Photo © Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com
Stormy Daniels
Stormy Daniels
Of all the crimes Donald Trump committed throughout his four years as president, most Americans probably agree paying $130,000 to cover up a sleazy sexual encounter with a porn star was a pretty minor one.
Attempting to overthrow democracy after losing an election, inciting violent insurrectionists to kill and injure Capitol police and threaten the lives of Congress and his own vice president, pressuring Georgia Republicans to manufacture fraudulent votes and creating fraudulent electoral votes in seven other states, stealing and hiding hundreds of secret government documents and lying about it—the list goes on and on.
Many more indictments are coming and all of them—the monstrous ones as well as the petty ones—are why Trump will never escape the inevitable verdict of being the most corrupt president in American history.
History Comes Alive
In states where Republicans still allow American history to be taught in the future, what better way to get students interested in how democracy can go horribly wrong than finding out Trump’s first criminal indictment involved his relationship with Stormy Daniels whose interview on 60 Minutes described spanking Trump with a magazine with his picture on the cover.
When we were growing up students used to think history was boring because it was taught so badly, requiring memorizing a lot of dates. Talk about making history come alive.
But for those who paid close attention to the details of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump—very few probably—Trump’s successful payments of hush money to cover up his sordid private life before the 2016 election was a much bigger story than many people realize.
How big? Alternative history big. Screaming headlines in National Enquirer big. Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen was paying to cover up the Stormy Daniels story and other scandals including rumors of an illegitimate child at the same time House Speaker Paul Ryan and other party leaders were distancing themselves from Trump over the disgusting “Access Hollywood” tape with their nominee bragging about sexually assaulting women by grabbing their genitals.
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Sleazy Sex Life
At that point, a flood of new stories about Trump’s sleazy sex life could have changed American history. Republicans fleeing from their corrupt candidate could have started a stampede before he had a chance to destroy the Republican party. Instead, the payoffs worked, and the party was destroyed. Is that a big enough story for you?
We could have had a qualified, competent president during a deadly worldwide pandemic probably saving hundreds of thousands more Americans. The U.S. Supreme Court could still be protecting our constitutional rights instead of destroying them. January 6, 2021 would never have happened. Racism, sexism and hateful bigotry toward LGBTQ Americans would still exist, but neither party would be trying to exacerbate those problems. Okay, that last one is probably wishful thinking.
Trump and the dysfunctional Republican House Crazytown Caucus can babble all the nonsense they want about defunding the FBI and the Justice Department, but there’s absolutely nothing they can do to prevent all the Trump indictments that are coming for increasingly serious crimes.
Nationally Divisive?
President Ford didn’t do his party any favors by pardoning Richard Nixon for running a burglary ring out of the Oval Office. Ford was wrong when he claimed it would be nationally divisive to prosecute a former president. It would be far more nationally divisive right now if all the federal and state investigations gathering mountains of evidence against Trump fail to indict him.
That didn’t stop Trump from threatening “death & destruction” from mobs of his violent supporters days before Bragg’s indictment. Very few showed up. Most party leaders have maintained a strict code of silence to avoid making any intelligible sounds that could possibly be mistaken for opinions either for or against Trump.
For the party that enthusiastically joined Trump in chanting “Lock her up!” to jail Hillary Clinton for using the wrong email server, it’s awkward for the law-and-order party to denounce prosecutors as radical leftists for issuing indictment for major crimes such as stealing elections and organizing a deadly and destructive public riot inside the U.S. Capitol attacking Congress.
The truth is many elected Republicans except for Trump’s deranged disciples in the House will be relieved when Trump’s ignorance and chaos are gone from the party. The problem is when politicians don’t have enough courage to help rid their party of criminal elements, the criminal justice system itself moves extremely slowly.
In the 1960s, Democrats drove violent Southern White racists out of their party by supporting the civil rights movement. Nixon’s Southern strategy betrayed the party of Lincoln by welcoming the racists.
Republicans need to take the same kind of drastic action Democrats did. It’s time for Republicans to embrace American democracy again. Let the violent racists and neo-Nazis supporting Trump form their own party. That will be a really big story.
