The beginning of the end, again
May I have your attention, please?
It’s over.
The 2020 presidential election ended on Nov. 3.
But to be precise, Donald Trump’s presidency started unraveling on Jan. 21, 2017 – the day after he took office.
That Saturday afternoon, he quibbled about the number of people who attended his inauguration. A falsehood he made emphatically.
Pure Donald J. Trump.
He was revealing his masterful skill for creating controversies out of thin air. That’s a talent that only rarely resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Within hours of him taking his oath of office, he was already crystallizing the vote that would topple him from his imaginary throne four years later.
On that same day, there was that massive Women’s March across Washington, and the rest of the country, that served as the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.
Estimated crowds of as many as 5 million people were letting Mr. Trump know if they had anything to do with it, his time in office would be short.
They were right.
While he’s enlivened by those Proud Boy crowds that darken the streets of Washington these days, he failed to understand that those women wearing their pink hats four years ago were already forming the foundation of his defeat.
Trump still hasn’t come to terms with the fact that most Americans just don’t like him. That they have no use for his presidency.
When he got elected, he was doing it with fewer votes than his opponent.
Gallup’s tracking polls indicate that Trump is the only president whose job approval never exceeded his job disapproval for the entirety of his presidency. That includes other one-term presidents: Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Gerald Ford.
Trump’s apparent defense against his personal unpopularity seems to be in flinging unwinnable lawsuits all over the legal landscape.
He’s won one. But he’s lost 59 of them.
On the very morning that electors made their way to statehouses across America so that they could put their final touches on Trump’s embarrassing pursuit of a second term, some lawsuit-happy attorneys were at it again. This time in New Mexico.
I wrote that right. They were trying to get some judges to throw out votes in New Mexico.
On Nov. 3, Joe Biden outpolled Trump by just short of 100,000 votes in the Land of Enchantment. It was hardly a close contest.
Even if there’d been a reason to overturn the will of those 100,000 New Mexicans, it wouldn’t have mattered in the overall. Biden’s electoral vote count exceeded Trump’s by 74 (306 to 232). New Mexico only accounts for five electors.
Who cares?
Trump’s attorneys did, of course.
They don’t count. Because they can’t count.
They can’t even count to nine: the number of Supreme Court Justices who’ve unanimously jettisoned attempts to overthrow the will of the people, not once, but twice.
There had been 126 Republican House members who were joined by more than a dozen state attorneys general in a futile attempt to thwart common sense.
They lost.
They should be embarrassed, but they won’t be.
Blind allegiance to Donald Trump, or should I say, soon-to-be-ex-president Trump, has resulted in some sort of stage-four political paralysis, causing Republicans to avoid looking into their mirrors.
Trump still refuses to say he’s given up. He’s going to keep fighting as long as there are donors out there who believe he still has a shot at staying in office.
He’s collecting millions in cash, with no discernible chance of becoming anything more than a GoFundMe ex-president.
The one word that’s being used most recently to define Trump is “grifter.” He knows how to get his hands on other people’s money. He’s good at it. He’s better at that than he ever was at mastering the finer points of governance.
Democracy will survive Donald Trump.
Not by much, though.
He will leave us in a huff, and thankfully, with far more circumstance than pomp.
He’ll carry his swollen ego with him.
We won’t miss him.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award-winning, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, as well as a 40-year television and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.