The election is a referendum on Trump. It’s also one on his enablers | Opinion

By Carl Hisiro

In less than 90 days, Americans will have the opportunity to determine whether they want four more years of Donald Trump as their president. In short, it will be a referendum on whether Trump deserves to be re-elected or should be voted out of office.

I have previously written that Trump is the most unfit, unqualified, incompetent, racist, and narcissist president we have ever had, and he has been the most amoral one too. In addition, I have chronicled why Trump deserved to be impeached and removed from office.

My conclusions were based, in part, because Trump and the Trump Organization are a walking, talking criminal enterprise and because Trump’s words and actions show that he is trying to turn our democracy into a dictatorship.

Trump’s recent words and actions have only reinforced these conclusions. For example, Trump ordered the use of tear gas against peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights who were marching near the White House so that he could do a staged photo-op at nearby St. John’s church holding up a bible.

In Trump’s words, he said it “was his idea” because he wanted the visual of him looking strong and in charge. Instead, we got a visual of the actions you would expect from a dictator and not the president of the United States, and he looked totally pathetic and inept doing it.

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Similarly, in Trump’s America, Roger Stone is rewarded by Trump who commuted his criminal sentence for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction, to protect Trump from incriminations in the Russian election scandal.  Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated combat veteran and purple heart recipient, is punished by Trump for telling the truth.

Now, there really are two criminal justice standards in America; one for Trump and his cronies and one for everyone else.

More recently, Trump’s musings that we should delay the November election because of the COVID-19 pandemic, even while advocating that it is safe for schools and businesses to now reopen, shows his would-be dictatorial tendencies (and his private acknowledgement that he is losing badly to Biden).

A true leader would focus on providing more funding for the U.S. Postal Service to ensure it can deliver the ballots on time and for polling locations to make them safe and secure.

Instead, he attacks mail-in balloting as being “bad” while arguing that absentee balloting is “good.” This statement is idiotic because the two processes are almost identical.

The only difference is with absentee balloting, one must provide an excuse to be eligible. All the safeguards in place to ensure fraud isn’t committed are the same for mail-in and absentee ballots, including the fact that mailed ballots leave a paper trail, making them less susceptible to fraud.

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And speaking of COVID-19, it was disheartening to learn recently that Trump’s initial response in the early spring not to take more action to combat it was because COVID-19 was mostly affecting blue states, and “these aren’t my voters.”

Such a view was purely politically motivated; the narcissist saw it only in terms of helping himself win reelection while letting thousands of Americans get sick and die from this disease.

Finally, with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office closing in on Trump and his organization for various criminal violations, including alleged bank and insurance fraud, it is better to get rid of this stench now before we learn of more crimes that he has committed.

Impeachment didn’t work because his enablers were more interested in protecting Trump than protecting the Constitution.

It is now up to the voters in November to decide whether Trump and his enablers should be removed from office. If that happens though, don’t look for Trump to follow tradition and be at Biden’s swearing-in ceremony on January 20, 2021.  Trump more likely will be playing golf at one of his resorts while waiting for a possible criminal indictment to come his way.

Carl Hisiro is a retired lawyer who resides in Susquehanna Township, Dauphin County. His work appears occasionally on the Capital-Star’s Commentary Page.