Trump Continues To Get Away With Crimes With the Luck of the Devil

Even though a majority in the Senate voted to convict the former president for his role in the Capitol insurrection, or the failed Capitol Building Putsch to subvert American democracy, Trump is once again being acquitted.

The vote was a lot closer this time. Indeed, a majority of the Senate voted to convict Trump, including seven Republican Senators. It should have been a whole lot more.

Right now, everyone is trying to report on the seven Republicans who voted against Trump. Frankly, we should be learning about the Republicans who refused to find the backbone enough to finally put an end to this ridiculous nonsense and stand up to the most arrogant, aristocratic, and blatantly, transparently corrupt president in American history.

As a result, it is almost assured that we will see some future president try and push the envelope even further. Because a man like Trump learned only one lesson over and over again after a lifetime of getting away with crimes, and especially in the last our years. What he learned was that he can keep getting away with things, so why not keep testing out just how much he can get away with?

He should never have been elected president. He divided the nation by making racist remarks against Mexicans, and championing the cause of creating a national registry of people of one particular religious faith, while also showing that he basically valued women based on what they could offer him in terms of favors. He even mocked a disabled reporter. All of that should have eliminated him from being considered a serious candidate, but instead, he won.

Then he had trouble clearly condemning outright Nazis and white supremacists, dragging his feet before finally doing so reluctantly after days and days of pressure, receiving universal condemnation. He got away with it.

He routinely lied, making promises that were transparently never going to come true. No, he never got Mexico to pay for the wall. No, he never lifted a finger to create the national healthcare system that he promised he would establish, and which would both be affordable and cover all Americans. No, he did not come close to paying off the national debt (he promised to do so in eight years), instead adding over $5 trillion to the national debt in his four years in office, or adding more than 25 percent to it in just his four years in office. No, he never divorced himself from his business interests, even though these did indeed seem to reflect a serious conflict of interest with the office of the presidency. No, he was not the greatest jobs creating president in American history. Far from it, as it turns out. No, the world does not respect or look up to the United States now more than it did before. Even farther from it than the jobs thing, unless you really believe the spin from FOX News about how those world leaders assembled at the United Nations who laughed right in Trump's face during his speech were, according to Fox pundits, laughing with him (even though Trump himself admitted that it was not the response he expected). 

And those were just his campaign promises. There were plenty more lies that dominated during his pathetic four years in office. It was not laughable, the whole Russian collusion thing, because it turns out that there were indeed meetings and obvious links between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The conversation with the Ukrainian  president was not perfect and was, in fact, obviously corrupt. The phone conversation with the Georgia election official was even worse. The speech to get his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol building, after months and months of lies about how he had won the election, and how this election was being stolen, was even worse still.

Yet, he gets away with it. Time and again, he keeps getting away with it. Not because he is innocent, but because he manipulated enough people with his snake oil salesman routine that he had amassed a strong base of supporters, with whom he could intimidate members of his party. They were scared of him for four years, and are still apparently scared of him. If they had half a spine to straighten themselves out with, they might have realized that this, finally, could have been the time to finally exorcise themselves and their party of the Trump demon.

Instead, they gave him, yet again, exactly what he wanted. You know that he is going to take his victory lap, and claim that this exonerates him completely. That everything that he did was "perfect." That this was just the latest Democratic, or Antifa, "witchhunt."

And the lesson that he - and more importantly, his supporters and those striving to succeed him in his leadership role with the GOP - will get out of this is that, once again, he got away with murder (that could actually be interpreted literally) once again. Hell, he even predicted as much when he was still just a candidate, making the claim that he could shoot someone in broad daylight, and still not lose a single supporter. For once, he was telling the truth.

Another dark day for the country, even though Trump is now, officially, a former president, thankfully. But he and Trumpism are not going away. Neither is the pseudo-fascism that he has ushered into mainstream American politics. And each of these successes for Trump empowers this fascism further. They are out of power for now, but for how much longer? How long before another Trump-like character, or perhaps Donald Trump himself (or another Trump family member) reaches the White House once again, and decides to attack the Constitution even further, to see how much more of it they can erode?

Shame on all of the Republican senators who lacked the courage and, frankly, the patriotism to stand up for what is right and what is best for the country.

Shame on all Trump supporters for their blind allegiance to a tyrant, and for empowering a wanna be dictator. Someday, they will empower someone who does more than gets the country closer to a dictatorship. Someday, if we keep going the way that we are going, we will outright reach it. And these idiots are going to be stomping their feet and waving the flag and swearing their allegiance to the leader who will take this country into it's darkest days yet.