I suppose today is as good a day as any to kick the hornets' nest, but with Trump putting himself out there as a candidate for 2024, this is a question that those who have supported Trump in the past are going to have to ask themselves. Is Trump still deserving of your support?
This video was made by J-6 political prisoner Jeremy Brown a few months back, when he was running for Congress from his jail cell in Florida. At the time this video was made, I think Brown had been jailed without a trial for over 400 days. Since that time, Brown has gone to trial, been found guilty, and is awaiting sentencing. This man was set up by our government for his willingness to expose the wrongdoing within it. When he would not join them in their corruption, they planted evidence of him and targeted him for punishment. Sure, there are some who will say, "But he admitted that the sawed-off shotgun was his!" Yes, and that gun was seized from where it was stored on his property when his home was raided (and evidence was planted against him), NOT from his person--and it was a family heirloom with a very sad history, for as I understand it, it was the gun that his brother used to take his own life.
Some might also say that Julian Assange (whom Trump refused to pardon) is getting what he deserves as well. Well, let me tell you something, there is nothing "just" about how Assange or Brown--or many others who have been persecuted for telling the TRUTH--have been treated. Any crimes that they may have been guilty of, any wrongdoing that they might have done, they have paid the price for many times over. The saddest thing is that these two men will never get back what they lost. The days past can never be restored to them, and even if they were each granted their freedom this very day, their path forward would be one in which each of them would have to constantly be watching their backs. Trump did not do what he could have for Assange before he left office, and since that time, he has failed to do all that he should have done to support those people who are imprisoned by our government because they showed up to our nation's capitol on January 6, 2021, to support HIM and his message of Keeping America Great.
Trump has allowed himself to become a politician. I did not support him from the very beginning. I preferred other candidates in the 2016 primary, but when Trump became the Republican candidate, I voted for him and he quickly won me over. But the man that I came to love as president is not the same man who is asking for my vote in 2024. The man that I supported in 2016 was the man who was well-known for telling people, "You're fired." He was a man who was famous around the world for entertaining people with a television show in which a job that was not well done was not rewarded. That guy knew how to show people the door when it was necessary to do so. And it's what a good business man does in order to protect his business. It isn't mean. It's just smart.
But that guy is gone. I'm not sure what happened to him, but I'm done making excuses for his failures to live up to what he once was. I don't expect perfection either. Any good politician (if such still exists) must be one who is willing to risk failure, for that is a possibility anytime action is taken to try to solve a problem. The "good ones" have guts. They have a spine and a backbone. Most politicians are too cowardly to even try to fix things. (Though the problem runs much deeper than even that.) A good politician must also be willing to stand and answer for the actions he or she took. Trump has failed in that regard. Trump has made some mistakes that he should be willing to answer for before he asks the American people again to entrust him with their vote. As President, Trump was a spender. That is just a fact. Given that I was happy with other things he was doing, I was willing to trust Trump's decisions to spend as he did. I made excuses for him when others would criticize it. If he had a plan to excuse such spending, then he threw it all right out the window when he failed to fight like hell to keep our country (and the debt which he had accrued) from falling into the hands of tyrants. I think it was irresponsible for him to have spent the way that he did and then NOT to have fought harder to ensure that it was not all done in vain. (Because, surely, he had a plan, right?) But instead of using his voice and his influence with the people to rally them to action (God knows the Democrats would have!), Trump told everyone on January 6 to go home. And then he disappeared for a while. What the hell? Where was the fighter that I once adored--whose image was on my fridge magnets and whose name was on my socks? (I really was a fan.)
The good no longer outweighs the bad, and as I have watched and eagerly hoped to see some glimpse of a return of the fighter who I supported in the past, all I see now is a man who has lost sight of why he was so loved by the people in the first place. It was because he WASN'T a stereotypical politician. But he has become one. My hope that I would see him return to being more in tune with "we the people" than with politicians has been eradicated by Trump's failure to recognize a real opportunity for a historical MAGA moment. Despite calls from so many Americans--many who, like myself, have been strong supporters of Trump in the past--for someone other than swamp rat Kevin McCarthy to become the next Speaker of the House, Trump behaved as a politician would and told us that we should accept what he was serving up to us and that we should like it. People became conditioned to trust Trump because many of the things which he has done in the past did benefit us. But his judgment has slipped and I no longer trust him to make sound leadership decisions.
The only way that Trump could earn back my trust now is if he finally begins to embrace accountability. My conditions for giving Trump my vote are very much in line with those which Brown mentions in the above video. It is all rooted in ACCOUNTABILITY. Trump SHOULD acknowledge that he made many errors during the COVID-19 response. He did not fire Fauci. And, short of that, he did not bring in other voices who could have countered the narrative of the plandemic. The closest thing we got to any real pushback was found in Dr. Atlas, but his time there was brief. There were many other (and stronger) qualified voices which were never allowed to be heard. (And some of those doctors who spoke up have become political prisoners of our government as well.) He called himself the "father" of the COVID-19 vaccines. Anyone who claims that title must own the consequences of what it means. Many mistakes were made which need to be acknowledged, and just as God does not automatically bestow forgiveness upon anyone--it must be sought--Trump should seek forgiveness for the mistakes that he has made as well. He should not take us for granted.
I should have heeded the warning signs which did indeed raise an eyebrow. Trump got elected on chants of "lock her up," and many believed that he would hold Hillary Clinton accountable once he was elected. The link below offers a good summary of what happened instead. He didn't "lock her up." He "let her go." Imagine what the trajectory of history might have been if he hadn't.
Consider that so many of the good things which Trump has done are things which have effectively been undone. Trump's many accomplishments have been erased--and so quickly--by many who might not have held the power to do so if Trump had followed through on his promise of accountability with regard to Hillary Clinton. (Allowing James Comey to stay on as FBI Director baffled me even then.) Trump's present boasts of "Trump did this" and "Trump did that" are now the equivalent of a high school jock talking up his high school glory days. They are little more than memories now. A big contributing factor to why it is that we no longer have those good things that Trump brought is Trump's failure to hold people accountable. The list is LONG of people whom he was soft on--people who have HARMED us. Hillary Clinton, Romney (he never should have endorsed him), James Comey, FAUCI! The list is long. And with regard to the vaccines, Trump needs to also acknowledge his own part in that. But instead we have government that operates like a dysfunctional family that tries to hide away the bad behaviors of those within it and pretend to the rest of the world that they don't exist.
At present, I think it is fair to say that Trump has lost any future vote from me. That doesn't mean that he cannot earn it back, but it must be earned. I think that there are two things that I will remember most about what just played out regarding the vote for House Speaker. One is that the conservative side I was rooting for was deeply divided. There was more than one dividing line, but the one that was drawn the deepest was that between the politicians in Washington, D.C., and "we the people." They aren't listening--and that includes Trump. The other thing that stands out to me is that politicians are focusing on political "wins" which they think they have gained in the bargain that was struck which put McCarthy in place. What concerns me more than what we got out of the deal is what it is that we have given up in that agreement. Congressman Crenshaw called the holdouts to McCarthy "terrorists." Political prisoner Jeremy Brown called them "warriors." I am ashamed that our country has become one in which so-called conservative representatives in government don't even bat an eye at comments like the one made by Crenshaw. They are so out of touch that they don't even realize--or perhaps they do not care--that those insults directed toward the people who are doing the rare thing of standing up for us (regardless of whatever their motivation for doing so may have been) are insults directed at US as well. Those who labeled patriots as "terrorists" won the day, and I will not forget Trump's part in it.