One Voice

People are asking, should Donald Trump go to prison for his actions during his presidency? I’m one voice, pretty insignificant I admit. Do I believe he should go to prison?

Yes.

I didn’t always think that way. It petrified me when he became president. I just couldn’t imagine he was capable of the job, but I could imagine the damage he could do. BUT, when the four years were over and he lost, I just thought, it’s too much trouble to go through the process. He and his followers and the Republican Party would kick up too much dust.

I’ve changed my mind. It wasn’t just because was involved in an attempted coup to overthrow the country. That should have been enough, and it is enough. But it’s more than that. What angered me more than anything, was the fact that he was a fraud. He stole the presidency and used it for his purposes.

I knew he was a fraud from his trip down the golden elevator. Many didn’t. Many didn’t care. People thought he was going to bring good change to the country. For some he was reality TV in the White House. He was brash. He was loud. He was going to drain the swamp. He represented the people. What most didn’t know was, he couldn’t stand being with those who loved him most. You could drain your retirement account for him, just don’t get too close.

Trump wasn’t professional. He was incompetent. As president, he was cruel, and uncaring, without an empathetic bone in his body. He was everything his niece, Mary Trump warned us about in her book Too Much and Never Enough. The Republican Party knew all this. They could have stopped his nomination. Just demanded that he show his taxes. They didn’t. They had an agenda. Judges, (and Trump delivered beautifully). Tax relief for the wealthy. Selling off public lands. Making government small enough to fit in a bathtub. Trump sounded good to them, so they saddled us with Trump. Even though it was clear he was totally incompetent, and working with Putin, an enemy to the United States, from his candidacy onward.

So why now? Why do I think he belongs in prison? Because he knew… he knew wasn’t capable of being President and he didn’t care. It wasn’t about that for him. It was about how much he could grift from the taxpayer and the country. And in the process, he

1. Weakened government agencies. The amount of work the Biden administration got dumped in their laps after Trump left office in this area alone is staggering. The amount of chaos the Trump administration caused has weakened us as a nation not just in areas of health, something most of us know about, but agricultural policy, economic policy, climate change policy. “I worry just because this last administration has gone away and we have a new administration,” Mr. Sinks said, “it doesn’t mean in four years, or in eight years or in 12 years, that we won’t have another group of people in there who are trying to undermine the facts and use ‘alternative facts’ to create a reality that isn’t there.”
2. Trump got impeached for withholding aid to Ukraine while trying to strong arm President Zelensky. He wanted President Zelensky to spread propaganda that Ukraine not Russia interfered in the 2016 election. He ousted our ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. He removed Alex Vindman. Finally he placed Giuliani in a position where President Zelensky was forced to go through him to relay anything to Trump.
3. Trump’s dismal understanding of foreign affairs created chaos in the withdraw from Afghanistan. His signed an agreement with the Taliban to leave the county by May of 2021, but Taliban had to stop attacks against American and coalition forces. And then he did nothing to promote a peace deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government. In the meantime he made it nearly impossible for those who help military forces get out of harms way, that is, interpreters and their families, or women who had gained status and power, or ordinary Afghans who fought against the Taliban.
4. Trumps betrayal of the Kurds. Again, Trump’s absolute lack of foreign experience put lives in danger.
5. Trump’s hatred for protests against his administration. It didn’t matter that peaceful protests are part of what makes democracy healthy. He was angry at the protests in Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd, and wanted to bring in troops, but Governor Walz stopped him. Those who marched with the chant ‘Jews will not replace us.’ in Charlottesville VA however, were very fine people. Those who threatened civil war as statues leaders in the Civil War came down, were praised. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers found a friend in Trump while Bill Barr ordered troops in for a Trump photo op, when a peaceful protest occurred in DC.
6. The insurrection. Starting June 9th we will hear how much Trump did to remain in power. It was power he never should have been granted and in the end when the people of the US voted against him, he simply gathered his cronies, his mafia, around him and they devised ways, NOT A WAY, but ways to remain in power. He threatened Vice President Pence, in an effort to make the electoral vote go his way. Pence remained. He wouldn’t leave with the Secret Service and the electoral votes were counted. Trump threatened Georgia. Just find 11,000 votes. Some in Congress helped. This is not how a democracy functions. This is how a democracy falls. And it came very close to falling. Too close.

Trump was a fraud who was allowed to capture the White House. He was a fraud, not capable on the first day to handle the office of the presidency, just as he wasn’t capable on the last day to function in the office. His COVID policies killed people. It allowed conspiracy theories to flourish, simply because it worked for him. We are two years into the Biden administration and we are still dealing with the ‘stop the steal’ nonsense.

Remember one thing from this article. Those who wish to rule as autocrats are not competent. They aren’t going to allow branches of government to rule beside him or her. They don’t work for the people or help the people of their nation. They throw rolls of paper towels at hurricane victims. They stand in from of churches they do not attend with a bible in their hands upside down. They spend days and weeks on the golf course as the taxpayers are forced to pay millions for improvements to the golf course. Autocrats are in power for themselves. They love chaos. They steal classified material to do who knows what with and their son in laws make billions for doing who knows what. If you think the next guy who seems like he really likes power might be an autocrat, he’s an autocrat. Follow the track record. It’s obvious.

Yes, Donald Trump should go to prison. Those who helped him hurt this country for their own gain, should go to prison. It was a con game from the first appearance on the escalator and he never should have made it close to the White House. It was a con game perpetrated by a fraud.