corruption and spoiled brat entitlement. 

Trump actually told a rally of his that he should be the Man of the Year every year, even as he mocked Swedish teenage climate chaos resistance girl Greta Thunberg, who was in fact declared Person of the Year by Time magazine. 

Some of this behavior is illegal and impeachable; much is simply disgusting. That is Trump’s daily regimen, to commit a few revolting acts every day. 

The world understands, the intelligence community verifies, that Putin’s Russia is once again manipulating social media and doing so to attempt to reelect Trump. Trump cannot handle such honesty; he fires the U.S. intelligence official who warns us about that. Traitor Trump. That is his new nickname.

From interfering in the Justice Department on behalf of his criminal friends, and falsely claiming that he is the “Chief Law Enforcement” officer in the U.S., to his petty attacks on anyone who isn’t fawning over him, this morally-challenged man⎯really not a man, just an aged big fat adolescent, if we consider soul and emotional maturity⎯this pathetic dude is just one person. 

The real question for America is, “How many continue to support this bozo? He is a criminal from dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn, and yet there are those–certainly virtually all elected Republicans who value their lives and livelihoods–who continue to lick his boots. 

I am so ashamed of anyone who supports Trump. I cannot believe they call themselves Americans. This is way past partisan disagreement; this is support for a gangster, a thug boss. I guess their only excuse is they are hardworking folk who only have time for one news source and it’s easiest and fastest to choose Fox News, a rabidly pro-Trump, anti-truth, fact-free source if there ever was one. 

Oh, well, we shouldn’t blame folks for not having the time to check it all out. 

Yes. We should. 

In the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, those of us who were working for peace, justice, and sustainability were frequently labeled commies and “Russian dupes.” 

Yeah. We rejected that. We were activists against Soviet domination of other countries; we opposed Soviet violations of human rights. 

We were the ones speaking out and acting in resistance. I personally went, in the winter of 1987, to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. and was arrested for resisting their nuclear weapons pointed at everyone I loved. I was cuffed and stuffed and went to jail for my opposition to Soviet violations of democracy. I didn’t see any Trump-type people doing anything like that. 

As someone who opposed all nuclear weapons, I could not simply resist those of my own government, in good conscience. I needed to act with integrity and resist the Soviet bombs too. So I did. I knew no one in our movement of opposition to the U.S. arsenal that did not also oppose the Soviet weapons. But we see a different and far more dichotomous voter now, Trumpees, who will vote for him no matter how dictatorial he becomes. It’s shameful.

It is proven that Putin is trying to influence U.S. voters to reelect Trump. Anyone who votes for that tool is empowering a traitor. This is getting as real as it can be. As we slide toward dictatorship, we will see who the patriots might be. 

Democracy requires patriots. 

Trump and Putin require stooges. 

This is looking like a jump ball. Those who support Trump are anti-democratic and if they vote for him, they support an end to the experiment the Founders began. We either get involved or we lose more than 240 years of this American experiment in the notion of a three co-equal branch government. Trump’s acolytes are rolling us toward some sort of monarchy or fascist dictatorship. Will his base support that? Will there be enough of us to stop them?

We shall see.

Dr. Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice director and on occasion an expert witness for the defense in court.