Trump’s a Felon: Say it Loud!
Donald Trump supporters are turning their flags upside down this week to protest his conviction, CNN reports. I’m not impressed. My head has felt like it has been turned upside down for many months now.
In fact, at times it’s felt ready to explode as I try to understand how more than 40 percent of U.S. voters reportedly support, and in many cases revere, a man who is a non-stop liar, a bully, a narcissist, a wanna-be dictator, a racist and, now, a convicted felon. It pains me to even think about it; I can’t fathom why.
I do know this: if Joe Biden loses the presidency in 2024 it won’t be because of his age. It won’t be because he’s a mediocre speaker. It won’t even be because he’s been trapped trying to nudge and reason with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s more intelligent version of a slippery autocratic leader, a man who knows perpetual war is his best and perhaps only path to retain power.
No. If Joe Biden loses, it will be because he failed to hang Trump’s mantle tightly and repeatedly around his neck: Felon, convicted by 12 men and women selected in the fairest jury system on Earth. It will be because Biden continued to cede to Trump the 24/7 noise arena that passes for television news—day, after day after day.
So stop equivocating, Joe. Stop taking “the high ground” in the face of a gutter fighter who dreflects his own failings and weaknesses onto you as his opponent.
Hit Trump for who and what he, and not you, is: a crook. Say it over and over and over. Get every intelligent Democrat on your team and in high office to do the same. Make it a coordinated and relentless effort.
The facts speak for themselves, no matter how many thousands of flags the MAGA maniacs turn upside down. Donald Trump is a convicted felon.
If he’s the Messiah to many evangelicals, I have to believe those evangelicals are in the minority of the American public. Early polls I’ve seen support that. More than 50 percent of Americans approve of the verdicts.
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty…. I won’t bore you with all 34 counts.
Democrats—and particularly Biden—have to hammer this point. Only if they flood the airwaves will the endless blatherers on 24/7 noise have something to counterbalance their non-stop panels analyzing such gripping questions as how Trump took his verdict or whether he’ll go to jail or face house arrest.
Ultimately, I DON’T CARE.
This may be sacrilege, but I don’t want revenge. I want Trump gone from the political arena.
Buy him a villa in Moscow. Send him on an around-the-world cruise with Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis. Crown him as PGA champion. But don’t let him destroy our country by becoming president again. If that happens, a United States as a beacon of democracy will cease to exist. Forever. Donald Trump has made that no secret.
This is why Joe Biden needs to stop talking about his infrastructure plan. Or how many billions of dollars he’s forgiven in student loans. Or his how low he has capped payments on insulin. Yes, these examples and many others demonstrate that Joe Biden, in my view, has been a pretty effective president. But neither they, nor even the draconian anti-abortion positions carved out by the GOP nationwide, will assure Biden’s re-election.
Having a crook as his GOP opponent, and making that sobriquet stick, likely will.
Donald Trump is a convicted felon. There’s no nuance to it. Biden need not wrestle with what that means. He should shout it from the rooftops. Ten minutes after the verdict, I texted friends to say that Democrats had to act immediately to keep MAGA yet again from redefining reality. But Democrats have been slow to do so. Again.
A few days post-verdict, prominent Democrats are still trying to convince Biden, the consummate nuanced negotiator from his decades in the Senate, to steel himself and stand firm and strong. There is no “middle ground” here.
On June 1, Politicalwire.com, one of the political websites I read religiously, offered the headline: “Democrats Push Biden to Make Trump’s Felonies Top Issue.” Listen to them, Joe.
Former Sen. Doug Jones, who as a Democrat briefly served the deep red state of Alabama, told The New York Times: “I don’t think there’s anything to lose and a lot to gain, because I am convinced there’s a swath of people out there who are going to be very, very troubled by this.”
Or, to put it another way, there remain many millions more in this country flying the flag right side up instead of upside down. Even those whose warped world leads them to flip their flags upside down have nothing to fear.
Should Joe Biden be re-elected president, his supposed “Deep State” won’t go after them. They’ll be free to live their lives as they choose, just like everyone else in a democracy.
And in the worst case, there’s a Plan B: They can say they are friends of Samuel Alito’s wife—and thought turning the flag upside down was simply a fashion statement. Surely at least one Supreme Court justice will support them.
Jerry Lanson is a writing consultant for Harvard Kennedy School. He is an emeritus professor of journalism at Emerson College.