(Dobbs) We Cannot Afford Darkness On Inauguration Day
To tens of millions, it doesn't make a difference.
I don’t even have to tell you who wrote this:
“Happy Thanksgiving to ALL, including the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State, Letitia “Peekaboo” James, who has let Murder & Violent Crime FLOURISH, & Businesses FLEE; the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a “Psycho,” Arthur Engoron, who Criminally Defrauded the State of New York, & ME, by purposely Valuing my Assets at a “tiny” Fraction of what they are really worth in order to convict me of Fraud before even a Trial, or seeing any PROOF, & used his Politically Biased & Corrupt Campaign Finance Violator, Chief Clerk Alison Greenfield, to sit by his side on the “Bench” & tell him what to do; & Crooked Joe Biden, who has WEAPONIZED his Department of Injustice against his Political Opponent, & allowed our Country to go to HELL; & all of the other Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, Fascists, Marxists, Democrats, & RINOS, who are seriously looking to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY.”
Hardly presidential material. Hardly in the spirit of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America.” Hardly a unifying message of thanks for the bounty of being an American. This guy wouldn’t know a unifying message of thanksgiving if he tripped over one.
He’s so angry, so unhinged, that even on Thanksgiving Day, he couldn’t take a break from his diet of venom and vitriol, when all he should have been thinking about was how thankful he ought to be that he’s not already in prison. Maybe by next Thanksgiving, when we’re serving up turkey and stuffing again, that will be the gravy.
He has proved himself unfit for the privilege of the presidency since he first occupied the Oval. But don’t take it from me. Take it from the people he hired for some of the top jobs in government, the ones he was talking about when he promised during his first presidential campaign, "I'm going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people.”
Opinion columnist Jackie Calmes at the Los Angeles Times compiled a list of denunciations of the ex-president from those “best and most serious” people he once so proudly hired. A few examples:
“The first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people… Instead, he tries to divide us.” He would order the military to “violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.”
— His first secretary of defense, James Mattis
“He’s unfit for office.”
— His second defense secretary, Mark Esper
“A moron.”
— His first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson
“A dope.”
— His second national security advisor, retired general H.R. McMaster. His first, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and wasn’t around long enough to matter.
“I’ve been in those rooms with him when he’s met with those (foreign) leaders. I believe they think he is a laughing fool.”
— The third national security advisor, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton
He “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.”
— Attorney General William Barr
“An utter disgrace.”
— Thomas P. Bossert, White House homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser
“This man is unfit to be president. And a second term would be more dangerous than the first.”
— White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin
“A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law… God help us.”
— White House chief of staff, retired general John Kelly
“Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”
— His own vice president, Mike Pence
Those are the judgments of some who worked with him and knew him best. As columnist Calmes said in summary, “No president in U.S. history has been so damned by so many who were part of the inner circle.”
And yet we know, to the tens of millions of myopic Americans who want this guy back in the Oval Office, none of this makes a difference.
To the faithful, those critics— the ones once considered “the best and most serious”— are just bitter. To the faithful, the 91 criminal indictments in four different cases are just political punishment. To the faithful, his language on Veterans Day— “we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” language that Robert Jones of the Religion News Service says “crosses fully into Nazi territory”— makes no difference.
It makes no difference either that one of the names evidently under consideration for Attorney General in a new administration, a MAGA lawyer named Mike Davis, forecast their frighteningly authoritarian ambitions if they win next November: “We’re gonna deport a lot of people, ten million people and growing— anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents. We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.” The MAGA movement cheers him on.
People sometimes tell me that they’re tired of hearing about the former president, that we should just ignore him and maybe he’ll go away. But they’re wrong. He won’t. He’s the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and the runners-up aren’t even close.
That’s why, like many writers who keep coming down hard on the ex-president, I won’t stop.
In an essay yesterday here on Substack, Dan Rather wrote, “While Trump could plausibly win in November 2024, he likely does so only if enough of the voters who don’t want him to be president stay home.”
We cannot let that happen. Everything from decency to democracy is at stake.
It’s not just a matter of fighting “against” him. It’s a matter of fighting “for”… namely, for those voters who might be thinking they’ll sit out the next election, and for those who still, inexplicably, are on the fence.
It’s kind of like selling toothpaste: a single ad doesn’t flip a buyer. It is only with ad after ad after ad that the buyer might say, “Hey, that’s beginning to make sense.” We cannot let up until every conflicted or undecided buyer sees that light. We cannot afford darkness on inauguration day. We need morning in America again.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Well said, and as suggested , we need to keep writing similar reminders. We won’t dissuade his faithful (they’ll never read or hear the truth) but to once more encourage new and large numbers of dem voters next November. Thanks Greg
I will forward this to everyone I know, both Democrats and Republicans. Never has it been more important for us to heed Benjamin Franklin's warning "A Republic if we can keep it."