Well... I was dreadfully wrong about the election.
It's been a couple of weeks since Trump won the election with less than 50% of the vote. It is the first time in three elections that he has won the popular vote. He also swept the swing states, given him an electoral college win as well.
The night of the election, as the returns came in, I was, as someone who had picked Harris to win, quite shocked at the outcome. Trump is an adjudicated rapist; he owed millions in penalties to Trump University students he swindled; he is forbidden from operating a charity in New York because of fraud; he incited violence at the Capitol on 1/6/21 with the intention of halting the certification of the election; he owes millions to the woman he defamed; he has appealed his business fraud case; he stole classified documents and refused to return them, claiming they belonged to him (and no need to store them in anything but a gilded Mar A Lago bathroom).
But he was elected president and will take the oath of office on 1/6/21. He has made it clear that the Constitution and the rule of law matter not much at all to him. His cabinet nominations include alleged sexual predators:
- Matt Gaetz for US Attorney General, who has since dropped out of the running because it seems clear he has committed serious ethical violations – like having sex with a minor – that would disqualify most normal people.
- Linda McMahon to head US Department of Education, whose qualifications for that role seem to include "loyalty to Trump" and being named in a sexual abuse of minors lawsuit. Her experience includes running a wrestling empire.
- Pete Hegseth, Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon, a member of National Guard, Fox News host and man accused of rape (he paid the victim money to keep his Fox News gig, apparently.)
- Robert Kennedy Jr., who has been accused of sexual assault and has said he has had a sexual addiction problem - his second wife died of suicide after reading his diary of his sexual conquests, to head up Health & Human Services.
There are no guardrails. Republicans won the House and Senate; the party has long abandoned the Constitution and the rule of law. SCOTUS gave Trump significant immunity with a ruling written by John Roberts. It's like standing at a precipice and realizing that disaster is imminent.
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