Believe Trump

If someone who aspires to being an autocrat says something, believe it. There may be explanations trying to back track from the statement, but that is just political maneuvering.

So, when Donald Trump says that, if he is elected, no one will have to vote in four years, believe him. That is his goal. We may not know how he intends to usurp power and destroy the Constitution, he may not even know at this point, but that is his end game.

That comment came in a speech Trump recently gave to The Believers Summit last week. He said, “Christians, get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Trump has captured the Republican party. He has captured much of the Christian right. He has tamed Republican officials who are more interested in holding office than preserving our Republic. He has the backing of business and tech giants who see him as a tool to advance their goals. He has brought back the Big Lie, convincing millions of Americans that the 2020 election was stolen, and that President Biden has weaponized the Justice Department.

Ask yourself this, if Biden had weaponized the Justice Department, would his son, Hunter, have been charged, tried and convicted of felony charges involving illegal possession of a firearm? Would Democrat Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey have been tried and convicted of taking bribes?

And if the Democrats stole the 2020 election, why didn’t they gain big majorities in the Senate and House? If you can steal a presidential election, why not those?

Yet the Big Lie persists. And millions of Americans believe those lies, which undermine the credibility of our elections, the fundamental base on which our republic stands.

Adolph Hitler, his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, and the Nazis offer a cautionary tale of what can happen. Now, I am not comparing Trump and his followers to Hitler and the Nazis. What I am saying is that we should pay attention to what happened in Germany in 1933 when Hitler came to power legally and then seized the government and instituted a reign of terror that unified the nation by eliminating dissent.

No one took “Mein Kampf”, or “My Struggle”, seriously even though it laid out his goals for what he did. He captured the Nazi party, using fear and manufactured threats of the nation. He won the support of industrialists and others in powerful positions who thought they could use him for their own gains.

Hitler and the Nazis lied about the Jews, blaming them for Germany’s problems. He lied about the Poles who were living in Germany, ultimately driving them out. He lied about how Germany lost World War I. Hitler promised Germans he would take care of them, he would make their lives better. All they had to do was trust him. And he turned Germany into a one-party dictatorship.

Trump has lied about the 2020 election, offering no proof for his claims that he keeps repeating. He blames America’s economic ills on undocumented immigrants, who he plans to deport in their millions. He wants Americans to trust him. He promises that he will make their lives better. Only he can do that.  To do this, he wants to sweep out the people in the Justice Department and other agencies, replacing them with his minions who will loyally do what he wants. The legality be damned because he knows what’s best for the American people. He has called those who attacked the Capital on January 6, 2020, patriots, and their arrests and convictions politically motivated. He has promised to pardon them when he is president again.

Trump has called his political opponents “vermin.” He wants to use the Justice Department to go after Biden and his family. And why stop there? So many investigations to launch against so many opponents.

But that’s okay, for as Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, said, “President Trump was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt.”

Goebbels could not have said it better.