LETTER: Trump and stealing our democracy
Why hasn’t Donald Trump been charged? The answer might be in his proclamation, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody ... and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
Five days before the election, a Fox News poll showed he was running behind Joe Biden by eight points among likely voters. Fox commentators said he needed to try to appeal to voters outside of his base, yet he stayed the course.
Post-election, his attorney general and Trump-appointed judges ruled against claims of widespread voter fraud. The Cyber Ninjas in Arizona and paper ballot counts in swing states confirmed the outcome, yet his base remained unshaken in “The Big Lie.”
Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels said, “It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”
The belief that the election was stolen is a case in point.
The head of the FBI stated before Congress that “racially motivated violent extremism specifically of the sort that advocates for the superiority of the white race is a persistent evolving threat.” During the presidential debates, Trump’s “stand back and stand by” comment to the Proud Boys only encouraged them.
The potential for violence, should Trump be jailed, must be considered by the Justice Department. It might explain why Trump doggedly played solely to his base instead of seriously trying to win re-election. That threat is his proverbial Band-Aid against incarceration.
It must be ripped off or our democracy will be what has been stolen.
— James Reynolds, Baker