I don’t propose anyone take away the former president’s phones, his internet access, his rights to call outrageous press conferences or give loud speeches.
I don’t suggest denying him the privilege to fleece supporters who want to click on his fundraising websites, or his prerogative to endorse outlandish candidates for public office.
And I would never propose challenging his First Amendment rights to call anyone who disagrees with him a litany of names that only a child would appreciate.
Just last week Donald Trump called the former head of CNN a “world-class sleazebag.” He next hollered in Texas, calling prosecutors who are investigating his conduct “vicious, horrible people,” adding, “they’re racists and they’re very sick, they’re mentally sick.”
Trump continues adding to his ever-growing list of schoolyard outbursts when he wants attention.
No, I don’t care for the former president’s policies, politics, dishonesty, flagrant disregard for facts, or his attitudes toward women he finds attractive and disdain for women he doesn’t, but that’s who he is. What he shouldn’t be is the spokesman for the Republican party. There are millions of Republicans who deserve better.
If Trump won’t tone it down, then other elected and political officials need to do it for him.
The country, particularly the Republican party, doesn’t have to keep giving Trump top billing. In terms he might understand, it’s time to move the former president out of the news-making penthouse with satellite service at the Ritz and check him into a room at a budget hotel that only has basic cable.
And maybe, in time, as he fades into irrelevancy, others will stop paying so much attention to so many false claims and attacks on democracy. And stop mimicking his bad behavior, particularly as the country is in an election year — one that I hope we can conduct without sore losers storming the Capitol because Trump told them to take matters into their own hands.
In particular, responsible members of Trump’s adopted Republican party — he is an opportunistic Republican, who saw easy pickings for his brand of attack politics — need to show they believe in something more than the next fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. They need to show they are not afraid of the bully.
Like former Vice President Mike Pence did last week.
Pence spoke up and spoke out at a gathering of conservative lawyers meeting in Florida, telling the group — and the American public — that “President Trump is wrong” in claiming Pence could have and should have overturned the legally verified results of the 2020 presidential election. The election Trump lost fair and square, not that he ever won anything fair and square.
Pence said it would have been “un-American” for him to overturn the election results. He actually got a round of applause for his remarks. No doubt some of the lawyers figured Trump would not recognize them behind face masks.
Sadly, on the same day as Pence was telling the truth, the Republican National Committee held its winter meeting in Salt Lake City and voted overwhelmingly to censure two Republicans for serving on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
A statement by the chair of the Republican National Committee defending the rioters for their “legitimate political discourse” prompted strong rebukes from Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young, both solid Republicans. Murkowski wrote, “We cannot allow a false narrative to be created. We cannot deny the truth” of the effort to overturn the election.
Alaska’s other U.S. senator, Dan Sullivan, was silent, as he usually is when Trump is involved. Too bad he is missing in inaction.
Thank you to Murkowski and Young, and especially the former vice president, for speaking up and standing up for truth over Trump. In time, maybe more will do the same and the former president will find fewer people willing to follow his destructive path.
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