Prologue 1: Willingness to Lie and Shock With Abandon

“Trumpism: Why Traditional Republicans Should Withdraw Support” © Tom Ersin 2022. This is the current installment from the serialized publication of this distinctive historical book.

Prologue 1: Willingness to Lie and Shock With Abandon

“The system held but just barely.”

(Lemire, Jonathan, White House correspondent; The Associated Press; 6/28/2021.)

In the last months of the 2016 presidential campaign, my wife and partner, Norma, canvassed for the Democratic Party. She always has paid attention to current events, but what motivated her to volunteer this election cycle — as it did many women and other humans — was the threat of a Donald Trump administration.

Throughout late September, October, and early November she reported to Macomb County Democratic headquarters each weekend in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, was assigned a walking partner and a map, and hit the streets talking to residents for three hours each Saturday and Sunday.

The highlight of her tenure was a drop-in to fire up staff by legendary U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D) of Michigan’s 9^th District in Greater Detroit. She and Sander reminisced about my late dad and cousin working with him on past local party business. Gracing our mantel is a photo of the congressman and Norma commemorating Rep. Levin’s fall 2016 visit.

On Election Day, Nov. 8, all Dem foot soldiers did extra duty, one final push to put Hillary over the top. They knocked on doors from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. At the end of that long shift they retreated to their command center for the last time, cautiously confident.

Upon returning they were greeted with an announcement: Campaign bigwigs were reporting ominous internal exit-polling numbers for the Great Lakes State and they needed all hands for a late surge. Norma and the rest of her crew went back to the streets for another two hours.

The rest is histrionics.

__________

Watergate. The Civil War. These are milestones in history, when American democracy was threatened and stress-tested like few other times in the past 234 years. Until the Trump presidency.

A perfect Stormy of electoral anomalies put Donald J. Trump in the White House Jan. 20, 2017. His supporters will argue against these points until the (pro-Trump shibboleth) “Make America Great Again” cows come home, but it’s clear — crystal — in my mind. The storm’s components? 1) Proved Russian pro-Donald election interference solicited, welcomed, and used by the Trump campaign; 2) FBI Director James Comey’s misguided reopening (then reclosing) of the Hillary Clinton email investigation 11 days before Election Day; 3) a now-exposed last-minute illegal hush-money payment to adult-film actor Stormy Daniels to keep her extramarital affair with Donald out of the grocery-store-check-out periodicals (which in the wake of the Access Hollywood hot-mic recording release surely would have sunk the campaign); and 4) Donald’s willingness to lie and shock with abandon.

The last point cannot be overemphasized. Note that Mr. Trump’s successful propagation of propaganda doesn’t require some form of messaging genius, only the confluence of virtually unlimited funds and vacuous celebrity. The capacity to possess literally zero integrity is a highly effective weapon, inherently immensely difficult to counter. And I don’t use the word literally lightly — or incorrectly.

Donald exploited this weapon, zero integrity, in an attempt to inoculate himself from election loss, which culminated in an insurrection incited by the “big lie”: that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him through (nonexistent) “deep state” voting fraud. Remember that he began this inoculation process during the 2016 campaign, regularly pronouncing that the only way he could lose would be through voter fraud. Though he won the Electoral College, he still engaged the lie to assuage his ego over losing the 2016 popular vote by nearly 3 million. He reprised the only-way-I-could-lose-is-fraud fable in the lead-up to his 2020 race, thus setting the stage to try to retain power illegally after his loss to Joe Biden.

Willingness to Lie and Shock With Abandon

Also because of that last component, willingness to lie and shock with abandon, candidate and President Trump was able to keep his corruption, incompetence, and amorality hidden from his supporters and the apathetic middle, or at least keep those failings consistently disguised and foggy.

He did this in spite of — and because of — the media’s enormous gift to him of free air time: by many expert estimates, several billion dollars in no-cost advertising throughout the 2016 campaign. Nearly all news and quasi-news outlets from the left, right, and middle were guilty. They simply could not take their cameras and microphones off the Trumpian train wreck in progress. And when there was the slightest lull, Donald would steer the day’s news cycle that morning with a new tweet-outrage: a slur, epithet, or conspiracy theory.

“Was Hillary Clinton a crook? Did she really have four Americans killed in Benghazi while she was secretary of state? I don’t know. I’ve heard it so many times there must be something to it. We’ll probably never know for sure.”

“Did Trump really say that as a celebrity he’s able to grab women by the p***y and get away with it? Well, I heard there was a tape but he said it was just ‘locker room talk.’ And now he says the tape was doctored. We’ll probably never know for sure.”

“Did Donald really say that Republican Sen. John McCain, revered Navy pilot veteran who spent over five years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp after being shot down, is not a war hero? Because McCain got caught!? Boy, that’s outrageous but you have to give Trump credit for speaking his mind — no PC crap coming from him.”

Later, during his presidency, Mr. Trump had to marshal his skills to camouflage crimes.

“Did President Trump really use his attorney general as his personal lawyer to lie for him, go after critics, and shield crooked friends so they would protect him? An attorney general wouldn’t be dishonest, would he?”

“Did the president really dangle (and even offer) pardons to keep his cronies from testifying in the Russia investigation? Did Trump really try to extort Ukraine’s leaders to get phony dirt on presidential opponent Joe Biden in exchange for releasing money to them that Congress had approved to fight off Putin’s Ukraine invasions? Well, we know there were witch hunts against Donald — we’ve heard that a thousand times. And Trump and the GOP say none of that bad Ukrainian stuff ever happened. They can’t all be lying all the time, can they? We’ll probably never know for sure. But can any president really be that bad?”

So Mr. Trump’s goal — doubt — is achieved. He can’t prove he’s not dirty, because he is dirty. But he can keep large enough segments of the country uncertain so that they throw up their hands and say, “Who really knows for sure?” As journalist McKay Coppins discussed in his Feb. 10, 2020, article in The Atlantic, “The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President,” autocratic fabulists such as Donald Trump don’t need to crush their critics anymore. They’ve learned to flood the national consciousness with conspiracy theory and other mendacity to drown out truth-tellers and create doubt: “Scholars call it censorship through noise.”

And Donald takes full advantage of the reality in that famous saying: Before the truth can get its Ivanka Brand Women’s Lory3 Ankle Booties zipped up, the lie is halfway around the world.

Multiply that by a swarm of Trump lies circling the globe.

From the Beginning

After Election Day, Nov. 8, 2016, I was in a depressive funk for a month or so along with half the electorate. Immediately after Inauguration Day the excrement started hitting the machine creating airflow: ridiculous, petty lies about inaugural crowd size; disrespect of fallen CIA members in front of their memorial; censorship of EPA employees; haphazard, illegal Muslim travel ban; epithets for U.S. senators and judges. The list could fill books — and it has.

By May 17, 2017, the Justice Department had been presented with enough evidence to warrant the appointment of former 12-year FBI director and unassailable person of integrity Robert S. Mueller III (Republican) as special counsel. The special counsel was commissioned that day to investigate possible conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian nationals to influence illegally the 2016 United States presidential election in then-candidate Trump’s favor. You might remember hearing about Donald famously responding to the news of Mr. Mueller’s appointment: “This is the end of my presidency. I’m f***ed!”

From Day 1, consuming political news became “like drinking out of a firehose,” to quote CNN anchor Don Lemon. By July 2017 I decided I needed to create a record of this presidency. Using my online magazine (don’t call it a blog), GraniteWord.com, I started writing a commentative, observational summary of developments each week without fail until Mr. Trump finished his term.

Do I have opinions? Yes. And I share them often. But more prominent in my comprehensive content is the factual recording of unfolding events. The entire series comprises 160-plus consecutive weekly roundup articles spanning 1,400-plus pages charting the Trump presidency from the perspective of an avid (compulsive?), long-time political news consumer. Think of it as an in-depth every-Thursday recap of all the news you were too busy to consume because you had a life and didn’t realize the gravity of the dysfunction and corruption. It’s all here in one place. When you see my opinion you’ll know it. Much more often, when you see facts, quotations, and details, I’m assuring you that I’ve backed up their accuracy with careful research and citation.

Chronicling History

This is a chronicling of history, a lot of history packed into four years. As I was compiling and editing my weekly commentary and observations, I was shocked to see how much debauchery and depravity I’d forgotten, that had made headlines, was widely decried over a news cycle or two, then had disappeared into the sea of Trumpian profligacy. No regular person could keep track of it all — which is the point, the plan.

In the Superman legend, the only thing the Man of Steel is vulnerable to is kryptonite, remnants of his birth planet, Krypton. But if he’s exposed to a mountain of kryptonite, the deadly effects are canceled. To a corrupt Donald Trump, standard scandal and outrage could be perilous. But he piles on the vile behavior daily — the more opprobrious, the better. Ultimately there is an ambiguous mountain of scandal, outrage, and concomitant denial. The public becomes confused, exhausted, and overcome with false equivalency. And the perilous effects are canceled.

“The president [has] exhibit[ed] his incompetence and depravity in many ways: Russian conspiracy and collusion; pecuniary conflicts of interest; financial corruption; obstruction of justice; racism, nativism, and xenophobia; a cornucopia of other discriminatory beliefs and policies; sexual misconduct and misogyny; nepotism resulting in unqualified advisers; spine-chilling swamp-filling appointments; dangerous narcissism; exceptionally low emotional intelligence; exceptionally low regular intelligence; unhinged temperament begetting frighteningly poor judgment; terrifying impulse control; dreadful constitutional ignorance; knuckle-headed climate change denial; embarrassing boorishness on the world stage; and more.”

(Ersin, Tom; “Dignity and Respect”; GraniteWord.com; 12/14/2017.)

Pecuniary conflicts of interest!

Still, Trump supporters believe.

Categorical Corruption

In the first tier of Mr. Trump’s corruption, incompetence, and amorality, there are four primary categories: 1) the insurrection; 2) being a witting or unwitting Russian asset; 3) the psychological torture of 5,400 innocent migrant children; and 4) the fatal, galactic, depraved mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During his administration Mr. Trump was the subject of a Justice Department special counsel investigation and two presidential impeachments. Yes, that’s a record. The reasons for the special counsel and impeachments comprise the categories in this accompanying, equal tier of corruption: A) suspected collusion with Russia — for illegal election support — and obstructing justice to cover up those offenses; B) extorting an allied country — withholding desperately needed congressionally authorized military aid until Ukraine supplied dirt on Donald’s political opponent — to win an election; and C) leading a literal coup attempt to retain power in spite of his election loss.

Regarding Point A and supporters’ assertions that the president was cleared of collusion: The Trump administration was “cleared” of conspiracy only in the sense that no provable-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt offense could be established, an extremely low bar for presidential behavior. In fact, during the 2016 campaign and transition, Donald’s team had 100-plus suspicious contacts with Russian officials, many by Trump himself. Donald and his campaign welcomed, encouraged, solicited, suborned, and employed illegal Russian election help, per special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Astonishingly, this apparently isn’t illegal.

The GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee determined beyond any doubt that Russian military intelligence groups directed by President Vladimir Putin conducted a widespread illegal campaign to help Mr. Trump win the election. The committee proclaimed that Trump’s willingness to solicit and use that help was the very definition of collusion. Unfortunately and amazingly, the conspiracy, the legal term that matters, did not quite rise to the level of provability in a court of law.

Also regarding Point A and supporters’ assertions that the president had no reason to obstruct justice because he was cleared of collusion: President Trump had four solid reasons to obstruct the investigation (including through attempting to fire or pressure numerous top DOJ and other officials to shut down the probe): 1) Donald didn’t know that his conspiracy crimes would fall just shy of indictability — he feared the worst; 2) Donald was afraid the investigation would uncover unrelated areas of his criminality; 3) Donald wanted to prevent the disclosure of illegal Russian election help to protect President Putin from embarrassment, thereby protecting Donald’s future multi-hundred-million-dollar business deals in Russia, which would require Putin’s blessing; and 4) Donald wanted to protect his ego, which could not accommodate any implication that he didn’t win on his own.

(Note that at least six of the president’s close aides pleaded guilty or were convicted of Russia-conspiracy-related crimes. These included his campaign manager who fed secret campaign data to a Russian agent, and his national security adviser-designate who assured Putin’s ambassador that Trump would lift that country’s sanctions after inauguration. Twelve high-ranking Russian military officers also were indicted by special counsel Mueller, though they’re unlikely ever to see a U.S. courtroom.)

Any one of these many alternate-tier examples of corruption is enough to demonstrate unfitness for office and warrant impeachment and/or indictment.

But put all that aside for a moment.■

[Tom Ersin has been a full-time professional writer and editor since 2010 and holds degrees in communications and counseling. He’s a long-time political observer and has written a half-dozen nonfiction books on 21st century U.S. politics.] Click here to purchase book. Please leave a rating.