FOUR REASONS

There are four powerful reasons why Donald Trump has no business being President of the United States.  Each one of them by itself would have been more than sufficient to keep him out of office throughout the 18^th, 19^th, 20^th, centuries, and first decade of the 21^st century.  And yet, with all four reasons together, he is the President, and there are many millions of Americans who feel he should continue in that role for years to come.  What the heck?

The four reasons are for the most part not about politics, and not a matter of opinion.  They are, instead, based primarily on facts, a.k.a. things that are true beyond a reasonable doubt, and that can be verified by anyone.  The FOUR REASONS are:

·         Donald Trump is grossly unqualified 

·         Donald Trump is a truly horrible person

·         Donald Trump’s is a pathological liar.

·         Donald Trump was not legitimately elected

To reiterate: at any time in our nation’s past, it is virtually inconceivable that a person would be elected President who lied all the time, or who was almost totally unqualified, or who was a horrible person, or who won the office by various dishonest means.  Especially when those "dishonest means" included interference by this country’s greatest adversary: Russia.  And yet – Trump sits in office in the White House, with all four of these conditions having been met.  This is not my opinion; rather, I will make the case for each of the four reasons using verifiable facts, logic, and related means that, at least until very recently, Americans understood and valued.  Let’s get to it.  

Donald Trump is GROSSLY UNQUALIFIED to be President.

A number of credible sources have suggested that he had no expectation of winning the position, but instead ran just as a way to further improve his image, his “brand,” gain support for issues he cared about, and to stroke his large ego.  Even if that is not the case, the fact is that he had absolutely no experience in government.  Furthermore, evidence supports the idea that Trump had little idea of how the federal government actually works.  Just one example of this was his claim in 2015 that judges (like his sister) are the ones that make laws.

Evidence of his overall lack of understanding about politics, history, government, economics, and world affairs abound.  A classic example was when he was asked, shortly before Britain’s vote on the matter, what he thought about Brexit.  “Huh?” Trump responded.  He hadn’t heard of Brexit, one of the most important world issues of the time, and he listened as the reporter explained it to him.  Anyone who is interested in doing so will have no problem finding dozens of other, easily verified examples of Trump’s ignorance of those matters in which a President should be well-versed. 

This lack of knowledge about even the basics of governing a giant like the United States of America is easy to understand, given Trump’s dislike of reading.   Asked what his favorite book was during the 2016 campaign, he said that he had only read one book after college – and that was his own biography.  Throughout the campaign, and during his time as President, anecdotal evidence is simply everywhere regarding his disinterest in reading reports, paying attention to anything other than short bullet points, and outright lack of curiosity about practically anything other than things that relate to him personally. 

Trump has several times repeated the claim to be a “very stable genius.”  The facts show that he is neither stable nor a genius.  From blowing up at reporters, his staff, and anyone else who he feels has crossed him, to making one decision one day, and totally reversing it the next day – on numerous occasions – “stable” is not a word that anyone other than Trump or his staff ever use to describe the man. 

As for being a genius, previous examples of his cluelessness bring that into question, along with claims by his own hand-picked people that the man is a “fucking moron,” and similar descriptions.  His own staff repeatedly reports, off the record, that they have to dumb down any information they give him, such as using pictures and video instead of written material, just so he can understand their reports.  Apparently, Trump wasn’t a very good student, having been described as a “C minus/D” student in college.  Trump denies this, claiming instead to have been a top student, but yet refuses to release his college transcripts or his SAT scores, threatening to sue anyone who divulges what they show.  Why would a “stable genius” not want to clear the air on just how good a student he was, or how smart his SAT score shows him to be?

Apart from those points, it has been obvious since Day One that the man is an idiot.  From his very first campaign speeches, Trump spoke like a 13-year old tough guy.  Small words, incorrect grammar, repeating the same simple phrases over and over, insulting, bragging, making false statements – those are the marks of Trump’s speaking.  Linguistic experts claim those things are signs of someone whose intellectual development remains in their teens.  Even his response to being called uneducated and his undeveloped vocabulary confirmed the charge against him: “I know words.  I use the best words!”  An eight year old couldn’t have said it any better. 

Let’s face it: A lot of people like the fact that Donald Trump is “just one of them.”  Not educated, not part of the political establishment, with no experience or great knowledge when it comes to running the government.  They feel that his fresh outsider status is a big plus, and not a disadvantage.

To some degree, they’re right.  It’s good to have a fresh face with an outsider’s perspective.  But Trump is so ignorant about the world and how things work, so disinterested in learning about government, economics, the military, other cultures, etc. These things matter.  The United States depends on having a President that understands what’s going on, how to run the government intelligently, and how to evaluate events and proposals from an experienced, educated, and rational perspective.  Donald Trump has repeatedly shown that he has none of those requisite characteristics, he is in way over his head, and has no business being in any public office. 

Donald Trump is a TRULY HORRIBLE PERSON. 

This is not a matter of name calling, of exaggeration, of just one man’s opinion.  By any reasonable definition, Trump is essentially the opposite of what most people would consider “a good man,” and there is an incredible amount of verifiable evidence to back up that claim.   

One way to consider this claim is by reading the essay A Good Person that I wrote in my Trump Tales book.  In it, I took the Boy Scout Law, which does a pretty good job of describing what it means to be a good man, with its A Scout is Loyal, Trustworthy, Helpful, etc.  One by one, I considered how Trump matched up with the 12 characteristics of a good man that the Law defines.  Using Trump’s own words and actions, it turns out that he is basically the opposite of a good man in 11 of the 12 categories (the exception being: Brave).  Now you may take exception to some of those interpretations, or you may suggest that the Boy Scout Law isn’t a good way to evaluate a person, but if you do, I think most  people who are being truthful would disagree with you.

But anyway, we can look at the “Trump is a horrible person” issue another way, by simply citing examples of behavior that show who he is.  Let’s start with his horrible treatment of women.  From it’s all about “having a nice piece of ass on your arm,” to “look at that face; who would vote for her?” to “grabbing them by the pussy,” to the 16 women who have made credible accusations that he groped, molested, or raped them – there is little doubt that Trump’s views and treatment of women ranges between unacceptable to felonious.

He’s a crook and a con man.  The many court cases against him for stiffing the people who’ve worked for him as a real estate developer make that pretty clear.  Though Trump claims he didn’t pay up for work because it wasn’t done properly, his own top financial officer is on record stated that not paying sub-contractors was an intentional strategy that Trump used to increase his profits.  In numerous cases, his failure to pay for work done resulted in bankruptcy for the small firms that he stiffed. 

Another aspect of his criminal behavior is that the court ordered him to terminate his "charitable" foundation, since the money was all going to him and his campaign instead of to charities.  Further, the court has prohibited Trump or any of his family from operating a charitable foundation in the future, due to "a shocking pattern of illegality."  And most recently, he had to pay a $2 million fine after "conceding that he used his charitable foundation at times as a personal piggy bank."

Finally, let’s not forget the Trump University scam, where students were promised a world-class education from top, hand-picked instructors that would make them rich in the real estate business.  All for only $35,000!  Of course, it turned out that there was little substance to the “curriculum,” that Trump had nothing to do with hiring instructors (as promised), and that the high-pressure sales tactics resulted in a total waste of money for those who signed up.  Trump finally settled the lawsuits from students by paying $25 million, claiming he did so just to clear the air before his election.  But a quick review of the evidence leaves little doubt that this was a total scam and that he would almost certainly have lost had the cases gone to trial.

Donald Trump is a nasty bully.  In every case where somebody criticizes him or points out that he’s wrong, his response is to attack the person, rather than intelligently respond to the criticism.  So Meghan Kelly has “blood coming out of her whatever,” John McCain isn’t a hero because “he was captured,” Congresswoman Maxine Waters is “a very low-IQ person.”  More recently, it was using the occasion of the 75^th anniversary of D-Day to blast House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as he sat in a graveyard of lost American soldiers.  Nancy Pelosi is an “very evil, nasty person; a real loser,” said our most un-presidential of Presidents.  And on and on.  Who the hell talks like that?

Aside from that, one of his favorite responses is the lawsuit.  If someone has negative information about him, Trump has his lawyers sue the person to prevent the information from becoming public.  Claim that he molested you?  Trump will sue you.  Claim that it’s actually Trump that is the “very low-IQ individual” by requesting to see his university records?  He’ll sue the university for releasing those.  Insult people and threaten to sue them: That’s Trump’s modus operandi.

Donald Trump only cares about what is good for Donald Trump.  More than a few psychologists and psychiatrists have studied his actions and concluded that, apart from being a pathological liar, he is a “prototypical narcissist.”  So when presented with conclusive evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, instead of acting to prevent that in the future, Trump’s only concern was about how that impacted his legitimacy.  His inauguration in early-2017?  The greatest attendance ever, by far, even when the evidence showed something quite different.  He even ordered the White House to Photo-Shop pictures to show a bigger crowd than was actually there.  Then there are all his ridiculous claims of having “the world’s greatest memory,” that he is “dazzled by his own creations,” and that “only he can fix” the US’s problems.  Who the hell talks like that?  The man is in love with himself and disconnected from reality.

But besides that, his focus on him and him alone places the nation in great danger.  By refusing to address Russian meddling,  by charging taxpayers tens of millions on his golf trips, by exchanging “beautiful love letters” with a vicious N. Korean dictator, by insisting on a pointless investigation to prove the existence of “3-5 million fake ballots” against him in the 2016 election – Trump harms the nation, all in pursuit of further stroking his gigantic ego.

And he is a fascist.  Too much?  An exaggeration?  Nope.  The essay Fascism in Fashion in my Trump Tales book considers the characteristics of fascism, written before Trump came along by an expert on the topic .  It turns out that Donald Trump basically meets every requirement, from backing nationalist, racist policies, to bashing the free press, and so forth.  Who would have ever thought that Americans would elect a fascist – and then continue to support him as it becomes ever clearer that he is one?

Granted that details and citations of evidence are sparse here, but anyone who doubts the President’s nastiness, narcissism, crookedness, and the rest will have no problem finding countless examples and evidence of those traits by simply looking.

Donald Trump’s entire persona is based on lies; HE IS A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR.  Shouldn’t this claim be part of the prior point of him being a horrible person?  Well, it could be.  But apart from all his other horrible traits, the scale of his lies is so huge that it deserves special focus.  Of course a person who lies all the time is a horrible person.  Who would claim otherwise? 

It is easy to show how Trump’s lies enabled him to capture the attention and support of tens of millions of Americans, starting with “Barack Obama isn’t a US citizen” way back in 2010.  Long after that claim was disproved, Trump continued to promote it, becoming the darling of those who opposed a liberal (and black?) President.  Trump built on that base with non-stop lies about Mexicans (criminals and rapists), Clinton giving weapons-grade uranium to the Russians, to knowing “more about Iraq than all the generals,” building a wall that “Mexico will pay for,” “climate change is a Chinese hoax,” “wind turbines cause cancer,” and on and on. 

There’s no point in further detailing all the man’s lies; it is no exaggeration to say that he can barely open his mouth without twisting, spinning, or outright lying about practically every and any thing.  “Yeah, but all politicians lie,” his supporters counter.  Well sure, but Trump’s degree of telling falsehoods probably exceeds even the least honest other politician by a factor of 10 or more.  In other words, if we take the next biggest liar in US political history, then for every lie he or she told, Trump probably has told ten or more lies.

Think that is an exaggeration?  According to Vanity Fair, Trump told an average of “23 false or misleading statements a day” over the past 7 months.  The President loves to criticize the New York Times and the Washington Post as FAKE NEWS and the “enemy of the people” (a classic line for dictators), but it’s a simple matter to prove almost everything those sources print, and at the same time disprove most of what Trump says. The mainstream media is not the source of FAKE news; Donald Trump is.  

Speaking of the Washington Post, it claims that Donald Trump exceeded 10,000 “false or misleading statements” earlier this year.  Maybe you’d disagree with some of their judgements; maybe you think a more accurate number is more like 5,000, or 15,000.  But the point simply is that the man is dishonest at an astounding level, far more than anyone else we've ever known. 

This matters because it got an incredibly flawed person elected as our President.  It matters because it allows him to continue to mislead the tens of millions of gullible Americans who take his words as truth.  And importantly, it matters because intelligent Americans can never trust what he says.  What will happen in the case of a genuine disaster or emergency?  How can we believe what he says about it?  Well of course, we can’t.  The leader of our nation, the leader of the free world – is a liar on an unprecedented scale, and that is a huge problem.

Donald Trump DID NOT LEGITMATELY WIN THE PRESIDENCY.  When you think about it given the facts, it is somewhat remarkable that nearly 3 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Trump.  As explained in more detail in my Have They Pulled It Off? essay from Trump Tales, there are three main reasons to challenge the legitimacy of Trump’s election.  We can argue about whether each of the three were illegal or merely unethical, but in any case, each of the three were unprecedented in American politics and disturbing enough to question whether Trump should have been allowed to assume the office.  Taken together, the three leave little doubt (at least, to unbiased and truly patriotic Americans) that the man should not be in the White House.

To briefly summarize, the first reason is that Donald Trump and his campaign used fake news and phony social media stories to spread wildly false information.  Sure, politicians have always spun the news, tweaked the facts, and thrown out a whopper or three in their campaigns.  “All’s fair love and politics,” as one version of the old saying goes.  But as my previous point explained, the degree of spinning and lying by the Trump campaign wildly exceeded anything we’ve seen before.  Combined with an astute use of social media, Trump was able to capitalize on Americans’ lack of knowledge about history, economics, world events, and government, along with their inability to distinguish between facts, opinions, lies, and propaganda.  The result was that millions of Americans bought into what should easily have been seen as FAKE NEWS, converting them into Trump supporters.

The second factor was the proven Russian interference in the 2016 election.  Every US intelligence agency long ago stated that there was no doubt the Russians sought to impact the presidential election in order to help their candidate, Donald Trump, win the post.  Trump himself has consistently denied this, as it obviously implies that perhaps he wouldn’t have won without Russian help.  But even he has acknowledged their interference in recent months, ostensibly since it is now far too late to reverse those results.  Despite disagreement about what the Mueller investigation found, there is no question that it shows the surprising extent of Russian interference, with goals of 1) sowing domestic discord and 2) electing Donald Trump.

The question is, of course, just how much that Russian involvement changed the results.  The answer largely depends on one’s politics and ability to be objective, but I believe it could easily have pushed Trump over the top.  Various analyses of his victory show that it was accomplished with just a few thousand votes in specific districts, areas where (not surprisingly) the Russians had directed much of their effort.  

Again considering the Mueller report, it documented how operatives of the Trump campaign shared important voter information with the Russians.  That, along with other proven facts such as Don Jr. welcoming Russian dirt, leave no real doubt that there was collusion, which is defined as secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.  Luckily for Trump, collusion is not a legal term, not criminally defined, so he and his supporters can lie in boasting of "NO COLLUSION!" found by the Mueller investigation.  

Former Air Force general James Clapper, as the Director of National Intelligence from 2010 to 2017, is in a unique position to know more than just about anybody about what the Russians did in 2016.  He is quoted as saying: "Surprising even themselves, [Russia] swung the election to a Trump win. To conclude otherwise stretches logic, common sense and credulity to the breaking point. Less than eighty thousand votes in three key states swung the election. I have no doubt that more votes than that were influenced by this massive effort by the Russians.”  None of Clapper’s fellow intelligence chiefs have disagreed with that assessment.    

Former President and US Naval Academy graduate Jimmy Carter recently joined Clapper in this opinion, calling Trump an “illegitimate President,” and claiming: "There's no doubt that the Russians did interfere in the election. And I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated would show that Trump didn't actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf." 

Sidebar!  Let’s take a little detour to consider the fact that other notable former military officers have a big problem with Donald Trump being President, even those whom he chose to serve in his administration.  Marine General and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattias, for example, finally gave up trying to work with someone he said was like “a 5th or 6th grader.”  Four-star General and Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly called Trump “an idiot.”  Trump’s own National Security Advisor, Gen. HR McMaster is on record as calling Trump “a dope, with the intelligence of a kindergartner.”   

There’s also retired Admiral William McRaven, former head of the military’s Special Operations, who’s taken on Trump several times.  McRaven scolded Trump for calling the press “the enemy of the people.”  He said Trump “embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.”  Finally, consider four-star General Barry McCaffrey, the most highly decorated General in our nation’s history.  I doubt that anyone would consider him, or any of those other officers just mentioned (all Republicans, except Carter), to be “snowflakes” or “libtards”.  Yet McCaffrey has repeatedly criticized President Trump, calling him (among other things) “under the sway of Vladimir Putin,” and a “serious threat to national security,” and most recently blasting his use of the military to make the 4th of July a “vile political fight.”  

(Update: A January, 2020 report revealed that in a meeting with the nation's top military leaders in July, 2017, Trump said: "I wouldn't go to war with you people.  You're a bunch of dopes and babies."  To America's top generals and admirals!  Who talks like this?) 

So my question is: Why in the world do so many military veterans, and current members of the military, back Donald Trump?  Seriously.  
I mean, besides all of these guys’ thoughts on Trump, he’s a 5-time draft dodger, as his former physician recently admitted he provided false evidence of Trump’s “debilitating bone spurs.”  He claims, as mentioned earlier, to know more about military affairs than the generals.  He trusts Russia’s leader more than his own military and intelligence advisors.  And he lies all the time.  So I really want to know: Why is this despicable person the overwhelming choice of our military and veterans?

OK – back on topic now with the third factor that unfairly brought the presidency to Donald Trump, and that was FBI Director James Comey’s decision to publicly announce, some ten days before the 2016 election, that there “might” be some negative information on Hillary Clinton in some newly discovered emails.  Donald Trump later put Comey on his hate list for refusing to proclaim his loyalty to the President and so forth, but the fact is that this decision of Comey’s, in hindsight, sort of sealed the coffin on Clinton’s run for President.

You see, in the weeks before Comey’s decision, Clinton had been well ahead of Trump in all the polls, up by some 3-4%, and still gaining.  But immediately after Comey’s announcement, Clinton’s numbers started to drop.  About a week later, Comey proclaimed the results of reviewing those new emails: There was NO negative information about Clinton.  But it was too late; there were just a couple of days until the election, and not enough time for Clinton to recover from her loss of momentum to Trump.  As we all know, Trump just barely squeaked by, winning the Electoral College vote, even while losing the popular vote.

Also as we all know, Comey directly violated a clear FBI policy against taking action or making announcements that might affect an upcoming election.  I have read Comey’s book, wherein he explains why he made that tough decision contrary to FBI policy, and I understand his rationale.  But nevertheless, the fact is that his actions almost certainly took the Presidency out of Clinton’s hands and put it in Trump’s – a decision he likely will regret for the rest of his life.

James Clapper and Jimmy Carter are right: Russia’s interference almost certainly gave the Presidency to Donald Trump.  But add in the Trump campaign’s unprecedented level of lying and manipulating social media (Pope Francis supports Donald Trump for President), and James Comey’s unfortunate reveal of “potentially” negative emails on Hillary Clinton and, well – there doesn’t seem to be any reasonable doubt that Trump unfairly, illegitimately took the Presidency from Hillary Clinton.

So that’s my case.  Donald Trump is a horrible, unqualified person who stole the Presidency from Hillary Clinton.  Besides my question about why in the world American military types support this idiot, this leaves us with the sad fact that tens of millions of Americans don’t care.  Trump is their guy, they love him no matter what he does, and no matter what the facts are.  May God save America!