The shrinking core of people who continue to defend Trump in the face of the facts cling to a number of false premises. A little basic logic will show how ridiculous they are.
The first absurd assertion is the idea that Trump cannot be held responsible for his ignorance of the law because “He is not a politician—he is a businessman.” Think about that. Anyone could make that argument. A logger, a fisherman, a banker, a doctor, a clerk—anyone and everyone could say that there is no real reason they should know the law. None would be given a free pass on that account.
Then people say that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Unless you believe that our democracy can survive when the people with the most power are above the law, this is an absurd argument. As one legal expert pointed out, if Trump really shot someone he would be immediately arrested and charged.
Trump defenders argue that he was “legitimately elected” and that therefore, their votes should be “respected.” In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million ballots. He said the midterms were a referendum on his presidency. He lost that election by about 9 million votes. But Trump and Co. show no respect at all for people who voted against them.
Trump defenders say that his amoral, scattershot approach to governance is tolerable because he will ‘do great things’. The two great things commonly cited are a soaring stock market and the appointment of conservative judges like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
The stock market has plunged in recent weeks, erasing all its gains for the last year and then some. With dozens of guilty pleas, scandal driven resignations and scores of investigations into every fraud-ridden corner of Trump’s empire, the idea that he is moral enough to shape the nation’s courts for years to come is indefensible. Ill-gotten gains can never be the basis of a moral system.
The elephant in the room is the Mueller/Russia investigation. The first Trump argument was that there was no contact with Russians. Then they claimed there was contact, but no collusion. Then they argued that there was collusion, but collusion wasn’t a crime. Finally (all these previous claims disproved) they have resorted to the argument that ‘Russian interference didn’t change the outcome of the election.’ Examine that idea critically for a moment.
We all know advertising works—that’s why businesses spend billions of dollars on it every year. Research on political advertising gives us a baseline. Robocalls apparently only change one vote in every thousand contacts. That sounds like an awful return, but robocalls are really cheap. They are also not really targeted. In a report sponsored by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI):
“There were ~77 million engagements on Facebook, ~187 million engagements on Instagram, and ~73 million engagements on original content on Twitter.” (all carefully targeted)
This data doesn’t include many other social media platforms. By the 1 in one thousand formula of untargeted robocalls, that propaganda would change some 350,000+ votes That is more than 4 times than the 77,000 votes that Trump “won” by. There is only one logical conclusion—of course Russian interference affected the results of the election!
This conclusion that Trump is in Russia’s debt could be questioned if Trump’s foreign policy had remained in the mainstream. The fact is though, that Trump’s bizarre antics have helped Russia in every possible way.
The facts are undeniable: Trump’s election was never legitimate, and, since his ascendance to power, Trump has used every advantage of his ill-gotten office to shield himself from punishment. Recently it was revealed that Trump was the target of an FBI investigation, that he suppressed notes of his meeting with Putin, and that his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave sensitive polling data to the Russians. Trumps biggest lies are always about Russia. If Trump gets away with this, it will be a disaster for our democracy. If he is brought to book, he will also insist on a crisis. For this colossal mess we can thank Trump his misguided supporters.
The Russians must be laughing themselves to death.
All the rest of us can do is persist in our resistance.
