Curmudgeon's Corner: Say Trump's name already

I want them to tell their constituents that — Say his name! Donald J. Trump! — is unfit to ever again serve as President of the United States of America.

Posted

Say his name! … Say her name! Those three words were chanted repeatedly and with force and respect in gatherings to honor Black men like George Floyd and Black women like Breonna Taylor — all killed by police under less than honorable circumstances. They must not be forgotten.
In a somewhat similar fashion — but with not a hint of respect intended — I’d like to hear those three words — Say his name! — aimed at Donald J. Trump by his fellow GOP pols hoping to occupy the seat he once held. But I’m not hearing them.
The likes of presidential hopefuls Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the presidency of Donald J. Trump, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seem reluctant to say the Donald’s name. I saw both of them on TV recently (I forget which programs). They both referred to him in less than complimentary terms and let it be known that they want the job he once held — but they never said his name. Are they that afraid of what he could do if, God forbid, he was returned to the presidency?
At the recent Conservative Political Action Committee gathering in a bizarre-world speech that lasted about 1 hour and 47 minutes,  Trump noted that there had been a GOP “that was ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists, open-border zealots and fools, but we are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Cove and Jeb Bush.” He also let it be known that “ … for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution, … I am your warrior, I am your justice.”
I want to hear GOP lawmakers say his name. I want them to tell their constituents that — Say his name! Donald J. Trump! — is unfit to ever again serve as President of the United States of America.

Not surprisingly, Democratic solons are not afraid to say his name; that’s to be expected. But I’m saying the time has come for GOP lawmakers — those governors in the Red states and U.S senators and House members — to show some courage and say his name: Donald J. Trump — aka “the Donald” — is unfit to come anywhere near the Oval office, let alone occupy it as chief executive.
I can’t believe that a single GOP lawmaker at the state or federal level can seriously believe that Trump had the presidency taken from him by some sort of foul play by the Democrats via miscounting votes, stuffed ballot boxes, dead people voting or voting machines changing votes. The counter to my and many other people’s arguments: One of the most interesting stolen-election arguments I’ve heard is really, really ironic — and ridiculous. The argument: But there was never any evidence of voter fraud. A Trumpster response I’ve heard to that is: Well, see, that’s how insidious the voter fraud was; the Democrats did it so cleverly that there was no evidence to be found.
Irony is an element that seems to go wherever Trump goes. Consider this: With the voting results in — both popular and electoral — and  his bid for reelection lost, he became a lame duck who would  leave office in 2 ½ months. But de facto he pretty much walked away from his presidential duties and spent those last-hurrah days trying to find legal ways he could stay in office. His supposed helpers, such as attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, proved to be more of a hindrance.
When those efforts kept failing, he spurred on his ultra-loyal followers to try other means to keep him in office: on Jan. 6, 2021, via a violent insurrection they stormed the National Capitol in a bloody but futile effort to stop the counting of electoral votes. But even as he looked to leaving office as a sore loser, he was like a drowning man reaching for life preservers that weren’t there.
The American public would see in vivid, at times disturbing, video footage and hear the sounds of the rioters — some of them suggesting it was time to “Hang Mike Pence!” — in the “Report of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.”
Are most GOP lawmakers and the GOP rank-and-file members convinced that the evidence presented in several reports to the American public by the Committee show and prove that an insurrection did occur on Jan. 6? Or was Tucker Carlson more convincing when he showed in cherry-picked footage, plucked from thousands of hours of Committee video given exclusively to him by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, that show a friendly group of visitors touring the Capitol? But why did one of the friendly visitors have a red, white and blue-painted face and wear a  buffalo-horns headdress? OK, that’s standard attire for the QAnon Shaman, aka Jacob Chansley.
Let me end this Corner, as I frequently do, with a question? Are we the people so uninformed as to what our Founding Fathers and the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America had in mind when they put in place safeguards to prevent a usurper such as Donald J. Trump?
I respond with a quote, a long one that says so much about our United States Constitution: “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed: and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”  The Federalist Papers, No. 51; essays by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison.
Donald J. Trump is no angel.
Have a nice day.