By Mike Weland
My last opinion piece, “Make America Great Again? No, let’s make her ever more perfect,” in which I call former president Donald J. Trump a liar, elicited a greater Facebook response than usual. Maybe some are listening?
Before I go any further, I would like to try dispel the notions of many that I hate Donald Trump. I do not.
Hate would imply that I have feelings for him — I do not. I simply believe he is not interested in or capable of public service. I say this despite his uncanny ability to mesmerize a large and devoted flock to believe his every word.
I wouldn’t write or even think about him at all were he still just a New York slumlord, running a diploma mill, sponsoring beauty pageants so he could wander aroused and carefree among the nude or partially clad underage contestants, jet-setting with Jeff Epstein or even still playing himself as a fake business mogul in one of the most inane TV shows to ever dash the hopes of those who still await quality American television.
But he isn’t. He is running again for the highest office in the land, promising, if elected, to finish the destruction of our constitutional republic.
And off we go …
“Are you trying to even justify the job the present administration is doing has benefited US citizens at all?” Alischia asks. “And yes … Kamila has been in it since the beginning. Our country will be flushed down the toilet if she succeeds.”
“Yes, I am, Alischia,” I replied. “That so many would listen to a charlatan and his propaganda rather than take a subjective look for themselves does not detract from the many accomplishments made by the Biden administration. Biden towers when compared to the do-nothing debacle that was the Trump presidency.”
I hope she will continue reading as I will expound on her question and the two to follow and tie all in a tidy bundle by examining just two areas of Trumps lies, one as president, one now, that demonstrate clearly the adverse effects of lying as one man’s personal and presidential policy.
“Show me an honest politician,” Jason writes. “Bernie, Pelosi, sleepy Joe, Kamala and Waltz are all in the same morality and ethical group as the one you keep putting Trump in. So when you find an honest person with no skeletons in their closet that’s been voted to the house or the senate, report on that. Until then, stick to the news and the research that benefits of the people who live in or have an interest in Boundary county please.”
Interesting observation, Jason, but wrong. And with the election now just a month away, in Bonners Ferry and in every community in the nation not facing the wrath of nature, there is no more immediate or consequential news than Donald Trump.
As human beings, we are all flawed, we all make mistakes. In addition to your list of Democrats, whom we’ve all heard Trump excoriate as evil enemies of the state for nigh on ten years now, let’s throw in all Americans who choose to put themselves through the rigors of running for election to public office, and lets not bother with party affiliation. Some will be flawed or wrongly motivated, but the majority believe in themselves and believe they have the vision and ability to serve their constituents and the public good. Like the population they’re drawn from, those running for office are diverse, and the electorate, flawed humans that we are, send to office candidates of all stripe; some good, some bad, most somewhere in between.
It’s typically left to historians some years removed to decide how a president rates, and that can fluctuate over time. But the ranking for very best and very worst are also the most stable. Abraham Lincoln, vilified in his time and felled by an assassin’s bullet, has long been considered very best president to have served the American people and his bookends, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, the first U.S. president ever impeached, consistently ranking the very worst,
Until recently.
The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project, a survey of 154 experts including members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association and scholars with recent publications in relevant academic outlets, ranked the top tier of the totem pole just the same; Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and George Washington.
Buchanan, with a 16.71 on a scale of 1-100, and Johnson, 21.6, are still together down in weeds, but a fair-sized cushion between them and the worms in the dirt below is Donald John Trump with a dismal 10.92 rating.
Joe Biden was also included in the survey, coming in 14th, Barack Obama, another favored Trump target, rose nine places to number seven.
About Trump, they wrote, “Failed to effectively respond to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, ran a horrifically corrupt regime that flouted ethics laws and violated political norms, and irresponsibly cut taxes for the wealthy.”
About Biden, “Oversaw America’s recovery from COVID-19, worked with Congress to invest trillions of dollars into critical infrastructure, climate action, and healthcare; diversified the federal judiciary.”
Sorry, MAGA, but that’s likely what kids in most schools, public and private, will soon be learning.
And now to Kyle, who says “I can give you multiple things he has kept his word on and made the blue collar people happier and wealthier,” but doesn’t, and, “I would love to see some facts that make him a lier (sic) or anything that can actually put validity to comparing Trump to Jonestown or Manson. But I can show you a movement that has convinced people to take up arms and try to kill someone and that is the democrat party and its constituents. Saying someone is Hitler all the time and calling them an existential threat to our democracy can make people think and do crazy things. Of the 2 parties, the democrat aisle has been the only one in recent history acting like they have been brainwashed by a cult leader.”
First, I did not compare Trump to those others. They are small fry, minor league cult leaders.
What I wrote was, “It’s not all that rare for charismatic liars to gain the undue trust of those inclined to believe what they are hoping to hear. Think Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson. What is rare, but not unheard of, are inveterate liars capable of putting a whole nation in peril.”
You see, I said Trump belongs to a rare class of cult leader far worse than those who leave a few to a few hundred corpses to clean up.
I said I’d wrap this in a tidy parcel, and I’ll do that by helping Kyle, who would love to see some facts that make him (Trump) a lier (sic).
The final year of Trump’s presidency opened with COVID, a pandemic first discovered in Wuhan, China, in December, 2019. The first U.S. case was diagnosed in March, 2020. Because there were so many, these are just a few of the documented and undisputed lies he told in the early days of the Pandemic:
- January 22, 2020: “We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.
— We didn’t, it wasn’t. - February 10, 2020: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
— Miraculously, it didn’t. - March 6, 2020: “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.”
— No, they couldn’t. - The US had done more coronavirus tests than the rest of the world combined or all other major countries combined.
— Trump made this false claim more than a dozen times in March and April, 2020. The rest of the world had consistently run millions more tests than the US total. - “So we’re doing tremendous testing. And ultimately, we’re doing more testing, I think, than probably any of the governors even want.”
— Governors from both parties in states across the nation were begging the Trump administration to ramp up testing and get them the supplies needed. - April 29, 2020: “We started off with nothing. We had nothing. We had absolutely nothing. And that included ventilators, and that included – I always say the cupboards were bare.”
— During president Barack Obama’s two terms, more than 14,000 ventilators had been added to the federal stockpile and the COVID crises was the first time they were needed. Despite Trump’s lie, many of the ventilators distributed under Trump were purchased under Obama. - On travel restrictions on China: March 19, 2020: “So when you say that I wasn’t prepared, I was the first one to do the ban. Now other countries are following what I did. But the media doesn’t acknowledge that. They know it’s true.”
— No they didn’t. A survey by the Washington Post found that 38 other countries imposed significant travel restrictions on China before or at the same time as the U.S. And Trump’s closure wasn’t so tight — around 40,000 traveled from China to the U.S. after his ban thanks to exemptions. - March 19, 2020: Speaking of the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine: “And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They – they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved.”
— The FDA had not, at that time, approved any drug for COVID, and hydroxychloroquine was never approved for treating COVID. Nor were bleach or light.
Thanks to Trump’s ineptitude, the most technologically advanced nation in the world trailed every other nation in the world during Trump’s last year in office, leading in both cases and deaths, over 400,000 and accelerating when he incited insurrection as the last hurrah of his first term. Before the pandemic began winding down toward the middle of Biden’s presidency, over a million Americans were dead.
Had Trump put service above self, heeded the recommendations of his experts and shared their clear and simple advice consistently, thousands would still be with their families. Instead, Trump politicized a virus, advised us to patriotically ignore calls to self isolate, wear masks, or take the vaccine he took credit for rushing through.
Meanwhile, he took the vaccine.
Fast forward to today to see if Trump, once again a candidate after being robbed in 2020, he has changed.
Two massive storms, one going, the other bearing down, are pounding the east coast with awful devastation. All affected government agencies are engaged in saving lives and property.
Trump is helping, right? No? Well, at least he’s not interfering, amIright? No?!
Not even close. Thanks to the lies and distortions of Donald Trump and his Confederacy of Dunce sycophants, FEMA has had to pull people from far more important tasks solely to refute the misinformation being deliberately spread for no other reason than to gain personal advantage and stroke his ravenous ego.
Visit https://www.fema.gov/disaster/current/hurricane-helene/rumor-response to find out which of the following is true:
- FEMA will only provide $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.
- FEMA is blockading people in Florida and preventing evacuations.
- FEMA distributes aid based on demographic characteristics.
- FEMA is in the process of confiscating Helene survivor property. If I apply for disaster assistance and my land is deemed unlivable, my property will be seized.
- FEMA is no longer accepting applications for housing assistance.
- FEMA does not have enough money to provide disaster assistance for Helene.
- FEMA is asking for cash donations and turning away volunteers.
I’ll save you the time — none. All lies, all from the malignant mind of the man who has so brazenly duped such a large group of followers who think he will soon give them whatever snake-oil elixir they think they hear him promise, and most willing to burn down the country to get it, whether it’s a white Christian nation or a white homeland free of woke, those uncomfortable leftist temptations, forever safe from being replaced or some other such, amen, thank you Jesus!
We were stupid in 2016, but we were lucky. Give him a second chance, it’s doubtful he’ll need us to give him a third.