From Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, to Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019, neither spoken nor written have I ever used the phrase President Trump or any variation. That is I did not adjoin the word “president” and the word “Trump.” Or “president” and “Donald J. Trump,” etc. I called the man by his names, and I liked DJT. Also said “the president.
Why haven’t I called Trump president? It’s not because he didn’t win the office. I think he did. He, the Republican Party in general and his campaign managers figured out how to game the Electoral Collage, which states to focus on.
You can’t win a big competition just by being the best campaigner. It’s more key to slam any rivals. Somehow negativity sticks with us humans better than positivity. Turns out that creating doubt isn’t hard. Making it stick takes more strategic effort.
Republicans figured out how to slander the Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton so effectively that even most of her supporters said something to the effect of, “Yeah, maybe she is (whatever), but she’s best we’ve got for 2016 and better than him.”
The GOP got there first and hit hardest. The more Democrats stamped and hollered about Trump, oddly, the more firmly his followers back him. Why? He owned most of the allegations, turned them around by bragging. That’s why calling Trump a liar is weird. At the least expected times, the habitual liar tells the truth.
It’s not that the Trump Republicans practiced “you can fool some of the people some of the time,” but engaged in “you can fool enough of the people.”
Voters, enough of them in the right states, weren’t conned by Trump or his people. They knew what he was, had to at some level. A majority of his key voters wanted to be seduced, wanted an enemy with convenience, one that could be vanquished.
With all the well-paid experts in campaigning on board that if or when the United States amends its Constitution to drop the Electoral College and we move to a coast-to-coast popular vote, that they would focus their candidate to speak and shake hands just in key population centers. This would still game the outcome.
Small and medium burgs and most of the middle of the country would be neglected. Not unlike now with the Electoral College. Trump still would have won votes tallied that way.
Russians did interfere in the 2016 election. Trump would have won without them, without counterfeit websites and hoax social media accounts. We do those well enough on our own.
Even in November 2016, I acknowledged that Trump was elected president. What I conscientiously believed, even before he was sworn in, was that he would never act like a president, with natural dignity and also with patriotic regard for the principles of a constitutional democracy.
On Dec. 18, the House voted to impeach President Trump.
If he is not president, he cannot be impeached.
So yes, he is President Trump.
If he is not president his indictment cannot be brought to the Senate where he will be tried, with the Chief Justice of the United States presiding.
Eh, he’s president.
Only the top officials of the executive and judicial branches can be impeached, while members of either house of Congress can be expelled, different constitutional processes, with particulars detailed by Congress. Civilians face conventional law enforcement and the criminal court system. For offenses outside codes of law, we commoners have lawsuits and civil courts.
Let’s move on the Senate trial in January or February.
The country is not in limbo, it’s too big to ever just float around. Trump is cornering a snarling America, from climate change denial to an about-to-burst economy and now to moves against a sovereign if hostile nation that begs for recourse.
This President Trump who is not a legitimate leader of the three-branch United States is creating diversions from an impeachment trial, from wildfires and floods, and from that eventual recession.
The real America leads the world by resilience, cleverness and compassion.
