Just say "No" to Trump 2.0

As expected, former President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he plans to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

The announcement came despite (or, in spite) of requests from a number of senior Republican operatives that Trump delay announcing until after the December 6th run-off race in Georgia that pits incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock against his hand picked challenger, the intellectually unqualified Hershel Walker.

Speaking of intellect, in analyzing Trump's now third run for the presidency, I've decided to pull out a few of my "SAT words" that my dear friend, the late Attorney Terri "Sista Shay" Alexander, used to tease me about using on social media.

So, without further delay:

Acerbic

a-cer-bic

adj.

"Sharply or bitingly critical, sarcastic, or ironic in temper, mood, or tone..."

From the very moment that Donald Trump launched his first presidential bid from the Trump Plaza lobby in 2016, he provided acerbic commentary about Mexicans, "The Blacks," Muslims and every single demographic group other than White Anglo-Saxon Protestants—all to the delight of many of his white fans and supporters who share his bigoted views about "others."

This week, Trump is right back on the offensive, calling for the death penalty for drug dealers (Nota Bene: While there are infinite white drug dealers arrested each year across America, the popular depiction of dealers comes in Black and Brown hues—the colors that Trump and his ilk see when discussing drug selling—not the white dealers that provide the rich and famous their own marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines). 

Discordant

dis-chord-ant

adj.

"Disagreeing, divisive, incongruous..."

From his surprising presidential victory, to his controversial last days in office during his term, Donald Trump was a discordant figure among his fellow Republicans—and certainly among his Democratic opponents.

Trump broke the oft repeated rule that the revered Ronald Reagan quipped back in the 1980s, "thou shalt not speak ill of fellow Republicans," routinely during the 2016 primaries—with little push back from his party members who seemed scared to fight back—figuratively or literally. Whether it was coining derisive nicknames like "Low Energy Jeb Bush," "Little Marco Rubio," and "Lying Ted Cruz," this comedic routine turned Trump from the debate stage side show clown to the front-runner as primary voters laughed at antics never before seen at serious political events.

Trump's insults were not just relegated to Republicans and Democrats (his so-called "Crooked Hillary Clinton” lost to him in 2016, but "Sleepy" Joe Biden woke up in time to soundly whip him in 2020), but he also routinely insulted women by making crude references to their looks and menstrual cycles; he insulted a disabled reporter; he insulted Gold Star Families, including one widow who he said that her deceased husband "knew what he signed up for" after his death in action); despite using eight deferments to avoid Vietnam, he insulted veterans, whether it was calling the American dead from World Wars I and II "suckers" for serving, or joking aloud about Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam War hero, on being captured by the North Vietnamese Army.

Trump infamously said that "many good people" exist within the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazi ranks after the Charlottesville Race Riot of 2017 (above); he called Colin Kaepernick, Eric Reid, and other NFL players who protested police brutality "ungrateful Sons of Bitches” while deriding Black nations as “shit-holes” and predominantly Black inner-cities as “rat infested”—insults that mostly spoke to his base and his base alone—not the majority of the American people.  

Mendacious

men-day-shous

adj.

"Lying, untruthful..."

The Oval Office has not had an occupant as mendacious as Donald Trump since Richard Nixon announced “I am not a crook” before resigning in 1974.

Indeed, Trump's own lies are legion, and he has an unholy knack of deflecting to everyone but himself for his misdeeds, great and small, including:

*His undergraduate grades (Trump has yet to release his transcripts from Fordham and Pennsylvania, despite demanding that former President Barack Obama, the student president and member of the Harvard Law Review that's earned through a blind review of high grades, release his a decade ago)

*His tax returns (still fighting their release in federal courts across America)

*His height being 6’3 (he is 6'1—at best)

*His weight being 235 lbs (he is 285 lbs—at minumum)

*His net worth (he is a millionaire—not a billionaire)

*His sexual proclivities (he bedded and paid off porn stars while his third wife, Melania, was pregnant with their son, Baron)

*His sexual assaults (despite being caught on tape bragging about sexual assault with Billy Bush, he maintains that the voice we heard wasn't his own…)

*His "victory" in 2020 being “stolen" (he was beaten soundly in both the popular vote and Electoral College by Joe Biden)

Villainy

vil-a-nee

noun

"Wicked, felonious, criminal behavior..."

Donald Trump's villainy far exceeds that of disgraced former President Richard Nixon, too, as Nixon's Watergate Scandal left no one dead; Trump's calling for insurrection to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to then President-elect Joe Biden in 2021 not only left five people dead and millions in property damage, his incitement led to his Twittter and Facebook pages being suspended!

Those facts, coupled with the fact that his words and deeds on January 6, 2021, including shouting at the White House to his aides that his Vice President Mike Pence "should be hanged" for not supporting his lies about who really won, are reasons that he very well could face indictment for a number of felony offenses in federal court in the days ahead—and disqualification from running per the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

As I have written before, I understood how many people who felt turned off from politics as usual turned to a non-politician for relief, but the problem is that Donald Trump was never going to be the right "outsider" to lead in Washington due to his intemperate and unstable disposition—and his inability to refrain from using Twitter and Facebook as axes to divide rather than unite.

It is important to note that while there are many highly intelligent people who have wonderful senses of humor, other would-be amateur comedians crack jokes to masquerade their intellectual deficiencies, just like Donald Trump. But what's worse is that Trump thinks that he is wiser than he is, a mental disconnect that fuels his acerbic, discordant, villainous mendacities—and led him to be become the only President in our nation's history to be twice impeached by the House of Representatives.

While the majority of Americans, even some of his former supporters, find nothing funny about his antics or the prospects of a second term, I caution those who are assuming that Florida's Ron Desantis is the prohibitive front runner for the Republican nomination in 2024 just because the mainstream media have crowned him as the heir apparent. Yes, there are many Republican donors, politicians, and pundits who are sick and tired of Trump and his "I, I, me, my, I" narcissistic ways, but again, do not assume that Desantis will be the clear-cut winner in ‘24!

Why? Lest we forget that there are millions of rank-and-file Republican voters who are still very much in love with Trump not because they consider him a policy expert—but because they love the way that he is verbally nasty towards "the Blacks," "the Muslims," "the Gays," "the Mexicans," and every demographic group that they deem to be less than themselves. Lest we also forget that on policy alone, there was nothing to differentiate Trump from Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or even another political outsider, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, in the 2016 GOP primary—but Trump, the class clown, whipped them ALL!

Further, even though just about every candidate that Trump backed in last week's 2022 mid-terms lost—Bigly!—in head to head matchups against Democrats (with the Trump backed Herschel Walker in a run-off against Sen. Raphael Warnock), the fact that his chosen candidates even

won their Republican primaries over more seasoned and articulate Republican opponents is a testament to Trump's pull within the Republican base—and the reason he believes that he can do what no President has done since Grover Cleveland in 1892—which is to win a second, non-consecutive term. 

Stay tuned...