I’ve been following this story avidly all year, waiting for the hammer of justice to fall. It’s been a slow, deliberate process, but I’ve been waiting for Trump to be judged on his attempts to thwart the peaceful transition of power when he lost to Biden in the 2020 presidential election held in November.
It isn’t just about the appalling attack on Congress while they were in session to carry out the ceremonial counting of the votes on January 6, but the plotting to overthrow the results of the election to keep Trump in power as president that began while he was still in office.
We all knew how Trump cheated on paying taxes, those of us who were interested in learning the truth about his business dealings. It was laid out in the New York Times during his presidency, with details provided to reporters by his niece, Mary Trump. He was following in his father’s footsteps.
Exaggerating his income to gain loans from banks such as Deutsche Bank, with officers who failed to exercise due diligence in reviewing his loan applications, while lying about his income on his taxes, making it seem as though he were losing money on investments. What a mess it has been for investigators to sort out the truth and facts, considering all the attempts made by Trump and his organization to delude others.
How can you have a president who is a tax cheat when he’s meant to lead a country of taxpayers? That has always galled me. And I want to see the case in New York go forward that investigates it. However, I didn’t want to see Trump indicted and imprisoned on tax fraud. I wanted to see him indicted for the attempted coup that led to the insurrection on January 6. That is his greatest crime.
Reporting on the investigations by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, which laid the groundwork for the Department of Justice to pursue these indictments against Trump, has created a groundswell of interest in the case against him. Throughout the long process of building the case, the American public is being educated about our legal system and how it works, or how it is meant to work. It’s interesting that the best reporting has been done by attorneys, and to see so many attorneys being interviewed on the news.
While I have found it utterly revolting that we had a rapist as president, as we have seen with Stormy Daniels and Jean Carroll (and a number of other women, apparently, who he was able to pay off when they sued him in order to drop charges against him), what mattered to me most was to see him held accountable for the violence he unleashed in what has always been a peaceful transition of power. What has been deeply disturbing has been the number of Trump supporters who didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass that he was a sexual predator. Even women.
I want to see Trump go to prison for egging on supporters, including right wing violent factions, to attack Congress while it was in session, violating the peaceful transition of power, which has always been what was supposed to distinguish our democracy from other forms of government that were often overthrown by violent coups.
Now the United States has had its credit rating downgraded, partially for this reason, that the government has been unstable. This is Trump’s true legacy, which should matter to his supporters who saw him as a successful businessman who could lead our country better than what they saw as the “deep state”. He failed. He’s a failure. And making him our president is contributing to the failure of our country.
In an article, “Fitch Downgrades the United States’ LongTerm Ratings to AA+ from ‘AAA’; Outlook Stable” on August 1, the key drivers for this rating downgrade were reported: the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance relative to 'AA' and 'AAA' rated peers over the last two decades that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions.”
The following paragraph from Fitch on erosion of governance gives us a teaching moment, as it’s what people outside the U.S. who follow these matters, are able to see. Americans are in the middle of it all, so we don’t have this valuable perspective, just a pervasive sense that things are getting worse and worse.
“Erosion of Governance: In Fitch's view, there has been a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years, including on fiscal and debt matters, notwithstanding the June bipartisan agreement to suspend the debt limit until January 2025. The repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management. In addition, the government lacks a medium-term fiscal framework, unlike most peers, and has a complex budgeting process.
These factors, along with several economic shocks as well as tax cuts and new spending initiatives, have contributed to successive debt increases over the last decade. Additionally, there has been only limited progress in tackling medium-term challenges related to rising social security and Medicare costs due to an aging population.”
When my friends have expressed dismay that we might see another Trump presidency, I have always told them that it’s not going to happen. We’re going to see Trump in prison instead. I’ve been following his legal woes for years, and found myself continually astounded that he has been able to stay out of prison this long.
What’s different this time, and why his day of reckoning is at hand, after a lifetime of eluding justice for criminal acts, is that we have now entered into the Age of Aquarius, the age of harmony and justice. The very stars and their place in the heavens are supporting the people of integrity and strong character who are committed to serving justice.
I predict that Trump will end up in prison before the presidential election of 2024 is decided. As a society, we need to analyze how to bring his supporters around to understand that they have been lied into following his cult. Perhaps we need to use methods that have worked on other cult followers to bring them out of the cult.
Mark Twain once said, “There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.” We must always keep that in mind.
Trump’s supporters were tricked. Trump is great, but not in the way he wants us to think. He’s a great charlatan, a great showman, right up there with P.T. Barnum. He’ll go down in history as a great fraudster.
Our country is in peril. And the day of reckoning is coming for Americans, for our military interventions in other countries, for the fiasco that we are mostly responsible for in Ukraine, and for our reckless spending on the military, and allowing our economy to have been based on warfare, the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about, and how it could take over (aided and abetted by Wall Street, of course, which deserves to fail.)
I am committed to a paradigm shift that could lead us out of the worst that could happen if we don’t change course immediately. We need to transition away from capitalism, from the profitability that comes from a militarized approach to dealings with other countries, and the failure of vision in its myopic search for ever more growth and profits. More on that in my next post.