I never thought it could happen here in America. But it is happening here, right before our very eyes.
We have all played footsies with Trump and his ilk for far too long. We have looked the other way. We have said, “oh it's just him.” We have dismissed his followers as a bunch of white nationalists and uneducated rednecks. When in reality, they are 71 million Americans strong. These are not rednecks. These are not dumb people. There are our neighbors. Colleagues. Friends. Family Members. They serve in the Armed Forces. They voted for four more years of chaos, hate, division, lies, rallies, embarrassment on the world stage, death from covid, and on and on.
It’s time for us to wake up and start confronting Donald Trump like the wanna-be dictator that he is. For the US Secretary of State to say with a smirk that there will be a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration” when Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the electoral college is outrageous. It is also dangerous. That was just after Trump fired the secretary of Defense, and the man sworn to uphold and enforce the laws of the United States, Attorney General Bill Barr, authorized investigations into the election results. This is not okay. This is not what we do in America.
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Speaking as a former Republican Congressional investigative committee counsel and an attorney who practiced in a big national law firm in the area of cybersecurity, intelligence, foreign money investigations and national defense, we are witnessing in real time a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America. This is no longer about one man’s fragile ego, or about his inability to accept defeat. Donald Trump is unstable, his followers are unstable, and his Republican enablers in the Congress are cowards.
Delaware Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) was on CNN on Tuesday morning and said that in private his Republican colleagues in the senate are asking him to send well wishes to Joe Biden, even as just three of them have publicly acknowledged that he won the election. That is not acceptable. Sorry. These senators are elected to preserve and protect the constitution of the United States of America. To defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic. They have abrogated that duty and in doing so they have undermined the fundamental underpinnings of American democracy.
So what do we the people do? Is there anything we can do? Yes, there is: If we can take to the streets in mass number in protest against the horrific death of George Floyd, then we can take to the streets to demand that Donald J. Trump and his sycophants respect the will of the American people. And we do it while respecting people and property, giving no way at all to Trump and gang to claim that these protests are, themselves, a form of chaos or “carnage.” I repeat: This must be a massive show of political force, and an entirely peaceful and lawful one.
We need to flood Republican senators offices with calls and emails. And stage protests outside of their offices. We need to demand that they honor the election results. That they release the GSA funds needed for the Biden-Harris transition immediately or in 2022 there will be hell to pay. And 2022 really starts in Georgia on January 5, 2021 (my birthday) when voters will decide who controls the US Senate.
This is not a time for complacency in America. There are risks in this high-stakes game Trump is playing with the presidency. Our national security is at risk. It is a documented fact that the fight over who won the 2000 Election delayed intelligence briefings and information sharing with incoming President George W. Bush. Many believe that resulted in 9-11 and how ill prepared we were as a nation to detect and thwart such attacks on the Homeland.
Our international stability and influence abroad is at stake. If Donald Trump and his senior cabinet officials are signaling they have won and do not intend to leave Washington, D.C. world leaders are not sure what is happening in America. Is America under attack from within? Is American under threat of a pending civil war? If Biden is not the president-elect, what does that mean when world leaders are calling him and congratulating him? Will Trump retaliate in his waning 70 days?
Fact: all Trump’s antics are doing is making us more vulnerable as the world’s sole super-power to attacks on our homeland and on our bases abroad if our enemies (Russia, China, Syria, North Korea, Iran) see us as weak and divided. All of these rogue nations know Joe Biden. All of them know he will not abide their nonsense as Trump has for the past four years.
Our founding fathers were clear about why they chose a “republican” form of government versus a straight democracy, monarchy, theocracy or otherwise. They wanted a government by, for and of the people of the United States. They wanted a government from bottom up, not top down. There is something we can do. We must make clear to Trump, Republican senators and others that this is not okay. And that is not American democracy at work. We must take this threat very seriously. Our great republic is being undermined by a bunch of rogue politicians and sycophants. It is time for “we the people” to get involved. Now.
