The vast majority of the people I
have observed in the first seventy-seven years of my life have been good
people; kind, loving, ethical and moral, for the most part. Some I have read about or observed, are on
the other end of the spectrum. Not to
put too fine a point on it, but I would describe those people as EVIL. My list
of evil persons is not terribly long, less than twenty-five as I think back on
it, but some of these humans are what I would call “Ultra-Sinister”.
Many of these individuals lived before my time, prior to 1945, but their histories are easily obtained, proving they were some of the most evil humans since the dawn of recorded time.
Attila The Hun: the epitome of cruelty and rapacity
· Caligula: Roman emperor whose life was a frenzy of
lunacy, murder and sexual perversion
·
Adolf Hitler: responsible for millions of lost
innocent lives and rampant antisemitism
·
Joseph Stalin: one of the most pervasive tyrants
of the 20th Century, responsible for the death and suffering of over
7 million people
·
Pol Pot:
responsible for the “Killing Fields”, a brutal, murderous dictator
·
Idi Amin: a
brutal and utterly ruthless dictator who somehow either endeared himself to the
people he ruled, bullied them into submission or murdered them
Bashar Al-Assad: The Syrian dictator has gassed the innocent, bombed hospitals and schools, and made thousands of his own citizens disappear.
· Vladimir Putin: Communist
dictator of modern day Russia. A very
dangerous, perverse human whom some say is clearly psychotic.
·
Kim Jong-un: Supreme
leader of North Korea and the odds on favorite, next to Putin, to start a
nuclear WWIII. Also considered a psychopath.
Unfortunately, our Democracy is under attack these days. I am not just talking about a battle between the political forces on the far right and the far left. By most estimates, citizens in those two extreme groups represent possibly 16 % of the voting population, a far cry from a majority. It is a divide much more universal. It is a divide between inclusion and exclusion. It is a divide between truth and falsehood, and everything in between. It is a battle between peaceful protest and radical and, often, random violence. It is a divide between personal freedoms and government control of those freedoms.
This person:
1.) Grew up in a wealthy
family and never wanted for a thing throughout his childhood; attended private
schools and was given anything he ever asked for.
2.) Played baseball and
soccer in high school and claims to have had pro baseball teams looking to sign
him before he went to college.
3.) Enrolled at Fordham
University, a private Jesuit research university in the Bronx, but left after
two years and enrolled at University of Pennsylvania.
4.) Claims to have
graduated No. 1 in his class at Wharton School of Business with an “astronomical”
GPA.
5.) Used his father’s
money to get him started in business and right out of college became President
and CEO of his father’s company at age 23.
6.) Claims to be a very
successful real estate developer with multiple properties across the U.S. and
some foreign countries.
7.) Married Ivana Xelnickov
in 1977, fathered three children with her and then they divorced in 1992.
8.) Married Marla Maples
in 1993, had one child together, Tiffany, and then they divorced in 1999.
9.) In 2004 he starred
in a reality TV show called The Apprentice.
It ran for 13 years.
10.)
Claims to have a “genius” IQ
11.)
Married Melania Knauss in 2005 to the present.
12.)
Claimed his net worth was about $ 2 billion as he declared
his candidacy for President.
13.)
Ran for President of the United States on the Republican ticket
in the 2016 election and defeated his Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton.
14.)
Served one term as President and then ran for re-election in
2020.
By now you have to have guessed it. We are
talking about Donald John Trump (DJT).
Staying with the past for a moment, let’s take
a look at history according to supportable facts and history as it relates to
the unsupported claims listed above.
A.) Claim: Pro baseball teams considered recruiting DJT
out of high school. FALSE: he batted .138 while at the New York Military
Academy…heck, I batted .240 and the Dodger’s passed me by. He was never
recruited by any team.
B.) Claim: Said he graduated # 1 in his class from
Wharton School of Business PARTIALLY FALSE – He attended some undergraduate
classes at Wharton, but not only did he
not graduate # 1, he was not even on the Dean’s List. His undergraduate degree
is a BS in Economics from UPenn. He does not have a Master’s Degree. His position in his graduating class is not
known and none of his school records have ever been made public. Trump has never revealed his college
transcripts or grades and, in fact, threatened to sue UPenn and Wharton School
of Business if they ever revealed them to anyone. Since then, the schools have refused to
disclose DJT’s records.
C.)
Claim: Trump says
his IQ is the highest of any President and is on record as claiming specifically
that his IQ is much higher than Barrack Obama, George W. Bush, Rex Tillerson
(ex-Secretary of State) and Jon Stewart (comedian and TV personality). NO ONE KNOWS – Trump has never revealed the
results of any IQ test he has ever taken.
Indeed, no one knows if he ever has been tested for IQ. However, maybe
we can figure it out. According to BBC
News, a Prof. Fred I. Greenstein, professor of politics emeritus at
Princeton University, lists six qualities that bear on presidential performance. They are: public communication, organizational
capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence.
"Trump scores low on emotional intelligence, cognitive style, vision, and organizational
capacity," says Dr. Greenstein. "Where
he has been superb, in order to win the presidency, is public communication and
political skill." More on this later.
D.) Claim:
Trump touts that he is a highly successful businessman. PARTIALLY TRUE but MOSTLY FALSE - While the
facts show he has had a few business successes, he has had many more failures
(his companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy six (6) times; including
three Atlantic City hotels and casinos [including the opulent Taj Mahal], the
Plaza Hotel in NYC, his Entertainment Resorts company and his Hotels and
Casinos Resorts company). He was sued by
several former students and, as part of the settlement with these people,
shuttered Trump University. Investors in
his various ventures have lost $ 1.7 Billion of their money from 1985 and 1994
and he has lost billions more since then.
Yet after reporting to the IRS $700 million in losses for 2020, in 2021
Bloomberg still estimated his net worth at $ 2.3 billion. Despite numerous subpoenas and lawsuits,
Trump has refused disclosure and has never revealed any personal or business
tax returns or company records to prove either his net worth or business
successes. More on this later.
DJT has been married
three times. He was married for fifteen years to Ivana Xelnickova, a Czech
national, who was a fashion model and businesswoman, and she bore him three
children; Donald, Jr., Ivanka and Eric. DJT’s
second wife was Marla Maples, a U.S. citizen from Georgia. They were married in 1993, shortly after she
told DJT that she was pregnant with his child. A few months later, she gave
birth to Trumps fourth child, Tiffany. They were married for six years and
divorced in 1999. DJT is currently married to Melania Knauss. Originally a
citizen of Yugoslavia (now Slovania), Melania became an American citizen the
year after she married Trump. They have
one son together, Barron. She had a long
modeling career and is only the second foreign-born “First Lady”.
DJT had the
reputation, from an early age, of being a millionaire playboy. He has been accused of numerous affairs and
sexual misconduct during and throughout his three marriages. I am not going to go into all of these
accusations, threatened lawsuits and reported hush money payoffs. DJT denies them all, and yet they have been corroborated
by multiple sources and witnessed public events. If you want to know more about this part of the
story, you will have to do your own research. After I researched it, the only
conclusion I could come to was that DJT and his approach to gender is the very definition
of misogyny. Check it out and decide for
yourself.
Let’s get back to
DJTs IQ. Since no one knows any actual
score from any intelligence tests he may have taken, we have to look to empirical
evidence. First, let’s take what comes
out of Trumps mouth. The first thing I
noticed about DJT was my grandchildren (ages 12-15) all have significantly better
vocabularies than DJT. He uses five
adjectives almost exclusively; great, huge, incredible, tremendous and amazing. He uses these over and over again; however,
when asked his opinion of Vladymir Putin’s actions when Russian troops first
invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine, he used the adjective
“brilliant”. So there is that.
“Great” is probably
Trump’s favorite. “I’m going to build you a great, great wall on the southern
border”, and “Make America great again”.
About himself; “I have great and unmatched wisdom” and on the radical
concept of having a lifetime President, “I think that is a great idea.”
“Incredible” is
right behind great. There’s really
nothing bad about a superlative here and there. A superlative refers
to something that is at the “utmost degree” or hyperbolic. However, when you overuse superlatives, as Trump does, it
gets harder and harder to differentiate between that which is truly incredible and
what is merely average.
“Tremendous” is used in precisely the same context as incredible. When they analyzed 260,000 words from speeches related to COVID-19, the New York Times realized
Trump spent most of the time praising himself. He was six times more likely to
brag than to offer words of comfort during this extraordinary time. Since the
analysis, Trump continues to say he has done a
“tremendous job”
on COVID-19.
As mentioned
earlier, DJTs management/leadership style is POWER. And because he is a narcissist of the highest
order, he is a consummate bully. When
confronted with any situation in which Trump is losing or he cannot logically
defend his position, he attacks. Use of
the word “stupid” is used flagrantly when describing his opponents. This, of course, is a pejorative term that is meant as an insult—no other way to spin
it. It’s a real hard-hitter, and Trump has proven that he’s not shy about
hitting hard. “Loser” is another one that carries a lot of weight, especially
if a person of power uses it. Trump has used the term a lot, describing
everyone from Cher to fallen soldiers, to prisoners of war to terrorists
as losers. Another favorite is “zero”. Trump stores this word in his “disparaging” arsenal. Some tweets confirm this: “Crooked Hillary Clinton
has zero natural talent.” “Jeb Bush has zero communication skills.”
Here is a couple of
Trump invented words you might enjoy; hamberders
and covfefe. Look them up, just for
fun. My conclusion is if DJT scored 100
on an IQ test (national average) it would just be luck. And my guess is that the odds were better for
me to win the $ 2 billion Powerball® than for Trump to
score anything above that.
Although he did not
invent the term “fake news” (DJT actually claimed he did, but that is not
true), he certainly did popularize it. Of
course, the term is now commonly used to describe some type of disinformation that is disseminated. However, DJTs use of the term follows its third definition most
closely: “used as a conversational tactic to dispute or discredit
information that is perceived as hostile or unflattering.” Both of these conditions are completely
unacceptable to DJT.
It has been said
that Trump has “turned the rant into an art form”. He uses both a lot of words and short words
to make his point. And he makes that
point repeatedly and frequently. It is
obvious that DJTs rhetorical strategy holds that if he makes a claim of some
sort, regardless of its truthfulness or any basis in fact, and repeats it often
enough and strongly enough, it becomes the truth. People will believe it. In fact, the phrase “Believe me…” is one of
DJTs favorite sentence starters. According to Professor Roderick Hart in his
book subtitled “The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump”, DJTs strategy is
“centered on agenda setting and framing, simplicity, emotion, slogans and
repetition”.
Accordingly, this
would classify him as a “Demagogue”, or a leader who makes use of popular
prejudices, false claims, empty promises and misdirection in order to gain and
retain power. To WIN at all costs. So in
this regard I suppose you could call Trump “brilliant”. But in my mind, it is definitely not
intellectual brilliance. He is just
brilliantly cunning. That, also in my
opinion, makes DJT eminently dangerous. According to
CNN.com “[winning] frames everything as a challenge, a competition to be
won, which definitely echoes Trump’s competitive personal nature and business
background.” The act of winning is an absolute essential
ingredient to the Trump formula. “You’re
going to win so much you may get tired of winning.” There’s danger in setting
the level of expectation that high, though. If you miss it, you’ve got a long
distance to fall.
Some prominent
examples:
1.) Stolen
Election: As we all know, DJT ran for reelection on the
2020 Republican Presidential ticket. At
the end, verified vote counts nationally had then candidate Joe Biden with 51.3
% (81,282,916) and DJT with 46.9 % (74,223,369), a 7,059,547 vote edge (+ 4.5%) The Electoral College vote, based on that
popular vote lead, was split 302 for Biden and 232 for Trump. That vote count was certified by the Senate
on January 6, 2021. Interestingly, when
Trump won the election in 2016 the EC vote split was identical; 302 for Trump
and 232 for Hillary Clinton. Back then
DJT claimed that result was a “great win”, an “incredible victory” and a
“tremendous landslide”. Of course, Hillary Clinton actually won the popular
vote by over 2.9 million votes nationally, a fact that DJT conveniently ignores.
His response in 2020 when the tables were turned was that this time it was an
“incredible fraud” and a “tremendous injustice”. DJT claimed that reports of voter fraud were
rampant and reports to the contrary were “fake news”. Then Trumps claim that the election was
“stolen”, kicked off a divisive campaign to “Stop the Steal” which has
polarized American voters for over a year, incited individual and massive acts
of violence, and fueled the influence of various popular as well as little
known social media sites on the internet, often having a serious corrosive
effect and spreading misinformation like wildfire.
According to the investigations conducted and testimony heard
by the January 6th Committee, DJT and his minions launched a
calculated and multi-pronged attack on the entire election system nationally
and across multiple “swing states”. DJT
and his cadre of high-priced lawyers filed sixty-three (63) lawsuits in
multiple states including Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin in an attempt to upset or set aside the vote and/or the legally
assigned electors. This was his right as it is any candidates right. Trump lost
all but one of those lawsuits and that favorable judgment was overturned by the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The primary
reason for dismissal in all of these lawsuits was “lack of evidence”. DJT could NOT prove his claims of voter
fraud. They were dismissed by the courts
as “frivolous”, “without merit” and, interestingly, many of those dismissals
were enacted by judges who had been nominated or appointed by Trump himself,
disparaging claims of political bias.
Everyone knows what has happened in the past year since this
all started. The Jan. 6th
insurrection at the Capitol was the most prominent disaster, but multiple more
local and individual disasters have increased because of the spread of the
“stolen election” conspiracy theory. One that could be extremely costly for Trump
and some of his minions (Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Fox, Newsmax,
et al) is the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems for $ 1.3
billion. I might not even be alive by
the time this one gets settled.
Still, with all the evidence indicating that the 2020
election was legitimate, 61 % of Republicans still believe that Biden did not
win the election “fair and square”. Why?
Because DJT continues to claim that it was fraudulent. And, as I said earlier, because he continues
to say it loudly and often, some people still believe him.
All I would ask people to do, is before you continue to
accept Trumps assertions and claims of election fraud, do your homework.
2.) Lawsuits
and Legal Problems: Historically, DJT lives in a litigious world. In the past three decades, Trump has been
involved in 4,095 lawsuits. So it is
easy to see how he might appear unfazed by everyone that is coming after him. As disclosed, DJT believes he is above the
law. However, as of this time in December,
2022, DJT, his companies and many of his cohorts in the Trump “orbit”, as they
say, are involved in at least twenty-seven
(27) lawsuits and investigations relating to his political and business
activities.
These are not frivolous lawsuits. They are extremely serious. Some involve criminal charges, some
civil. Some are federal offenses
(seditious conspiracy/conspiracy to commit election fraud/obstructing an
official business of Congress/election tampering/mishandling and unlawful
seizure of classified and Top Secret documents, to name a few) as well as
serious and potentially expensive civil suits (tax fraud/loan & lender
fraud/defamation/sexual assault and misconduct, etc.). Trump has dismissed them all as “fraudulent
witch hunts” and “politically motivated”. Of course, once again, without any
proof.
Trump has lied, cheated, broken laws and bullied his way to a
position of leadership in the Republican Party.
He intimidates and uses the ultra-right-wing faction of the GOP as a
blunt instrument to keep Republicans in power subservient to his will. How all of these lawsuits and investigations
play out could take months, even years to resolve.
In the recent
Mid-Term Election, DJT went on the campaign trail and stumped for his preferred
candidates in multiple markets, focusing on the “swing states” of AZ, GA, PA,
NV, MN, MI and OH. Unfortunately for many
of those candidates, Trump spent most of his time at those rallies, stumping
for himself; bragging about his perceived accomplishments and how he should
still be the President.
In the competitive
races overall, 42 Trump-backed candidates won, 29 lost, 6 are in races not yet
called and two are headed for runoffs. And a candidate was more
likely to lose a competitive race if he or she echoed Trump's lies that the
2020 presidential election was stolen. Twenty-eight of the 29 who lost denied
or cast doubt on Biden's victory.
The results of the Mid-Terms have cast a shadow on the Trump’s
ability to influence voters. Some
leaders in the GOP, who are still in office, are backing away from DJT. Even Ivanka, Trump’s daughter and Jared, his
son-in-law, have said they want nothing more to do with DJT politics.
A couple of weeks ago, in prime time, DJT held a large event at
Mar-a-Lago where he formally announced his intention to run for President of
the United States in 2024. Only portions
of it were covered live by any traditional news media and most all of them
either took a pass on live coverage and/or cut away in the middle of their
broadcasts. CNN did a fact check on
Trumps speech. Not surprisingly, they
found 20 false or misleading statements.
Whether DJT is using his newly established candidacy to slow or
halt various investigations or lawsuits is unclear at the moment, but it may be
a prominent factor in helping him to dig his way out of the legal cesspool he
finds himself in. I have enough
confidence in our judicial system to believe that DJT will not be able to avoid
prosecution on all of them and may even face prison time. Of course, we all have little to no control
over whatever the final outcomes might be.
So, what I hope happens is for justice to be done. I pray that God’s will for DJT be the controlling factor. And I pray that God’s will has a dramatic
effect on saving our democracy from ruin.
Donald John Trump is, in my opinion, the “Essence of Evil” and
the sooner he is out of the political limelight, goes back to Florida and shuts
the hell up is the only way for our democracy to recover and thrive. In the
end, however, I believe that God will prevail.
I certainly would be interested in the reader’s opinion(s) on
this post.
Thank you, God Bless you, and God Bless America.
Jud