I haven’t written about Donald Trump for months. He’d become a tiresomely easy target of ridicule for his lame and baseless attacks. Sleepy Joe. Crooked Joe. Even Traitor Joe. But then President Biden himself became too easy a target. While recovering from COVID, the onset of which may have impacted his disastrous debate performance, Biden realized that the issue of his advanced age wasn’t going to go away.
So he did the right thing – putting the country ahead of himself.
It was a brilliant Sunday, July 21, our wedding anniversary. We had just settled poolside after a couple of hours on the beach at Cape May, where we honeymooned 40 years earlier. My wife Liz said she had a hunch that morning. Checking her iPhone as our drinks were delivered, we got the breaking news: Joe Biden was stepping aside for re-election, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Trump became vulnerable in a Rehoboth Beach minute. (That’s where Biden made his announcement.) Joe is a name Donald can pronounce. Kamala, not so much. Though I’m sure his mispronunciation is as purposeful as his lies about her. That she never declared herself black until it became politically advantageous. That she’s too stupid to pass the bar exam. Be careful, Donald, about projecting too obviously. You have lots of experience being the dumbest human in the room. If Kamala couldn’t pass the bar exam, how did she become attorney general of California?
But that’s only the beginning of his desperately demented attacks on a rival. He knows his stay-out-of-jail-free card is now in serious jeopardy. But instead of taking Harris on as a candidate for president, he makes up crazy stuff. From cat ladies – women who never bore children of their own – I’m not aware that’s a crime or any of your “damn business,” to quote Kamala’s running mate, Tim Walz. From there he goes on to preposterous stories he heard, possibly from Laura Loomer, a conspiratorial lunatic banned from many social media sites, about Haitian immigrants – black, of course – eating pet cats and dogs. Donald’s running mate, Senator (Jr. Varsity) Vance, admitted he helped spread this lie in order to get the attention of mainstream media that pay no attention to their case against Kamala. Such as failure to birth children of her own?
Or how about that Democrats promote violence in the campaign more than Donald does? Veep Wannabe Vance keeps the score at 2-to-zero owing to two assassination attempts against Donald vs. none against Kamala. What? Is he rooting for some MAGA maniac to take aim at Harris? With no evidence – that never stopped Donald from spreading unsupported theories – I wouldn’t be surprised if the most recent golf course assassination attempt was faked. How did the suspected would-be assassin know Donald would be on the course that day? Donald cares most about crowd size and poll numbers. The first assassination attempt, which obviously could have ended him, boosted his poll numbers just before the GOP convention that cemented his nomination for president.
Assassination grievance. Is that all they have? So Trump and Vance try to take down Harris by calling her a Communist, child sex-trafficking Democrat, and, oh yes, that she’s not authentically black or Asian. For the life of me, I can’t see why anyone who hasn’t been brainwashed would listen to this SLAT (Sorest Loser of All Time) ever again. He is running for president to avoid prison and if he were to be elected again he would seek to destroy America as we know it.
The Parks family on my father’s side is at least 12th-generation American. But we’re still descendants of immigrants. So I suppose Donald would try to have us all deported because he doesn’t like our politics. I’m not exaggerating the danger here. The Trump-McConnell Supreme Court gives Donald, as president 47, immunity to virtually any crime against humanity and the Constitution he could imagine.
Donald is an intellectually lazy slacker with an obsessive talent for promoting himself. He is purposely ignorant due to his aversion to reading or listening and he would do anything to get even with those who have exposed him as a shameless sociopath.Who speaks ill of the dead so glibly? Who has the obscene gall to call military heroes who died for their country “suckers and losers.” And even worse, he said that to his White House chief of staff John Kelly at the foot of his son’s Arlington National Cemetery grave.
That. alone, disqualifies him to ever again be our commander-in-chief.
Think of it: He would deport several million undocumented immigrants, but maybe also those legal Haitian “kitty and puppy eaters.” Who will replace all those employed and tax-paying immigrants in landscaping and upkeeping your property or working in factories to prepare your chicken parts and such? Under Project 2025, proto-Nazi Stephen Miller – his own family disowns him – would also “denaturalize” American citizens he and Donald don’t like. Miller has Trump’s ear, which puts the diverse and dynamic America we love at risk unless we defeat Donald fair, square and decisively.
Waves of immigrants of all ethnic and racial stripes have made the American meld the envy of the world. We are already and have long been great. If there is chaos at our borders, it is because America remains a shining light. That doesn’t mean we should leave our borders unprotected. But the No. 1 enemy of protecting our borders is Donald Trump, who abused his reign over Republican sycophants in Congress to defeat a comprehensive immigration bill favored by the most conservative Republicans in the Senate just because it would take away his favorite campaign issue – black or brown immigrants at our southern border.
That seems to prove Donald Trump doesn’t care about you and me – only himself. But beyond all that, Donald is not even a decent human being. Who speaks ill of the dead that you know? Who says of women he’s accused of sexually abusing that they’re too unattractive for him even to try to “seduce”? And now he says that if he loses the election it will be the fault of Jews who “vote for the enemy,” meaning Kamala Harris, adding that Israel will cease to exist in two years if she is elected. More likely, American democracy will cease to exist if Trump is elected.
He’s even said out loud that there won’t be a need for any more elections after he wins this one in November.
While defeating Donald Trump is the No. 1 priority in the election just ahead of us, the best way to assure that Donald can never run for office again is to deny any lane of power in the federal government for what was once a loyal opposition party that has become Trump’s tool. For Maryland voters that means voting for Democrat Angela Alsobrooks over former Republican governor Larry Hogan for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Ben Cardin who retires at the end of the year. Never mind that Hogan was not for the most part aTrumper. He nevertheless will caucus with the Republican Party in a Senate that would be led by Mitch McConnell should Hogan’s election put the GOP in charge by even one vote. That’s the same upper chamber which conspired with Donald Trump to pack the court with three justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
No matter what you think about abortion, the means by which this court gained the votes to overturn a near 50-year precedent was flagrantly unconstitutional. There’s nothing in law or constitutional edict that supports McConnell’s claim that a twice-elected president of the United States, in this case Barack Obama, had no right to nominate a prospective justice to the Supreme Court in an election year – in this case 11 months before the end of his term. Because the Senate even refused to hear Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, much less bring his name onto the floor for a vote, the president should have single-handedly appointed his pick on the basis that the U.S. Senate failed its constitutional duty to advise and consent on a presidential nomination. But I understand why Obama may not have seriously considered that tactic. It was widely assumed by everybody, including then-FBI director James Comey that Hillary Clinton would be elected. And she might have been except that Comey reopened the email investigation of her laptop barely 10 days before the election. Nothing came of it and we can only assume that Comey announced he was reopening the case to cover his ass with the Republican Party.
Thereafter, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed by the Senate despite credible testimony by a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by him in high school. Finally, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed as Supreme Court justice on Oct. 25, 2020 – again just 10 days before the presidential election. Of course, Mitch McConnell had no problem with allowing Trump to nominate her in an election year because, well, the president was Republican. You see the problem here with expecting Republicans in the House or Senate to do the right thing. They do what they can get away with – which is plenty if you hand them the majority. We can’t risk that – whatever you think of Larry Hogan as a worthy Senate candidate. If the House had anything at all on Biden, you think they wouldn’t have impeached him already? Standing up for the rule of law, Joe instead said he would not pardon his son if he were convicted of a felony to which Hunter has essentially pleaded guilty.
Don’t forget to look down-ballot whenever you vote – whether early starting on Oct. 24 or on election day Nov. 5. Everything you care about may hang on keeping Republicans out of power until Trump is out of picture – for good. He’s in no position to “rig” an election – which is what he accuses Democrats of in advance. He’s not the president as he was in 2020.
Joe Biden is still president until noon on Jan. 20, 2025. The Supreme Court has given him immunized power to do whatever it takes to coerce those who would refuse to acknowledge certification of the election of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on Jan. 6, 2025. And if Trump tries to start a riot outside the U.S. Capitol, he will be arrested. Count on it.
No problem. He would never show up for Kamala’s inauguration anyway.
Steve Parks
Easton
Fiery, comprehensive piece – thank you!