Dump Trump?

It took me awhile to cotton to the idea of Donald Trump in the White House in 2016.  Like many, I was put off by his brash, vain and unpolished style.  But as a disaffected voter, I gave him a second look during the convention when he announced, “I am your voice.”   Like most Americans, I felt that Washington had become completely unmoored from the electorate and that the country needed someone that was not beholden to any particular interest group, someone that could shake things up.  And Trump delivered on a multitude of fronts, from curtailing the bureaucracy, to pushing back on China, to browbeating the Germans into stepping up their defense commitments, to killing Soliemeni, to the Abraham Accords, Trump showed some real moxi and courage to do some things that needed to be done.  His greatest gift was spotlighting the necrosis that had settled in D.C. and the toxicity of the press.   At the outset of Trum’s presidency, cartoonist Scott Adams correctly predicted that, “Trump will do a lot of things you like.  But it won’t be cost free.”  I was along for the ride, but fully expected to tire of him at some point.

I have tried very hard to view Trump differently and be neither an acolyte or a Trump hater, and assess his performance fairly and within a historical context.  It is enormously difficult to make fair judgments about him, as the media and the agencies distort and lie, and most of my friends and acquaintances fell into either camp.

Again, as this election cycle begins, I have  some misgivings about Trump, and I try to organize them here.

Age
While we are focused on the age and infirmity of Joe Biden, his obvious descent into dementia that is frightening given the challenges we face internationally, but Trump is 76.  I have great trepidation that we are descending into an ossified gerontocracy just as the Soviets did just before its collapse.  As someone that is north of 60, I understand that our job now is to prepare the next generation to take the reins.  It’s their country, or will be soon.  We are being led by Dementia Joe (80), Chuck Schumer (72), and until recently Nancy Pelosi (83).  Dianne Feinstein (89) is still clinging to her job as is Chuck Grassley(89).  While he is still vibrant and energetic, this nation seriously needs these elderly scions to step down and make room for the next generation. 

Personnel
This is a tough one because Trump, as an outsider, didn’t quite know who to trust, and he is particularly bad at hiring lawyers.   Five minutes with Michael Cohen should have been enough to determine that Cohen was something you would fish out of the bathtub drain trap.  Same for Anthony Scaramucci.  He also failed to fire people that he should have dismissed much, much earlier—Jim Mattis, for one.  And the most costly for Trump and the nation—Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Jim Comey.   Taken together, those three inflicted more harm on the country than a nuclear explosion in a medium sized city.

Perhaps one of Trump’s worst flaws is his failure to discern people to whom he owes some loyalty.  Sure, Jim Mattis, John Bolton and Bill Barr turned on him.  But he threw Michael Flynn to the wolves from the outset, and disparaged Steve Bannon (whether you like him or not).  His recent disparagement of Kayleigh McEnany.   She stood by him, was smart and well prepared, and faced the hyenas in the press corp day after day.  Trump had no business publicly rebuking her.

 

Discipline
Trump has very good instincts, especially in foreign policy.  But his lack of discipline has been very costly.  He picks fights with people that he doesn’t need to engage with.  He prides himself in being a great counterpuncher—and he is.  But the forces arrayed against him, especially in the security agencies are formidable and smart.   This most recent indictment was an unforced error.  Yes, this indictment is an aspect of the abuse of the justice system to derail a presidential candidate, but Trump opened the door with his carelessness.  As was his criticism of DiSantis for how Florida handled Covid.  Trump unnecessarily alienated white suburban women, a constituency that would likely have pushed him over the top in 2020 had he moderated just a bit.

So yes, these are defensible reasons to dump Trump.  And I’m sure there are others that I have missed.  As a fiscal conservative, I can also argue that he did not pay enough attention to spending and the deficit as I would have liked. 

But none of these possible objections matter now.  After the indictment of Trump, an obvious political move to take him off the game board, attempting to deprive the American citizens of making their own decisions on him.

It’s fair game to raise issues of Trump’s sloppy handling of some documents.  But to prosecute Trump for the same things Clinton has done, Obama has done, and Biden has done is a bridge too far.  And that’s only the beginning.  The Clinton influence peddling and money laundering through the Clinton Foundation, the Biden family corruption that took those techniques and raised them to a new level, filtering funds through a labyrinth of entities to enrich his family…and of course, the infamous Biden laptop.   Add to it the financing of BLM and Antifa and we can see that equal application of the law has completely broken down.

I am not alone.  There are millions of people like me, that see Trump’s positive attributes as well as his deficiencies.  The decision of whether to put him back in the White House belongs to us, not the Department of Justice, or any local petty DA.

As the jackals in the corrupt justice system, media and in his own party (Haley, Christie) circle to take him out, he may be the only leader strong enough to push back on the Deep State and the Marxism that have a stranglehold on D.C.   

In normal times, there would be enough reasons to turn to someone else.  Now is not that time.