I’ve always been a happy person, but I’ll admit to being very depressed these days.
The thought that Donald Trump is actually the Presidential candidate of one of America’s major political parties–a party I worked for and supported for 35 years– nauseates and frightens me. Without money, this man would just be dismissed as the ignorant pontificating asshole you try to avoid at parties, the guy telling tasteless racist jokes and bragging about his latest con.
(If we had any doubts about the racism, a recent study has pretty much settled the issue: in a survey undertaken to identify the most likely Trump supporters, by far the most likely were people who still insist that President Obama is a Muslim.)
And there have been plenty of cons: his “send in your urine sample and we’ll send you supplements” diet scam, the Trump University fraud (Trump’s “not fair–the Judge is Mexican” sort of reminds me of the whiny undergraduates who complain that their poor grades are because the mean professor didn’t like them…), his refusal to pay people the full amounts of their contracts (he calls that “haircuts”), and so many more.
As scores of students complained that Trump University was a ripoff, the Better Business Bureau in 2010 gave the school a D-minus, its second-lowest grade. State regulators also began to take notice.
The office of then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, opened a civil investigation of “possibly deceptive trade practices.” Abbott’s probe was quietly dropped in 2010 when Trump University agreed to end its operations in Texas. Trump subsequently donated $35,000 to Abbott’s successful gubernatorial campaign, according to records.
…
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi briefly considered joining with Schneiderman in a multi-state suit against Trump University. Three days after Bondi’s spokeswoman was quoted in local media reports as saying the office was reviewing the New York lawsuit, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made a $25,000 contribution to a political fundraising committee supporting Bondi’s re-election campaign. Bondi, a Republican, soon dropped her investigation, citing insufficient grounds to proceed.
So, we know Trump is sleazy and corrupt. But apparently, there are officeholders who are equally corrupt. Or at least, easily corruptible. Maybe that explains the willingness of so many in the GOP to obediently “fall in line” and support the candidacy of this massively unqualified jerk.
I’d love to believe that Trump’s candidacy will go down in flames–that Americans will reject this fascist buffoon, that–as a friend puts it–he is not what is meant by Orange is the New Black….But I keep thinking of a (possibly apocryphal) story about the woman who approached Adlai Stevenson after he’d made a speech, and said “Oh, Mr. Stevenson, no intelligent American could fail to vote for you after that speech.”
Stevenson reportedly replied, “But Madam, I need a majority.”
My stomach hurts, and I think I’m getting hives.
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