After last week’s column detailing only a fraction of the grotesque corruption Trump and his familiars are getting away with, I heard from a sometime commenter. “The most corrupt administration in US?!!,” he wrote. “Laughable! Thank God for President Trump. No he’s not perfect but the Biden and Obama administrations absolutely corrupt and throw in the mainstream media, including the Herald and the propaganda they push against America and you got corruption, buddy. At least Trump is standing up FOR America which is why the MAJORITY voted for him.” (sic)
I requested examples of Biden or Obama’s “absolute” corruption and for evidence of Trump being “for” America as opposed to only himself. I also pointed out that whereas Trump did win the last election, the majority of votes went to others. On the assumption he can’t differentiate between news and opinion, of which the Herald provides a variety, I didn’t ask for examples of its “propaganda against America,” of which there are none.
I guess he’s still formulating an answer.
His comment helps us understand Texas Republican primary results for US Senate. Longtime senator John Cornyn, a vanilla Trumpist who tried to get a Texas highway named after him but failed to grovel enough, lost to AG Ken Paxton; a man so glaringly corrupt that his own party impeached him and the Republican senatorial campaign committee spent $100 million to defeat
him.
After a last-minute endorsement from Trump, he crushed poor Mr. Cornyn. After which the Republican campaign committee endorsed him. A serial adulterer and liar, an unethical scammer still under indictment, and first-order election denier. Sound familiar?
Two possibilities: either Texas Republican voters limit their news to Foxoid sources and haven’t heard about Paxton’s and Trump’s transgressions, or they know and consider them reasons to vote for them. Not despite. BECAUSE. The choices are equally damning of people still supporting Trump.
In the case of my commenter, it must be a bit of both. Bombarded for years from Fox with “the Biden crime family,” he swallowed it without chewing, despite, after years of “investigations,” having been shown no evidence of it. Fobbing off Trump’s self-dealing, lying, and illegal billions in family-enrichment as “not perfect,” the only inference is he’s okay with it. Admires it, probably.
To comprehend Trump supporters’ mentation, consider the latest verbal atrocity spewed by Deputy Chief of Staff and co-president, Stephen Miller: “The American people understand the hell that we inherited and the extraordinary paradise that President Trump is building.” That’s “climate change is a hoax” level lying. “Iran was weeks away from a nuclear bomb” b.s. “Nothing less than absolute surrender” narcissistic puffery. It’s the kind of barefaced, transparent lies away with which the Trump administration gets, daily. Not only gets. Has them amplified by rightwing media, hourly.
Here’s Miller’s “inherited hell”: Post-Covid, the lowest inflation and fastest-growing economy of any nation. More job growth than any previous president, most small businesses being created. Infrastructure being rebuilt. Reversed Trump’s Covid incompetence. There’s lots more. (I’ve been urged to dispense with fact-confirming links, but readers can easily find them.)
And Trump’s “paradise”? Soaring debt; an unending, unnecessary war based on a lie; accelerating inflation, especially food and gas; depletion of our military assets; handing world leadership to China; fulfilling Putin’s dream of weakening NATO; creating – deliberately – the most political division in our country since the Civil War, right out of the fascist playbook; and, to beat a moribund horse, wallowing in the most government corruption we’ve ever seen.
I’d have listed spewing hate for anyone who doesn’t support him, punishing dissent, and turning his DOJ into his personal Stasi, but MAGAs see those as positives. Same with his nightly barrage of repetitive grievances, childish name-calling, and pathological lying.
It’s unsurprising that Stephen Miller, as loathsome a person as ever slithered the earth, produced the foregoing outrage, or that he assumes people will believe it. Nor, by now, is it surprising that they do. MAGA news sources are built around the concept that if a lie is repeated often enough, it’ll be accepted as truth.
It’s how my respondent can assert, with certainty, despite being unable to produce examples, that Presidents Obama and Biden were more corrupt than Trump. That kind of unquestioning credulity bodes ill for our republic, the survival of which depends on citizens’ ability to think.
But let’s end on a happier note. As Trump systematically destroys America’s efforts to study and mitigate climate change, other countries are filling the void. Australia has become a leader in solar power and, addressing sunshine’s inexplicable absence at night, its homes are increasingly equipped with high-capacity storage batteries. Elsewhere, Türkiye, where I just was, is creating massive solar farms, and, by law, manufacturing equivalent batteries to go with them. Several European countries are approaching 100% clean energy.
As Trump’s America, blind to science and averse to facts, falls behind – and not just in sustainable sources -- enlightened world leaders may yet save the day. Addressing climate change elsewhere, it seems, is easier than regaining sanity here.
