Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
May 5, 2022
By Bill McCann
“Cheaters never win.” My mother said that many times. She said it about a local politician who later got kicked out of office. She said it about a door-to-door sweeper salesman who got chased out of town. She said it about a Little League baseball coach who put his over-age nephew in the lineup. The kid struck out. Twice.
Mom may have been right about cheaters when I was a kid, but she never met today’s perverse version of the once Grand Old Party. They’re a bunch of cheaters led by a cheater-in-chief. The cheating has put our democracy on life support. If we keep letting them get away with it, we will end up with a Putin-like autocrat running our country, squelching freedoms, suppressing fair elections, blocking the free press and passing off lies as facts.
Cheating has always been part of U.S. politics. But former President Donald Trump has taken it to a new low. Lower than Richard Nixon. News outlets have widely reported about Trump cheating on wives, underpaying taxes and short-changing contractors in business dealings. He brought that history to the White House after fooling millions of people who naively believed his promises to reform government and eliminate the national debt.
Instead, he made things worse. He chased off experienced federal employees. He appointed a swamp full of unethical flunkies, who eventually had to quit or be fired. He increased the federal debt by nearly $8 trillion and botched the nation’s initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic. His unpredictability and his submission to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin worried and angered our allies.
Trump’s continued praise of Putin is despicable, considering Putin’s murderous attack against the people of Ukraine. Trump is a Putin wannabe. Like Putin, Trump’s power is based on lies. Both call the free press “fake.” Both seek to silence their enemies – Putin by disappearing them and Trump by bullying them.
Once Trump experienced the power of the presidency, he didn’t want to give it up, even when he lost the 2020 election, which his own elections security chief called the most secure in U.S. history. Instead, Trump falsely claimed that widespread voter fraud cost him reelection.
Trump and his supporters, including White House staff, outside lawyers, some congressional Republicans and other ne’er-do-wells concocted a campaign of lies, sketchy legal maneuvers and an insurrection to try to keep Trump in office, at the risk of our democracy. Fortunately, more than 60 lawsuits filed by his supporters failed. A coup at the U.S. Capitol failed, as did attempts to strongarm state election officials.
Undeterred, Trump’s political allies in Republican-led states have enacted laws to make it harder for people to vote, particularly people of color, who heavily favor Democrats. Although some states spent much of 2021 searching for widespread voter fraud that Trump had alleged, they never found it. Nevertheless, last year 19 states, mostly controlled by Republicans, enacted 34 laws that made voting more difficult, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Meanwhile, red states continued reshaping congressional districts to keep incumbent Republicans in place and to carve out new red districts.
Perhaps more nefarious are ongoing efforts by Trump and his followers to target secretaries of state, the top elections officers in the states. Trump wants to ensure that Trumpsters who believe he won in 2020 get into those offices this November and are in position to help, if needed, in the 2024 presidential election.
In 2020, secretaries of state in swing states didn’t cave into Trump and his minions when they tried to overturn election results. Trump doesn’t want that to happen again. He knows Republicans can’t win without cheating. Here’s hoping Mom was right.
McCann is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. He is a retired journalist and may be reached at [email protected].
