Let's pause for a moment during the great “Let's Make Trump Not Deplorable” game that is being played right now and consider exactly who it is that we’re being told to accept as our new El Presidente. We’re being told we should “give him a chance.” Actually, we’re being scolded into it quite often, even during this confrontation between Kathy Griffin and Megyn Kelly that took place during a Women in Entertainment event.
Kelly spoke about the importance of giving President-elect Donald Trump a chance to lead the country. “I have high hopes for him, despite the tweets and all the rest of it,” Kelly said. “There is much to admire about Donald Trump.”
That’s when Griffin can be heard “boo-ing.”
“There it is,” Kelly responded, telling the audience, “Stop that, stop that.”
Kelly continued, noting that there is room for the “loyal opposition in this country, absolutely.” Griffin didn’t stop, though. “F*ck him,” she said.
“Guess who that is? Kathy Griffin, everybody,” Kelly said.
Clearly there’s a lot of anger here. Tons. People argue that it’s disrespectful to boo someone—while at the same time praising Donald Trump and minimizing his unsavory actions. But simply vocalizing your disapproval is not only your right: There are times when it's your responsibility—particularly when the issue is that a man who admitted and confessed to repeatedly sexually assaulting women is being praised at a women’s event as if that was never the case. And it’s not as if the scenarios of his exact claims haven’t been brought before a court before, because they have.
If you're conscious, sane, or you don’t have some incredibly selfish agenda (like believing that what he said may have happened to those people doesn't matter because it’s not likely to happen to you), then you have to simply believe that Donald Trump didn’t mean any of offensive crap that he said over the last 18 months, or the past 30 years.
And if he truly didn’t mean it, then why on earth would he say any of that shit?
His defense: we are supposed to believe that Trump isn't a sexual predator, because he just thinks it would be cool if Billy Bush thought he was a sexual predator. He truly, seriously thinks that’s something that people aspire to become? Or admire? That it’s the awesome that he’s such a big star he can get away with that? This is his idea of “funny?”
And it’s just a coincidence, or a pack of well-coordinated lies spanning decades, that a dozen women happen to have stories of being aggressively assaulted by Trump—in exactly the manner he described to Billy Bush—and that many, albeit not all of them, told friends, family, and coworkers about this assault years before Trump's bragging on Access Hollywood?
Wow. That’s just breathtaking, isn’t it?
Even if you assume all of that magic nonsense is even possible, that he never actually did what he claimed—who is this guy who brags about this kind of shit? Who would want that guy anywhere near their 10-year-old daughter?
Never mind Chester A. Arthur, whose own presidential birther controversy was related to his father being a British citizen and a family rumor that he was technically born in Canada. The fact is that there was never any credible proof that Barack Obama’s mother ever left the country while she was pregnant. Exactly how and when did she take a round trip flight, or boat, or submarine from Hawaii to Kenya and back? How?!
Obama released the mysterious long-form birth certificate five years ago, but Trump never admitted that it was legitimate until a couple of months ago. And then he proceeded to blame it all on the Clinton campaign, when the fact is that the two volunteer staffers who had circulated an email about Obama and Kenya were immediately fired by the campaign.
"The campaign, nor Hillary, did not start the birther movement. Period. End of the story," Patti Solis Doyle told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "There was a volunteer coordinator, I believe in late 2007, I think in December. One of our volunteer coordinators in one of the counties in Iowa, I don't recall whether they were an actual a paid staffer, but they did forward an email that promoted the conspiracy."
"The birther conspiracy?" Blitzer asked.
"Yeah. Hillary made the decision immediately to let that person go. We let that person go, and it was so, you know, beyond the pale, Wolf, and you know, so not worthy the kind of campaign that certainly Hillary wanted to run or that we as a staff wanted to run that I called David Plouffe, who was obviously managing Barack Obama's campaign in '07, to apologize and basically say this is not coming from us."
So are we supposed to believe that Trump didn’t know that the viral email these staffers had shared was all a conspiratorial lie and he believed it this entire time—or that he always knew it was a lie and simply continued stoking it just to annoy President Obama?
Which of these two options is worse?
And yet he asks black people what we “have to lose” with a straight face?
We’re supposed to just ignore his comments about Mexico “sending us their rapists” (when
that’s not the case) and their “bringing crime” (when
that’s not true) and that Judge Gonzalo Curiel couldn’t be trusted to rule fairly because of his “Mexican Heritage” since Trump’s going to “build a wall” and a “deportation force.”
Let’s just assume, as we’re being told to do, that Trump didn’t mean any of this seriously. He’s not biased or bigoted or horrifically ignorant enough to really believe any of this stuff. How could one man harbor all this hate and ignorance all at once?
No, we’re supposed to believe he was just kidding. We're supposed to believe these were just “words,” that he said “stuff” that was only about getting people’s attention and maybe their votes, even though much of this was said or done long before he ran for president and some of it has continued on after the election. But it was not for votes from the KKK or the alt-right: Trump doesn’t want those votes. He wanted other people’s votes. Good, decent, non-racist people. People whose judgement we should trust now, implicitly.
And other than actually grabbing a few pussies (as confirmed by
reports and court filings), and actually discriminating (as also
confirmed by court documents and records), and deleting his own emails and personal records (
also court records), and cheating contractors out of money (
many, many more court cases), and having his clothing line made overseas while he rants about China and Mexico stealing our jobs, and still not revealing his taxes while he’s setting up business meetings and deals as president-elect for his daughter and sons with
Japan and Turkey and Taiwan, according to him: we have nothing to worry about. Not a thing. Yeah, except for the argument that Trump didn’t actually DO any of this stuff—even though he did—and therefore won’t actually try to ban and register Muslims, and he won’t actually have a deportation force and a wall and national stop-and-frisk and racial profiling as regular police policy.
Nope, that’s not gonna happen. None of it.
So if he really didn’t mean a bit of it, who the frack is this guy who would say all this totally fucked up shit about all these people just because he thinks it’s goddamn funny? Was it all a ploy? Was he just pandering and exploiting people’s fear? Dog whistling to bigoted Americans with a bullhorn—not because he had common cause with them, or was one of them, but simply because he could get away with it? Did he just grab America by the pussy?
Who. Does. That!?
And what then makes you think he wasn’t also lying when he said he was going to “Make America Great Again,” particularly for the kinds of small business and contractors he’s been cheating for decades?
We’re supposed to just blow all this off because he mouths the word “unity” once or twice and maybe says “regret” halfway, but never actually apologizes or admits he was wrong, ever, about anything?
We're supposed to be giving this guy, this fucking guy, a “chance?” Yeah, right, exactly. Fuck him. Totally and fully. He had his chance, and he’s blown it. Whether he said all this because he’s some form of bigot or some form of cynical manipulator—or both—there’s no good reason why he should be rewarded with the benefit of the doubt and our trust as a result. In fact, it should be exactly the opposite. We should not be treating someone who behaves like this as anything like “normal,” because it’s not—it’s not normal at all.
Yes, some feel it’s simply unpatriotic to criticize a president who hasn’t even been sworn in yet, but at the same time it’s not like this is the first entrance into the public world by this particular person. He’s been in the spotlight for decades and has a public record. Some of it is good if you consider building gaudy, shiny stuff good. Yay, him. But a lot of it is bad—really bad, and a lot during the campaign was just plain terrible. True patriotism demands that we speak out. True patriotism demands we hold him accountable both for his promises and his threats.
He violated our trust long ago, and now he’s going to have to struggle to earn it back. He’s gonna have to beg us, and he’s going to have to deliver. But he’s not going to do that. He doesn’t have it in him.
Not even a little bit.
.