My final Trump prediction
Monday, January 20, 2025, will be a day of pomp and celebration for many. Not for honoring the legacy of a man who’d done so much to bring the United States a small step closer to the ideal of a nation whose citizens are all equal, but for the second inauguration of Donald J. Trump, whose vision of a great America would more resemble the pre-Civil War antebellum south than anything after the war.
Yes, the majority has spoken. Not by the landslide Trump proclaims, but by a whisker-thin margin. Of the 152,322,830 votes cast between them, Trump, who launched his campaign against Joe Biden on November 15, 2022, only just edged Kamala Harris, thrown into the race when Biden unexpectedly dropped out on July 21, 2024, by 2,284,316 votes, a pretty dismal performance by Trump.
In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump by over seven-million votes, to which Trump responded with one of his biggest lies.
But even if all 152,322,830 had voted for Trump, it would not negate the fact that he was elected based on a web of lies masterfully spun by a consumate conman. A lie is a lie, no matter how many can be convinced to believe, and nothing good is ever borne of lies. Trump and MAGA has never been right vs. left, that’s just another ploy to create further chaos and division. It’s about right and wrong.
We are all allowed our own opinions, but not our own facts, a distinction blurred by ten year’s distortion by Trump and his propaganda machine.
It’s ironic but somehow fitting that Trump’s second inauguration falls on the day set aside to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his dream, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” as the entire premise of Trump’s presidencies are to deny that dream.
I do not enjoy harping on Trump and I have never had TDS. I do not hate Donald Trump, Republicans or conservatives. I do take serious umbrage at those who use lies and deception to gain unfair advantage at the expense of others.
I am open to and appreciative of opposing points of view honestly presented, but I am not easily swayed by opinions not based on fact or logic. I am offended by attempts to stifle, to gaslight, to threaten.
On Monday we will at last see the true Donald John Trump, and while there will always be those who will worship blindy at his feet, I think the illusion of Trump’s supposed greatness will shatter fairly soon when rational people see the damage he and his administration is doing, the freedoms they’re losing.
As special counsel Jack Smith noted in his recently released report, “Mr. Trump’s conduct had no historical analogue.”
Based on the evidence, I contend that the conduct of the electorate in 2024 has no historical analogue, though the election of 1860 comes close … I contend as well that Trump’s future conduct is going to continue in that vein, but be far worse ahead.
He’s spent the last ten years broadcasting his plans, his first four in office setting the stage, an unexpected four year hiatus deliberately and falsley spent tearing down and impeding his successor, tearing down the system of checks and balances respected by every president but him, designed expressly to prevent the ascension of a king or tyrant, sowing lies so audacious it’s easier to trust one’s opinion than to try to discern the truth. He’s usurped the Republican party, unbalanced the Supreme Court such that they would violate both the constitution and the law by putting the president above it.
Twice impeached, he convinced Republican senators to spare him the consequences, and his loyal sycophants in both houses to reject the clear and unmistakable directive of the 14th Amendment that no one, having taken the oath of office to uphold the constitution and shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof shall hold any office, civilian or military, under the United States or any state … the same Amendment, by the way, that establishes that all citizens be afforded equal protection under the law.
Donald Trump is the first convict elected to execute the laws of this nation and the first to so egregiously undermine the law itself.
He’s nominated a cadre of sycophants whose only qualification is loyalty to Trump and he’s already drawn up the executive order to fire federal employees nationwide and replace them with Trump loyalists. He promises to be “our” retribution, making clear that “our” means only Trump supporters — everyone else is against him and so an enemy of the state and fair targets for the wrath of the Department of Justice, the FBI and the many of no office still biding time, standing back and standing by, prepared and eager for their master’s call.
“You should be writing nice things about our president,” one reader wrote me. “They’ll be coming after the disloyal, and I’ll be here to point you out!”
I have little doubt of it.
Trump does not see “the state” as the central government of a group of states, each of which made formal petition and was ratified according to the United States Constitution to be part of a union, as did our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. In Trump’s mind, he is the state, his Republican party the beneficiaries. There is room in his state only for the loyal, the sheep.
Faced with a group of rich white Christian slaveholders of 11 states who, fearful of losing their privilege to those who didn’t buy their lies regarding slavery and backed by believers fearful of being replaced, chose to break the bonds of union and their compact with the constitution, Lincoln saw a threat to the constitution he swore an oath to protect and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
“Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all of its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it?” the first Republican president asked. “Will you hazard so desparate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence?”
They did, and Lincoln fought to uphold the constitution and by force of his will, He stood fast and preserved the union.
Faced with a small but loud group of rich white Christian Nationalists clamoring to extend their privilege and influence despite those who see through their hypocricy, and backed by believers fearful of being replaced, Trump saw opportunity and he embraced them. He called them forth and empowered them.
When he lost his bid for reelection, he incited them to insurrection.
And here we are, three days from the onset of what may prove the most contentious and consequential presidential administration since Lincoln’s cry for reason in his first inaugural speech on March 4, 1861. Only this time, it is our president who is the threat to our constitution and there is no one in authority to counter him, to call for reason.
This will be what many up here in Trump country have been begging for — the last of my hate-filled, biased and egregiously wrong-headed opinion pieces about Trump predicting doom and gloom. Whatever I and others write about Trump after his inauguration Monday won’t be prediction, it will be news.
