We should have seen the Trump danger sooner
Civil War - the movie - tells the story of future catastrophe through the journalists
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There is a certain culpability for all of us who write about current events.
Me included.
When Donald Trump was elected president, I was 17 years into a run as editor of The Post-Star in Glens Falls.
In the ensuing years, we rarely criticized Trump or his Republican administration. At the time, I was convinced we should remain true to our local mission and stay out of national politics, despite his daily lying, ethical lapses and politicizing almost everything.
We had survived bad presidents in the past, I reasoned.
The guardrails would protect our democracy again.
While trying to prove we were fair and impartial journalists, we too often failed in calling out the lies.
It is a mistake many in the media made and continue to make.
If you pointed out Trump's lies, if you criticized his conflicts of interest and his unethical behavior, you were proclaimed "partisan."
So I pulled my punches when writing columns to avoid provoking conservative readers. I didn't want the newspaper to be labeled partisan.
Maybe that's part of the reason we are where we are today.
Maybe that's part of the reason Trump - despite all of his misdeeds - is still a formidable presidential candidate.
Heather Cox Richardson, the respected historian who also writes a Substack column, put it perfectly on Friday:
"There are really two major Republican political stories dominating the news these days. The more obvious of the two is the attempt by former president Donald Trump and his followers to destroy American democracy."
Her only mistake is that is the only political story.
We should not hate Trump, we should despise him for his failure to embrace the American ideal.
The Washington Post fact-checker found Trump lied 30,573 times in the four years he was president or about 21 times a day.
You cannot possibly digest even a small sampling of his misdeeds in one sitting.
He tried to extort Ukraine into getting political dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for weapons. He obstructed the Mueller investigation, urged the FBI to investigate opponents, fired whistle blowers and truth tellers in his administration, used his office for personal gain, downplayed a world-wide pandemic, then suggested we all might try ingesting bleach to kill it, tried to subvert the 2020 election and when that failed incited a riot to stop the counting of the electoral votes.
The fact so many others don't believe those things to be true is truly frightening.
America has a long history of hucksters, carnival barkers and get-rich quick schemers cheating the American public, but Trump is the granddaddy of them all.
The fact our Harvard-educated congresswoman is an ardent supporter is especially troubling.
Thankfully, the criticism over Rep. Elise Stefanik and her Trumpster-transformation has been much more robust and needed, but still not entirely embraced.
This is a Republican district, a conservative region, but shockingly over time "Trumpers" have emerged hardened by Fox News' repeated lies. The fact it was fined nearly $1 billion for its lies about the 2020 election being stolen does not seem to have diminished its viewership and their loyalty to the cause of Donald Trump.
During Trump's tenure, my newspaper was called "fake news" and "enemies of the people" even by some of our local readers. Several local town boards tried their hand at lying, too. We exposed their lies and demanded the truth.
In 2018, five people were killed at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland. I blame Trump - perhaps unfairly - for that as well.
Being brutally honest should be an admired quality. Too many still believe you have to criticize Republicans and Democrats in equal numbers, but from where I sit the bad behavior has been far more pronounced among the Republican Party with Elise Stefanik leading the way locally.
Too many believe you have to criticize Fox News and MSNBC equally for their points of few, but from what I see, they don't deserve equal criticism. While MSNBC gives "Trump haters" its daily fix, it sticks largely to the facts. I don't find that true of Fox, especially during prime time.
Where you get your news will color your perspective.
Perhaps, that's why we all have to be better citizens. The risk for our democracy should be the only issue today, tomorrow and through Election Day. We all have to speak up. We have to call up lies and force debate that could be uncomfortable.
While it's hard to imagine anything worse than Jan. 6, Trump's abuse of pardon power may be more far-reaching. The day before he left office, he quietly commuted the sentences of 116 convicted criminals.
For 125 years, the Department of Justice's Office of Pardon Attorney reviewed all requests for pardons.
Until Trump.
The 116 include a notorious list of white-collar criminals, Republican insiders and hucksters that might remind you of Trump. You know some of them: Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon.
Look at the list yourself. You will be shocked how many former Republican congressman were pardoned or had their sentences commuted along with white-collar criminals guilty of bilking consumers out of millions.
The vast majority of the pardons were for people Trump had a personal or political connection or served a political purpose that would benefit him. Many of those pardoned had been convicted of fraud or public corruption. The New York Times reported that during the closing days of the Trump presidency, individuals with access to Trump were soliciting fees to lobby for pardons.
That is the real Donald Trump in action.
This is the world Trump would bring back.
Remember, Roger Stone was prosecuted for covering up President Trump's crimes during the Mueller investigation. A week before Stone was to report to federal prison, Trump said, "He can sleep well at night."
He then commuted his sentence.
Case after case is like this.
Fred Clark Jr. was sentenced to 40 years in prison for masterminding a $300 million ponzi scheme in Florida.
The Tampa Times wrote commuting Clark's sentence was an "outrageous injustice that reeks of favoritism and privilege and confirms how easily a president can abuse clemency power."
Eli Weinstein was sentenced to 24 years for running a $200 million ponzi scheme, then running another $7 million scam while awaiting trial.
After Trump commuted his sentence, New Jersey Attorney General Gubir Grewal, who prosecuted Weinstein at the time, called Trump's grant of clemency "one huckster commuting the sentence of another."
Two years after Trump let Weinstein out of jail, he was re-arrested for another ponzi scheme where he fleeced 150 people out of $35 million.
Perhaps Trump admired his moxie.
That's the future.
We can no longer afford not to speak up. We can no longer worry about hurting the feelings of others.
The future of the country depends on it.
Trump trial
Dan Froomken, who writes the Press Watch column, says that the media needs to do a better job of characterizing the first criminal trial against Donald Trump.
They keep referring it to as a “hush money trial” and he says that is not good enough. He suggests the following language to explain the charges against Trump:
Trump is charged with falsifying documents to cover up his frantic efforts to prevent damaging disclosures in the waning days of the 2016 election. Specifically, the charges relate to the October 2016 hush-money payment Trump’s fixer paid a porn star who threatened to disclose their prior sexual relationship. During the federal trial of Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, it was established that Trump ordered Cohen to make the payment then repaid him with checks he recorded as legal expenses, when he was in fact repaying an illegal campaign contribution. Still unclear is whether Trump committed tax fraud by writing the checks off his taxes.
Even you Sununu
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is one of the few Republicans who had not backed Donald Trump. He supported Nicki Haley and his moderate views are reasonable and sane.
But on ABC's This Week he announced he was supporting Donald Trump as president. Host George Stephanopoulos had this reaction:
“Just to sum up. You support (Trump) for president even if he's convicted in (the) classified documents (case). You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he's lying about the last election. You support him for president even if he's convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?”
“Yeah. Me and 51% of America,” Sununu said.
What is so troubling is that our leaders are supposed to do what is best for the country. They are supposed to be smarter than the rest of us.
Chapman book sale
The Chapman Museum has a pretty broad collection of local history that you will not find in almost any bookstore.
It will be holding its spring book sale on Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Several local authors will be signing books including myself on Saturday at 11 a.m.
More bad news
The Times Union reported this week that the College of Saint Rose, which is closing, will run out of money on June 30 and there will be no severance pay or health insurance for its employees when it closes.
Civil War - The movie
Civil War is about a real life future civil war in the United States. Unfortunately, the premise does not seem so far-fetched anymore.
Los Angeles times columnist Mary McNamara wrote this:
“It is a powerful film, which (Director Alex) Garland has said he made to underscore the importance of journalism: to remind us that much of what we know about the world is a direct result of journalists telling and showing us what is going on at any given moment. Even if their lives and/or mental health are at stake.”
Now you know why I will be going to see it.
This election is not about electing a Democrat or a Republican, it is a choice between Democracy and Autocracy. One candidate who is working to improve the lives of the American people regardless who they voted for in the last election and the other candidate who continues to spew vitriolic rhetoric, gives validity to dictators and thumbs his nose at the rule of law. Make no mistake about it. this is the most important election in our lifetime. Our enemies are watching , the credibility of our nation is on the chopping block .
Many saw Trump for what he was. Very few saw the capitulation of an entire party to him.