by Michael O’Neill

It’s bad enough that Donald Trump is even on a presidential ballot, since he is already a convicted felon in New York State awaiting sentencing and facing trial elsewhere on other felony charges. They include attempting to change the 2020 presidential election votes in the State of Georgia; leading and inciting the attack on the Capitol in Washington DC, on 6th January, 2021; and unlawfully removing boxes of state secret documents to his country club in Florida. Yet millions of people are expected to vote for him again to be president, in effect voting for approval of what he did the first time to overturn the election.

We live in a country swamped with guns, where the major cause of children’s deaths is firearm injuries, and where the ‘Proud Boys’, the ‘Oath Keepers’ and other ‘militia’ groups, depending on the state they are in, can operate with impunity. Over one thousand MAGA insurrectionists, including militia members, have been convicted and imprisoned, but Trump has promised that if he becomes president again, he will pardon them all.

Meanwhile, the now rogue 6-3 Republican majority on the United States Supreme Court has declared that a president is immune from criminal conviction for his ‘official acts’. So if he wins the election on 5th November, there is nothing to stop him from pardoning the MAGA insurrectionists. He could also get rid of the pending charges against him.

At this point, the politically sane among us have to hope that far more millions than Trump’s cult followers and enablers vote to stop a second Trump term. In no way has he been chastened by the failure of his efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election.

His stated intention is to set aside the constitution and rule like his favourite contemporary autocrats and dictators, even lately invoking the language of Hitler. He is determined to win at all costs. This time, if he can’t win at the polls, there will be no repeat of 6th January, 2021. January 6th next year has already been declared a top security day at the Capitol. Any violent action after the polls on 5th November is likely to shift to the states long before then.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash