"Except for Day One"
Donald Trump has gone from saying the quiet part out loud to shouting it from the rooftops with a bullhorn.
Asked by Fox host and Trump campaign adviser Sean Hannity whether he would be Dictator Don, the POTUS 47 hopeful failed to offer the simple, declarative answer:
"You are promising America tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?" Hannity said.
"Except for Day One," Trump responded, repeating the phrase.
Asked for clarification, Trump said, "I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill."
And if you believe that, then Mexico has paid for the wall stretching across the southern border.
It certainly isn’t the message being heard by sycophants like Kash Patel, who is likely to serve in a senior national security role if Trump either wins outright or succeeds in a 2024 coup attempt.
“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”
The fact the story did not appear on the home pages of either the New York Times or the Washington Post is, um, troubling. Digging down a bit you would find a Times report where Biden honestly remarked he might not be running if it were not for Trump, a position he made clear from the day he announced in 2019.
I’m certainly not expecting this to be the prime topic of conversation tonight among the four remaining candidates in The Race for Second Place. I suspect to some degree they’ll all be auditioning for the Dancing with the Stars losers bracket. Maybe in the final 30 minutes, after Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley perform their latest versions of Knives Out.
But, pardon the cliche, this is as serious as a heart attack.
To be fair, the Times and Post along with other legacy media are finally starting to chronicle in detail how a second Trump term would use the Department of Justice as a weapon against his political enemies, use pardons to reward political friends, eliminate civil service and purge the nation of immigrants, opening camps to hold them until they could be deported.
Not to mention rooting out “vermin.”
Yet there’s still too much focus on the horse race, the polls showing Biden trailing a year out, despite a history showing Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama faced the same headwinds.
Biden successes in fighting inflation and job creation are glossed over while he is lambasted for not stopping the leader of another sovereign nation was conducting a massive overreaction to an attack on its homeland.
Of course, we’re not hearing anything from Trump and his wannabees about what they would do to lower inflation and improve the economy. Or fulfill what’s now a decade-long promise to repeal and replace Obamacare with a “brand new beautiful health care” system.
I’m among the many who have said there’s a long way to go between now and November 2024, including four criminal trials against the twice-impeached former president. Many people are clearly tuned out and won’t begin to pay attention until after next Labor Day.
And while I applaud the current coverage of the threats posed by another Trump term, I’m also cognizant that reporters and editors can adopt a “we’ve already reported that” attitude. And that polls are a lot easier to cover than threats to democracy.