In His Own Words

Back in the day, when I thought it was worth my time arguing with people over social media about Donald Trump, I was accused of not thinking for myself, being deeply under the influence of "Mainstream Media" (MSM) and the "Deep State". According to my now former "friends", I was little more than a pawn under their spell. 

It mattered little to them that the real estate mogul turned TV game show host had been on my radar for at least thirty years before he became president, and I would never have voted for him for as much as the proverbial dog catcher, even back when he claimed to be a liberal Democrat. 

My assurances that my opinion of Donald Trump was formed not by the pundits, but by the words coming out of his mouth, fell upon deaf ears. 

While I never liked Donald Trump, his comments during the 2016 campaign only solidified my distaste for him. For instance:

• Speaking of John McCain in an interview, Trump who did everything in his daddy's power to avoid service to this country, said he did not like POWs because they got captured.
• At a campaign rally in Sioux Center, IA he claimed that he would not lose any supporters even if he committed cold-blooded murder.
• In a secretly taped interview with a reporter he spoke of his fondness for grabbing women by the pussy and...
• The most cynical of all, made during his acceptance speech at the RNC in Cleveland in 2016, he said that as a businessman who knew how to "fix" things with politicians, he alone could fix the problems of this country. 

All of these comments would have been deal breakers for me if they had come out of the mouth of a candidate whom I greatly admired, let alone someone I didn't. 

When I pointed these statements out to my former friends, they just brushed them aside and reiterated their point made over and over again by Trump and Fox News, that it wasn't Trump himself that was turning people off to him, but the MSM and the rest. Apparently according to my friends, their man, and the media empire who took it upon themselves to be his mouthpiece, knew more about me than I did.

Such is life in the age of Trump, which we are still sadly living in for the unforeseeable future.

Now we have more of his words to contemplate, courtesy of the journalist Bob Woodward in what is now his fourth, yes fourth publication on the exPOTUS.

This time it's strictly an audio book called, "The Trump Tapes: Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump." In publicizing the book, excerpts were played that exposed in detail things we knew already such as the exPOTUS's extremely high opinion of himself, his criminal malfeasance during the Coronavirus, and his love and devotion to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.

One might say that a good view into his misdeeds as president and psychological study to boot can be had from listening to these tapes in their entirely. But honestly, Trump is not particularly hard to figure out; it wouldn't take more than five minutes of listening to one of his rally speeches (if you can stomach it), to get a pretty clear picture of what makes the guy tick. 

But one thing did stand out to me that proved once and for all that the man should never again be allowed within a thousand miles of the White House. In the summer of 2020, a few months before the election that would unseat him, Woodward asked Trump if should he lose the election, would he leave the White House. First of all, the need for such a question should raise eyebrows. It is a question that has only one acceptable answer: "of course I would", perhaps followed by "why would you even ask such a question?" 

Instead, Trump said he wouldn't comment on that and abruptly but politely ended the conversation.

Much to Woodward's chagrin, he didn't press him on the matter as he rightfully should have in perfect 20-20 hindsight.

The rest is history and if there were any doubt that the "Big Lie" perpetrated about 2020 election fraud was in the works long before the election, those doubts should be put to rest by Trump's failure to answer that softball question. 

Unfortunately, as they have proven time and again, Trump supporters will believe what they want to believe and in the end, Woodward's latest work is not going to change one single mind.

In one week, we will have national elections which if all goes as predicted, will return Congress into the hands of Republicans. Even more serious, several states' elections feature  candidates who are on record as election deniers who could be put in positions such as governor and secretary of state, with the power to cast grave doubt, if not thoroughly reject the outcome of a free and fair election in which they don't like the results. 

If and when that happens, we can kiss our democracy goodbye.

With him or without him, Donald Trump it seems, is the gift that keeps on giving.

Heaven help us.