Doesn’t It Bother You That…
…
1) The 2012 Republican nominee for President, Senator Mitt Romney, said:
“The president asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival. The president withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so. The president delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders. The president’s purpose was personal and political. Accordingly, the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.
What he did was not perfect. No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.”
2) If Congress worked in the 2019 and 2020 as it had in the 1970s, important Republicans would have broken ranks with Trump, and forced his resignation.
3) Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Trump continues to deny that he welcomed and benefited from Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and continues to fight congressional attempts to protect the 2020 election from foreign interference.
4) Stunningly, unlike any previous president, Trump refused to say that he would peacefully transfer power should he lose the 2020 election.
5) Like a tin-pot dictator, Trump has: (a) declared the press “the enemy of the people” (b) reduced the oversight of himself and the government by firing a record five inspector generals, all of whom conducted or were conducting oversight of the government which may have made Trump look bad politically. © Impaired congressional oversight by refusing to recognize subpoenas for information and testimony.
6) Trump has lied over 20,000 times during his Presidency. This unprecedented and pathological lying has serious political and health consequences.
7) Trump has poisoned our democracy by bringing the very concept of “truth” into question by flooding the arena of political discourse with lies and misinformation.
8) More than 224,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, and that for months Trump knowingly lied to us saying that the disease was no worse than the flu.
9) It is estimated that his incompetent handling of the pandemic has caused over 150,000 preventable deaths.
10) The New England Journal of Medicine which in over 200 years has never weighed in on a presidential election, in a scathing editorial, urges voters to oust Trump: Our leaders “have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.” In handling the pandemic, “We have failed at almost every step.” When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent.”
11) Despite bragging about his stewardship of the economy, the economy has LOST 4.7 million jobs since he became President in January 2017, the worst job numbers of any president since World War II.
12) The United States is currently mired in the worst recession since World War II with the economy forecast to contract 6.1% this year.
13) His biggest legislative “accomplishment” was the 2017 Tax Cut which gave the majority of benefits to corporations and the top 1% of earners, while leaving American citizens with an estimated 1.8 trillion dollars of national debt over the next ten years.
14) Our President’s only significant business accomplishment was when he portrayed a successful businessman on “The Apprentice”, but his real-life business career has been marked by failure as his hotels and casino businesses have filed for bankruptcy six times.
15) At a minimum, Trump has personally guaranteed $421 million of debt which must be re-paid by 2022. As we still don’t know who all his creditors are and what are the terms of the debt, this creates a huge national security risk . For example, what prevents Trump from compromising the country’s interests to manage his debts?
16) Our “billionaire” President paid only $750 income tax in 2016 and 2017, and did not pay any income tax in 10 of the last 15 years? And unlike any previous modern-day President, he still refuses to show us his tax returns.
17) Trump and his party have incessantly tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and have never proposed a serious alternative health plan.
18) Our commander-in-chief received five draft deferments, the last time for bone spurs in the heel of his foot, which allowed him to avoid serving during the war in Vietnam.
19) Trump is on record for calling those who died in WWI “losers” and “suckers” for making the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
20) Our commander-in-chief has made us less safe. North Korea has more nukes and missiles to carry them to the USA than ever. The Iranians are now enriching more weapons-grade uranium as a result of Trump leaving the Iran Nuclear Agreement. Syria is a renewed breeding ground for ISIS after Trump, against the advice of his top military advisers, abandoned our allies, the Syrian Kurds. He has alienated our NATO allies, and cozied up to dictators including MBS, Erdogan, and Putin.
21) Trump’s former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, says the president is trying to turn Americans against one another. He has promoted racism, xenophobia, and militant right-wing extremism.
22) Trump has been breaking the rules and the law for years. His niece, Mary, reports that our “stable genius” President had a proxy take his college admission test.
23) In 2016, Trump agreed to pay 25 million dollars to students who said they were defrauded by Donald Trump and his now-defunct Trump University.
24) In 2018, his “charitable” Foundation was closed by a judge and in 2019 paid $2 million to eight charities as part of a settlement in which the president admitted he misused funds raised by the Foundation to promote his presidential bid and pay off business debts
25) Trump also considers his political allies above the law. He commuted the sentence of political ally Roger Stone, and his DOJ filed a motion to dismiss the case against his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
26) He has been accused by 25 women of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape, but claims they are all lying. For a President with over 20,000 lies and who on the Access Hollywood tape bragged about grabbing a woman’s genitals, this seems especially rich.
27) Married three times, Trump had a sexual relationship in 2006 with porn star, Stormy Daniels, three months after Melania Trump gave birth to their son. His personal lawyer then secretly paid Daniels $130,000 to suppress the politically damaging information from being disclosed before the 2016 election.
28) Unlike the leaders of the other 194 nations who signed the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, which was our shared commitment to cut climate-altering pollution and to strengthen that commitment over time, Trump unconscionably denies that climate change even exists.
29) Trump plans to leave the Paris Agreement in November 2020.
30) Trump has loosened Obama-era environmental regulations on power plants, cars/light trucks, and methane leaks from natural gas operations which will worsen the climate crisis.
31) This negligence ignores the greatest global crisis facing humanity, and if ignored, will cost millions of unnecessary deaths, trillions of dollars of lost output, and a planet irrevocably damaged and less welcoming than the one we inherited.
32) Worst of all, the “me, myself, and I” President does not appear to care.
Justin F. Thulin, M.D.
Salt Lake City, Utah
