Frightening: The return of Trump
As Halloween approaches, here’s something scary to contemplate, and unlike black cats crossing your path and cracks in the sidewalk, this is real: Donald Trump as candidate for president of the United States.
As spooky is what a third Trump candidacy would do to the GOP, whose Republican, Democratic bona fides are hardly pulsating with life now.
In the past several weeks, Trump has unleashed a veritable House of Horrors, a foretaste of what a Trump candidacy would look and sound like.
Let’s begin with Trump’s tribute to Ashli Babbitt, the young woman who was shot and killed by a police officer protecting members of Congress during the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, was fatally wounded in a corridor of the Capitol, as she and other insurrectionists were trying to break through to the other side of a locked door. Video of the incident makes one thing clear: These were violent, angry people whose actions created a dire situation.
Trump, addressing the Babbitt family on video, called Ashli “a truly incredible person. Her memory will be in our hearts for a long time.”
The former president demanded “justice” for Babbitt, in the form of a Department of Justice investigation into her death.
“My heart,” Trump told the Babbitt family, “is with you.”
(An investigation of Babbitt’s case by Capitol police cleared the officer who fired the fatal shot of wrongdoing. Lt. Michael Boyd, authorities said, fired as “a last resort.” Boyd told NBC News, ” I tried to wait as long as I could” before firing from inside the Speaker’s Lobby in the direction of the Jan. 6 mob.)
On Saturday of last week, at a political rally in Iowa, Trump again litigated the 2020 elections results, and once again he won, against overwhelming, indisputable evidence that he did not win.
“First of all, (Joe Biden) didn’t get elected, OK?,” Trump told the crowd. The crowd roared back, “Trump won! Trump won!”
Equally creepy was Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley’s statement at the rally that he was thankful for Trump’s endorsement. Grassley is running for reelection in 2022. He was first elected to the Senate in 1981.
In the aftermath of Jan. 6, Grassley pinned the blame for the Capitol riot on Trump, whose language, he said, was “extreme, aggressive, and irresponsible” and whose behavior toward Vice President Mike Pence was “extraordinary and unconstitutional.”
In photographs taken at the Des Moines gathering, Trump beams as Grassley acknowledges the ex-president’s preeminence in party circles (a “92%” Iowa approval rating).
Trump and Grassley shared the stage with Iowa Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson. Hinson is another sheep who has returned lamely to the flock, after having declared in February that Trump was responsible for the attempted coup on Jan. 6.
Profiles in political courage – not.
The pro-Trump conservative Save America webpage trumpeted Grassley’s retreat in an interesting, and disturbing, way.
The website posted a Newsweek article, in which the mag cited remarks by super-reporter Bob Woodward to CNN that the Grassley surrender to Trump demonstrated fealty to Trump in a most unusual way.
“It’s not just polite deference, it’s obedience,” Woodward told Erin Burnett, using a word that suggests authoritarian submission to a superior will, not the normal allegiance due one American politician to another.
As disturbing as the website posting was Trump on Oct. 13, when he issued three statements, Twitter-like, on the 2020 election.
In one he excoriated “the media”: “Our media is almost as corrupt as our politicians.”
“We will never give up,” Trump wrote in another. “Our elections are so corrupt.”
In a third statement, the former president stated, “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24.”
Talk about throwing American democracy into a death spiral. Scary.
Richard Robbins lives In Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.