The felony conviction of Donald Trump for paying off Stormy Daniels in the last days of his 2016 campaign to deep-six the fact that he slept with her has set off a firestorm. The Republican leadership, for the most part, has rallied to Trump’s side. Pollsters probe to see the effects on voters. What gets lost in the furor is what is beyond dispute.
In this case, as in the other criminal indictments that Trump faces, the facts are not really in question. There’s no doubt that Trump paid off a porn star to hide his tryst with her. There’s no doubt that he took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago and, remarkably, sought to evade the efforts of the National Archives and the FBI to recover them. There’s no doubt that he summoned to Washington the mob that sacked the U.S. Capitol and then sat and watched the destruction in an utter dereliction of duty, all as part of a multi-layered effort to overturn the results of an election that his own Justice Department admitted was fair. There’s no doubt that he tried to influence election officials in Georgia to come up with votes to change the results there. There’s no doubt that he assaulted E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room. Anyone paying attention knows what Trump did. The only question is how these acts violate the law and whether he will be or can be held accountable for them.
Much gets lost in the resulting furor. First, how defending Trump has deformed the Republican Party. The party that prides itself on morality now defends someone convicted of paying off a porn star and violating a woman against her will. The party that brays about law and order defends a person who stood idly by as brave men and women in blue were assaulted and bloodied in defense of the Capitol and joins Trump in defending the mob, calling them patriots. The party that preaches balanced budgets defends the man who, as president, added more to the deficit in four years than any of his predecessors. The party of free markets and free trade salutes a man who, as president, slapped tariffs on the Chinese, paid billions in subsidies to big agriculture, increased subsidies and benefits to big oil and essentially abandoned any effort to curb monopoly power and pricing.
Finally, what also gets lost in the furor about Trump’s past criminal behavior are the dangers posed by his plans for the future. Put aside the bluster about prosecuting Biden and other opponents. His central promise – reinforced by the billionaires that are lining up to finance his campaign – is to sustain his tax cuts that are scheduled to expire. This would add literally trillions to the deficit over the next decade while deepening the obscene inequality that is so poisonous to our economy and our democracy.
His second promise – reinforced by direct pledges to Big Oil executives – is to implement the Big Oil wish list while terminating all things related to the climate and renewable energy in the federal government. The U.S. is already at peak oil production. Climate change is already costing billions of dollars and more and more lives. Four years of inaction, while climate change accelerates, will pose a clear and inescapable threat to our security.
His third big promise – repeated in virtually every stump speech – is to launch the largest deportation offensive in the nation’s history, mobilizing the National Guard to deport 10 million undocumented immigrants from this country. The upheaval this will trigger as workers are seized from their jobs, fathers, and mothers are torn from their children, and children are shipped to countries that they no longer remember is hard to imagine. The economic effects, however, are clear: ripping workers from their jobs will add to our labor shortage, force employers to raise wages or reduce production, and increase prices dramatically.
Add to that Trump’s pledge to slap 10 percent tariffs on all imports – up to 60 percent on products made in China – and this is a recipe for explosive inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates dramatically. Bigger deficits, higher prices on imported products (and on domestic products that compete with them), and increased shortage of workers – if you are concerned about the inflation we suffered coming out of the pandemic, it’s about to get far worse if Trump is elected.
If he returns to power, Trump will nominate more of the right-wing zealots who are deforming our courts. The right-wing assault on women’s right to choose will worsen. The gutting of the Voter Rights Act and rollback of civil rights will accelerate. The systematic undermining of democracy – opening the spigots to big secret money, giving free rein to political gerrymandering, turning a blind eye to voter suppression measures – will continue.
These are just the promises that Trump repeats in his stump speeches. His beltway acolytes are detailing far more aggressive agendas. Trump hasn’t signed on to all of those–but he has promised to issue an executive order that will enable him to turn senior civil service jobs into political appointees – 20,000 or more – that will turn the federal government into a spoils system that can only add to corruption, fraud and abuse of power.
No leader is without flaws. All of us have our weaknesses. Trump’s past offenses aren’t in dispute; they are simply a matter of fact. It is his plans for the future that are even more alarming. If you are a billionaire, you might throw in with Trump, assuming you can pocket the tax breaks and your wealth will insulate you from the chaos. For the rest of us, Trump’s plans for the future are far more destructive than his offenses in the past.
You can write to the Rev. Jesse Jackson in care of this newspaper or by email at jjackson@rainbowpush.org. Follow him on Twitter @RevJJackson.
©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
**********
Thank you for reading Jesse Jackson’s article on scoopusamedia.com. To read additional articles of interest, please subscribe to Scoop USA Media. Print subscriptions are $75.00 and online subscriptions (Print, Digital and Vizion) are $90. (52 weeks/1 year)
