Trump

He's been out of office for nearly two years now, but former President (that title still sounds impossible to me) Donald Trump will not go away.

Yes, I understand that he is prepping for the candidacy of President once again. His visibility, which never seems to wane, will only increase if and when he announces that he is running for office again.

What I don't get is his singularly loyal popularity with his Republican base. One of the refrains that you keep hearing from his decidedly white grievance supporters (think Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers and those who believe in and follow their anti-government agenda) is that "he is our voice," and as such, many in his base regard him as the best president this country has ever had.

Better than Washington. Better than Lincoln. Better than FDR. Better than Eisenhower or Kennedy. Let that sink in for a moment, especially when you consider Trump, a multi-millionaire real estate mogul, has lived a lifestyle so completely foreign to his mostly lower-to-middle class base that it defies logic. Mansions. Country Clubs. New York Towers. All with tasteless gold-plated fixtures and trim, complete with narcissistic pictures of himself hanging on the walls.

His four years in office barely produced anything to help the common Joe. Granted, he was the point man behind Operation Warp Speed, which helped fund Covid-19 vaccine research and production, but then he minimized the distribution of the vaccine as hundreds of thousands died.

He pushed through his only significant legislation, which provided a tax cut for the ultra rich. But he did get three conservative judges appointed to the Supreme Court, which promptly took away a long-standing Constitutional right by reversing Roe v. Wade and safe abortions.

Turned out he actually owned American carnage, the catch-phrase he used in his inaugural speech.

I've never understood this fascination for Trump. I thought I'd seen the worst when he declared that, with women, "when you're a star, grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything" (that's Trump's debasing word for female genitalia, not mine. I use it to illustrate his outlandish crudeness. If you voted for him, this is what you voted for).

Then I thought I saw the worst at Charlottesville, which featured torchlight rallies reminiscent of Nazi parades in the 1930s, with supporters chanting Nazi slogans "Blood and soil," and "Jews will not replace us." A woman, Heather Heyer, was killed during the clashes, and Trump excused it by offering the false equivalency that "there were good people on both sides." Sorry, no. There are no good Nazis.

But then I thought I saw the worst when it became administration policy, ramrodded by then Attorney General Jeff Sessions and approved by Trump, to separate thousands of young children from their families to discourage border crossings. This policy, I suspect, is the policy that Trump believers feel make him the best president ever. 

To this day, hundreds of children, if not more, remain separated from their families.

I thought I'd seen the worst, but I was wrong. Because then came Jan. 6, when an actual American insurrection unveiled itself in front of our eyes. Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to try and stop the Constitution-mandated certification of Joe Biden as president. Meanwhile, Trump himself was silent for three hours, watching the insurrection unfold on TV, wondering if his vice president, Mike Pence, didn't deserve to be hanged for not certifying the vote.

I really thought this was rock bottom, but I was wrong. A couple of weeks ago, the FBI conducted a search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where files and files and files of top secret documents were recovered after being illegally taken from the custody of the National Archives. What Trump was doing with the nation's secrets remains speculation, as does the damage he may have brought to the country.

Insurrection. Obstruction of justice. Child abuse. Sexual assault.

And he could be running for president again.