Kendall Stanley: Enough already

I’ve got Donald J. Trump fatigue and it’s barely two weeks into his third run for the presidency.

Apparently some in his own party are feeling the same way. While many of Trump’s acolytes welcomed the news that he was running again for president, many others dodged reporters when asked what they thought about the news.

As The Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank noted of Trump’s announcement, “He renewed old grievances. “I’m a victim,” he complained, moaning about the “fake dossier” — of six years ago.

“He lashed out anew at immigrants undertaking an “invasion” of America for "very bad and sinister reasons.”

“And he voiced more election conspiracies, saying voting in the United States is worse than in a “third world country” and suggesting “China played a very active role in the 2020 election” to defeat him. His demand to return to paper ballots and ban early voting earned one of the biggest cheers of the night.

As for “forward looking”? Trump saw a “failing nation” beset by “festering rot and corruption,” run by “radical lunatics” who are “leading us to the brink of nuclear war.”

“It was desultory and random, bouncing from supposed long-ago conversations with China’s president, to his belief that “you won’t get” a turkey for Thanksgiving, to the FBI’s seizure of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, to urban “cesspools of blood,” to imitating former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s accent.”

So there you have some of it.

And despite evidence to the contrary, he tried to claim wins in the midterm elections because of his support. Never mind the gubernatorial candidates, secretary of state candidates and senate wannabes who got rolled by their Democratic opponents.

His speech ran so long and ponderous that some in the crowd tried to leave only to be stopped by Trump’s security people.

The Post’s editorial board didn’t hold back in rejecting a third run by Trump either.

“The case against Mr. Trump is straightforward. He uses demagogy to stoke racism. He lies about matters great and small. As president, he frequently placed his personal interests above the national interest. He promised to lift up ordinary Americans and instead delivered tax cuts for the wealthy that significantly increased the federal debt. He was a friend to dictators and an inconstant ally to liberal democracies. He made the country’s military position in the world demonstrably weaker by foolishly withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, which even a senior Israeli official now concedes was a serious self-inflicted wound. And in perhaps his greatest test as president, he treated the COVID-19 pandemic as a public relations problem, downplaying the danger and resisting basic safety measures that would have saved lives.

“If he is elected, a second Trump term would lack whatever guardrails were in place during the first. Over the course of those four years, Mr. Trump grew bolder in his defiance of the other branches of government, disregard for the law and flagrant abuses of presidential power. This time, he would be running with the support of those who are not only aware of his worst abuses but have also embraced him as the wronged party. He is likely to be surrounded even more completely by sycophants. Consider, for example, whom Mr. Trump might choose as an attorney general. At the end of his term, Mr. Trump forced out his own attorney general, Bill Barr — a loyal supporter but someone who was unwilling to openly break the law — and tried to install a midlevel Justice Department official whose primary qualification was an apparent willingness to do exactly that on Mr. Trump’s behalf. A second term promises to be a revenge tour of grievances and political payback.”

Who would want that?

Trump apparently remains under the delusion that if he is running for president the many criminal investigations in his life will be put on hold or dropped.

Did he try to overturn the 2020 election? Of course he did and his sycophants are still pushing the tale of the stolen election. But he did it out in the open, calling Georgia election officials and urging them to find enough votes to give him the state’s electoral votes. Or publicly urging vice president Mike Pence to get the courage to stop the electoral process to give the vote to him.

While an early announcement of his decision to run is not without its fans, are the rest of us willing to listen to two more years of whining and “I did it better” claptrap?

Don’t think so.

— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Kendall Stanley: Enough already