BRATTLEBORO — According to The Washington Post, President Donald Trump has made close to 11,000 false or misleading statements in less than 1,000 days in office.
Why can't the press call out a lie by a lying liar anymore? The running tally does not include the waffles, untruths, inaccuracies, backtracks, and self-congratulations of the president or the lies of his spokespeople - Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
This reality has brought me through a pit of despair and onto the hard ground of resolution.
The president was asked recently if (hypothetically) he would call to inform the FBI that his campaign had been contacted by a hostile foreign government.
You don't call the FBI, he said. “Life doesn't work that way.”
Nearly any third-grader would have hit this ethical softball question posed to him out of the park.
Trump told the rare truth.
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Emboldened by the fizzle that was the Mueller Report, Trump's hubris consistently tests his own theory of being able to “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and [not] lose any voters.”
Someday soon that hubris should be his downfall (at least that is how it works in Greek Mythology) - but only if we, the people, take back the power that we have given to him.
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Loyalists of the president frequently tell people who share my opinion to “get over the election result of 2016.”
You mean the election that my candidate won by more than three million votes?
Well, I've gotten over it. I've struggled these past two years through denial, depression, despair, and now truth-tellers' fatigue. My feet are planted firmly in never-again-land.
As a child, I was taught that the president of the United States was supposed to be a role model for children in citizenship and moral leadership. Is there anything that anyone can point to from this man and say to a kid, “There goes a man of character?”
Don't get me wrong. As I survey the other politicians of our age, I see craven calculation (Nancy Pelosi), the ends-of-stacking-the-Supreme Court-justify-the-means (Mitch McConnell), ordinary political lies (just about any of them), and please-Donald-allow-me-the-privilege-of-kissing-your-ass (Mike Pence).
The question for Dems should not be, “Would impeachment help us in 2020?”
Democrats, forget about reading tea leaves. The question is simple: Did Trump break the law?
He admitted to obstruction of justice when he told (his other truth) to Russian officials visiting the Oval Office. When he dismissed former FBI Director James Comey, Trump reportedly said it was because “I faced great pressure because of Russia."
Trump has put his Enron School of Business skills behind ratcheting up the national debt to over $21 trillion. That's your children's and grandchildren's debt that goes to finance the lavish lifestyles of today's billionaires.
Meanwhile, there's a war on the poor, science is attacked or discarded, districts are gerrymandered, voters are suppressed, rights are trampled, and human beings are made illegal.
If you turn down Fox News, you can almost hear Trump's thumbs tweeting while our planet burns.