Despite damning evidence, a Senate inquiry has acquitted Donald J. Trump after impeachment in the House of Representatives. Sadly, 99% of Senate Republicans dismissed incriminating facts and/or did not allow the testimony of key witnesses. Now, 75% of Americans feel frustrated, anxious and/or infuriated as our democracy crumbles apart. Therefore, you should thoroughly review the Trump Administration’s proposals, policies, actions and behaviors before voting in 2020. This detailed, factually supported article is unlikely to change the minds of 25% of Americans who still (in 2020) identify as Republicans. The target audience here is the 42% of Americans who identify as politically independent and the 46.9% who did not vote in the 2016 election.
It’s a flagrant abuse of Presidential power and an impeachable offense to solicit a foreign power to aid in attacking or investigating a political opponent, especially considering that Trump withheld financial/military aid already approved by Congress. He allegedly used extortion to attempt to coerce a foreign power to meddle in our 2020 election. It is also an impeachable offense to brazenly obstruct Congress’s constitutional duty to gather all the necessary facts / evidence for its impeachment trial.
Unsurprisingly, the Republicans / Trump’s enablers remained intransigent. There was only a single “deeply troubled” Republican defector (Senator Mitt Romney, Utah). The vast majority of the GOP was brazenly dismissive of Trump’s shameless shenanigans. Some Republicans even prayed to God that Trump had the strength to get through these never ending “witch-hunts”. For the GOP, any semblance of objectivity or fairness flew out their stained glass windows with Trump’s acquittal trial. Hypocritical, dishonest Republican politicians ridiculously claimed that facts that prove Trump committed impeachable offenses are not, in fact really facts.
The arguments from Trump’s vocal supporters were typically: “It’s just another partisan witch-hunt.” “It’s a phony impeachment hoax.” “All of the Democrats want open borders.” “The Democrats want to take away all our guns.” The less vocal enablers made arguments like: “Well, the economy is doing pretty good right now.” An increasingly common remark was, “I’m no big fan of Trump but all the Democrats are a bunch of socialists”.
Here’s why non-Democrats should push themselves harder, examine the evidence, dump Trump, and flush him down the toilet in 2020: First, the remaining Democratic candidates have varying policy priorities and plans, strengths and weaknesses, but you’ve got to admit, they are all highly qualified. Second, none of the Democratic candidates are actually proposing open borders or banning all firearms. Third, the Democrats could actually benefit from non-Democrats asking important questions like, how is the federal government going to pay for all of these bold proposals? How are your ideas going to affect the national debt? Such dialogue helps to improve and prioritize the next President’s policy agenda. It’s also important to ask yourself, what really are the facts regarding Trump?
You may be a non-Democrat who agrees with some of Trump’s signature proposals like building a “big, beautiful” wall on the southern border or outlawing abortion without exceptions. Of course, you have a right to your opinions and free speech. My plea is for you to carefully review Trump’s proposals, actions and behaviors (organized into the following 15 topics):
3. Health care: Trump has completely failed to build a more effective and efficient healthcare system for all Americans. The numbers of uninsured and underinsured people has increased. He did not lower health care costs by enacting policies to effectively address the U.S. obesity and mental health epidemics. To his credit, Trump did take action to address the opioid epidemic. That’s a good thing. Unfortunately, he did not substantially lower health care administrative and drug costs. Instead, h
e has enthusiastically backed legislation, regulations, and lawsuits that would make it harder for sick people to get health insurance, allow insurance companies to discriminate against patients with preexisting conditions, and kick millions of Americans off the Medicaid program. https://www.vox.com/2019/3/27/18282509/trump-obamacare-lawsuit-health-care In 2018, he
proposed $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid and $192 billion in cuts to the federal food stamp program.
4. Early learning programs: Trump claims that his proposals would
prevent reductions in the number of available slots for the Head Start preschool program. But that’s not true. In reality, he proposed a $85 million cut to Head Start after the program had just implemented new performance standards, which call for increasing the quality and amount of time children spend in preschool. https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/trumps-budget-proposes-cuts-early-and-elementary-education/. Furthermore, he proposed cutting funding to prenatal home visiting services,
Child Care and Development Block Grants (CCDBG), preschool development grants and Title I special education programs. In summary
, his administration proposed drastic cuts to early learning, preventive-focused programs that have been proven to have high annual economic return rates https://heckmanequation.org/.
6. Democracy: The Trump Administration has eroded our U.S. democracy through its constant attacks on free press, enabling gerrymandering, encouraging voter suppression, supporting corporate lobbying, encouraging unfair representation, limiting voter choice, trying to skew primary elections, asking foreign powers to meddle in our elections and fanning the flames of hyper-partisan politics
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/02/trump-department-of-justice-robert-mueller-crisis.
7. Economy: While it’s “great” that the national unemployment rate is the lowest in 50 years, the statistics leave
out the growing number of Americans who have stopped actively looking for jobs https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/1/18246233/economic-growth-workers-wages-economy. U.S. income inequality is worse than ever and wages
for average workers have not appropriately increased because Trump and the GOP voted 14 times against a minimum wage increase. There has not been a sufficient
increase in the number of green jobs, manufacturing is in recession and farm bankruptcies are the highest over the past decade. It’s certainly not “great” that individuals now pay more in taxes than wealthy corporations. In 2020, t
here is an increased risk of economic instability due to inadequate regulations and reforms in the financial sector and meanwhile, the national debt is exploding out-of-control
https://www.thebalance.com/trump-plans-to-reduce-national-debt-4114401 at over
$23 trillion or 106% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Unsurprisingly, many economists are predicting a recession in 2021.
8. Women’s health: Trump has repetitively tried to impose governmental restrictions on women’s reproductive rights and reduced easy access to free, effective and reliable birth control
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/health/trump-defunds-planned-parenthood.html Experts tell us that these restrictions will increase the number of unsafe abortions, increase the number of children being placed in foster care and worsen the global climate crisis.
As the planet’s population skyrockets upward, “the time seems ripe for another contraception revolution to provide options for the diverse populations that are not currently being served by modern contraception”. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1906733
10. Civil and human rights: The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has compiled a list of the Trump administration’s human right violations against children, women, racial minorities, LGBT individuals and others
https://civilrights.org/trump-rollbacks/. This organization released statements stating that they are openly “opposed” to 73 of Trump’s political appointees and expressed “serious concerns” about 9 additional Trump nominees.
11. Immigration and border security: Some of Trump’s efforts to secure U.S. borders, prevent undocumented immigration and deport those with violent criminal records are reasonable. Social democrat-controlled countries like Denmark actually have much stricter immigration policies. However, the big problem with Trump’s policies is that they have too many xenophobic-driven flaws and have not been implemented in a humane and fiscally responsible manner
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/20/trumps-cruel-border-policies-created-needless-crisis-far-from-over.
The United Nations had to intervene by saying it’s a clear human rights violation to lock up immigrant children in unsafe, trauma-inducing federal detention facilities for months or years. It’s also not okay to separate children from their parents. No amount of time in detention is safe for a child, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Trump and the GOP basically failed to compromise with the Democrats to fix a broken immigration and deportation system.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/11/fix-americas-broken-immigration-system-trump/575845/
12. National defense: It’s “great” that America has not entered into another war over the past three years. Nevertheless, a counterpoint is that Trump’s actions and behaviors have actually
increased the risk level of future conventional, nuclear and/or cyberspace wars. Below the surface-level calm, there is a building crisis of U.S. foreign policy, of which Trump is both a symptom and a cause. He has outlined a deeply misguided foreign policy vision that is distrustful of U.S. allies, scornful of international institutions, and indifferent, if not downright hostile, to the international order that the United States has helped to sustain for eight decades https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/long-term-disaster-trump-foreign-policy.
15. Moral character or psychopathology: This section is longer. Politifact and the Washington Post have tallied 16,241 false or misleading claims (i.e., lies) that Trump told during the first three years of his presidency as of January 20th, 2020 www.washingtonpost.com/.... He has, by far, the highest percentage of “mostly false”, “false” and “pants on fire” lies of any modern politician
www.politifact.com/.... His campaign speeches, official White House statements and Twitter feed provide ample evidence that Trump is
an overt racist and white nationalist https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history. He is a textbook bully
https://www.forges.com/pictures/flji45elmm/donald-trumps-10-most-of/#50a5ddff70df who, like a mafia boss, vindictively seeks retribution against anybody who opposes, questions or testifies against him. A
lmost everything that has occurred during the Trump presidency – his persistent refusal to release tax returns, his praise for authoritarian leaders, all his nasty tweets – has been a deeply troubling departure from precedent. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/09/donald-trump-op-ed-bullying-and-bluster-cant-save-him-now. He has
sexually harassed and/or allegedly sexually abused at least 24 women since the 1970s https://www.businessinsider.com/women-accused-trump-sexual-misconduct-list-2017-12?r=US&IR=T. Just think about how many women that Trump has
sexually harassed or abused who decided not to go public with their accusations. Trump is a sick man. Numerous, well-respected psychiatrists and mental health experts (who usually stay completely out of politics) have felt morally compelled to explain why Trump is psychologically unfit to be President due to having a malignant case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/psychiatrists-trump.html.
Trump’s impeachment inquiry was not just another “witch-hunt”. His wildly inappropriate actions and behaviors demanded that he be removed from office. Non-Democrats should know there are numerous, justifiable reasons why Trump has been the subject of 12 congressional investigations, 10 federal criminal investigations, 8 state and local investigations and an Presidential impeachment inquiry. He’s a self-absorbed con man and a wannabe dictator. American voters should not underestimate how dangerously unfit he is or could be in the future.
Non-Democrats should push themselves harder. Critically examine the evidence. Do the right thing. Help America remove this piece of shit from office on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020. And let’s wipe away (vote out) every last one of the soiled politicians who stank up America’s political process. Dump Trump! Flush him down the toilet of history.
Author: Kevin P. Marks MD FAAP