How Can Trump’s Scumbag Express Keep Roaring On?

By Donald A. Collins | 6 December 2021
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

I so appreciated the replaying by CNN on Sunday night December 5th of its June 2021 documentary program, Assault on Democracy, the complete airing of the events leading up to and afterwards of the January 6th US Capitol insurrection. It forcefully brought viewers the most cohesive review yet of the insurrection which could have changed the outcome of our 2020 Presidential election.

The June description by CNN’s Brian Stelter of the intent of this program, “Assault on Democracy” confirmed its power. He said,

That’s the title of an ambitious new CNN documentary that is premiering Sunday at 9pm Eastern and Pacific and re-airing several times in the coming days. The subtitle is “The Roots of Trump’s Insurrection.”

Those roots run deep into the right-wing media dirt. The influence of MAGA TV, the radical right web and social media is highlighted throughout the special. “Former employees of InfoWars and Breitbart discuss the profit and political motives of their owners/leaders,” CNN senior VP Jim Murphy says. Fox News also comes up.

It’s important to connect the dots — say, from “the election of Barack Obama, when Rush Limbaugh said ‘I hope he fails,’ through Breitbart’s massive influence on the former president and thus his followers,” exec producer Patricia DiCarlo says. Trump “shared more articles from Breitbart than any other source,” she notes. Now, post-riot, “right-wing media helps keep alive the lie that the election was stolen.”

Regarding the riot, “we went behind the numbers, behind the court cases, and actually talked to the people who are charged,” correspondent Drew Griffin says. What is stunning “is that even now, even facing tremendous charges, some of them… don’t feel any remorse. They don’t feel like they were in the wrong.”

It’s sad when you think about how inevitable the January 6 riot felt, in hindsight. Trump’s lies were always going to lead to violence. When I Googled “assault on democracy” on Sunday, one of the first results was a January 2018 report by Freedom House — a stark warning that “democracy is under assault and in retreat around the globe, a crisis that has intensified as America’s democratic standards erode at an accelerating pace.” January 2018! Three years later, the assault continues…

Seeing this denunciation of the whole caper seemed to me to present the perfect case to use against Trump et al for the presently ongoing House Presidential Commission on January 6.

It raised for me the question of why after such a sweeping and accurate indictment of Trump he could count on any support from anybody. Many of the scumbags appearing on this illuminating program including the ex-President were and/or still are holding key elective offices in our federal government. For example, the flipflop Minority Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who excoriated Trump right after the insurrection then switched his opinion completely, giving Trump a pass instead of a black eye.

In watching I sincerely hope CNN will continue to replay this program multiple times. Trump’s leading the planned conspiracy to overthrow the democratic transfer of power of a fair and conclusive election was so completely and definitively proved on gripping film by the words of the felons and the co-conspirators themselves. The behavior of Trump earned him his unique 2nd impeachment but no prison time yet. The Senate should have ousted him from office, even that close to the end of his tenure. The thought that he could again run for President and be elected is brings me nightmares of Hitler’s route to power.

That many who participated in the January 6th assault were influenced by the false information from the pro-Trump inspired media does not excuse them or any of the militant racists that surfaced so vividly on August 11 and 12, 2017 in Charlottesville and then collaborated with Trump and his follow instigators in attempting to overthrow Biden’s election. Remember? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally

A perfect example of Trump’s egotistical lack of concern for anyone, even his close colleagues was chronicled by the December 6th page one Washington Post article which reported that after he was diagnosed with COVID he exposed himself to 500 people.

Read it here.

So as his scumbag express rattles on, even some of those who knowingly echo his big lie about election fraud may come to realize his train is not a safe (electability wise) place to be in 2022 or 2024.

Trump, having partially succeeded in denigrating all 3 of the branches of our national government, deserves conviction soon if only in the court of public opinion.

The House of Representatives Commission probing the events of January 6th will doubtless confirm and enhance the findings already reported by our non-fake media to whom we owe our profound thanks for offering us the facts and the chance to right our stumbling democracy.

Will Americans derail this scumbag express? Your call, Folks.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?” and “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?: Leaders Commit to Reduce Human Population”.

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