It has been said that you will see everything if you live long enough. Well, I guess I have lived long enough to see things I never thought I would see. The assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy. The Vietnam War. Watergate and the resignation of a one-time very popular president. The taking of American hostages in Iran. A sex scandal inside the White House. 9/11. Two impeachments of the same president. The unbelievable seizure of the Capitol on January 6. I am sure I have missed something. But today, there is one thing I never thought I would see: a former president on trial for a series of criminal offenses. I am talking about Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has a legion of followers who love him. He has taken control of the Republican Party, and almost all of the republican members of Congress consider themselves Trump loyalists, afraid to do anything that would displease him. However, there are many other folks, some political people, who will tell you that they liked much of Mr. Trump’s policies, but Donald Trump the person was a little too much. Name-calling (Sleepy Joe, Crooked Hillary, Crazy Nancy, and Pocahontas), outrageous tweets, and behavior unworthy of a man, a husband, and a president. It is Trump’s behavior that has gotten him in trouble. It is his own doing, and that is a shame.
I really thought that once elected in 2016, Donald Trump would assume the office of president, respect it, grow into it, and leave his past shenanigans behind. Instead, his outrageous behavior only got worse. He won the 2016 election because he was not Hillary Clinton, who was more unacceptable than he was.
Candidates win elections for a reason. A better platform, the opponent is not a serious candidate, or the candidate is not someone who should be trusted with the job. But other times, sometimes, a candidate will get elected because he is not the other guy. Simply put, the other guy is just too much to take. The problem is that the winner of those elections believes he got elected because he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but in reality, he was not.
In 2020, the American people had enough of Trump’s antics and elected Joe Biden president. Joe Biden still does not understand that he won that election because he was not Donald Trump. The American people did not vote to put our nation on a far-left path any more than the election of Donald Trump in 2016 had been a vote to move America to the far-right. In both elections, the winner was not the other guy.
According to current political polling, Americans are not looking forward to a rematch between two unpopular politicians. Unfortunately, this is the reality. It is hard to believe that these two men are the best we have: two old guys, one who appears to be too old for the job and may not be mentally all there, and the other who walks the very edge of decency with a fondness for dictators. What a choice!
Today, Donald Trump is on trial for felony charges related to his payments to Stormy Daniels through Michael Cohen. The press calls it hush money. While press coverage focuses on the steamy part of the payoff and why those payments were made, Trump’s behavior should concern the American people. No one knows how this trial will end, but we all know that Donald Trump will not change.
All this means that whoever is elected president on November 5 will be the candidate who is not the other guy.
