The Trump Putsch

“While I am happy to endorse some of President Trump’s policies, I am not willing to endorse his self-serving legal maneuvering simply for the sake of these policies I support.”

After a history of voting for Republican presidential candidates George Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, I never warmed to Donald Trump. To me, he has remained cold as a lobster off the coast of Maine—not only since he announced his run for president in 2015 but for many years before that when he was lauded for his wealth and success in the worlds of real estate and reality television. President Trump invariably struck me as an egomaniacal empty shell with few moral scruples other than the promotion of the Trump brand.

In short, I never liked him, yet I also never paid him much mind until he competed for the Republican nomination in 2016, inspiring me to write fierce critiques of him for initially refusing to disavow David Duke during an interview, for his undisciplined and unhinged behavior during the 2016 campaign, for trivializing sexual assault, and for his antics in the wake of the tragedy in Charlottesville.

All that said, he won. Distasteful as it was, he won a majority of electoral votes, catching pollsters with their pants down, while leaving his political enemies in shock and disbelief and his supposed “silent majority” of supporters in celebratory jubilation. The election process was free and fair, despite all the allegations surrounding the so-called “Russia hoax.” As a result, former President Barack Obama carried out an incumbent’s customary duty of welcoming President-elect Trump to the White House to facilitate the transition. Four years later, President Trump has refused to do the same. Instead, he has refused to concede defeat and has barraged the courts with a number of frivolous lawsuits challenging vote counts in key swing states, despite an absence of any material evidence of election fraud. He fired now-former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and appointed loyalists to key posts. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump term” on November 10th.