By Stacy M. Brown
NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
A good parent usually chastises and punishes their child when they’ve egregiously misbehaved. Jaywalkers get tickets, and murderers have received the death penalty. Generally, no one goes unpunished for breaking the law. Not in the United States. Not unless you are of a particular social and financial status, and the crime, for the most part, isn’t much more than white collar.
But that’s not the case with Donald J. Trump. Undoubtedly, Trump is the kid who has never been chastised or punished. And, as a grown-up, and certainly since his false election claim in 2020 and his egging on a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, the twice-impeached and four-times indicted former president hasn’t seen a scintilla of punishment. One could argue that America, or his parents, have rewarded his unprecedented bad behavior.
Just one day before his second sexual assault civil trial was to begin, Trump cruised to a landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses, solidifying his front-runner status for the Republican presidential nomination. As several outlets reported, losing one-term presidents rarely mount subsequent successful primary campaigns, much less pull off landslides that demonstrate utter dominance of their party.
Trump transformed the GOP in 2016. By claiming 50% of the vote in the biggest win in caucus history, putting him on course for his third consecutive nomination, Trump showed that the current GOP is now entirely his party.
President Joe Biden beat Trump in the 2020 general election, 81 million popular votes to 75 million. And while both numbers were stunning, Trump’s was more telling, as it demonstrated that 75 million could vote for a man who single-handedly destroyed American Democracy, who championed white supremacy, caged babies, mocked the disabled, and called cowards American troops whom the enemy captured. Not all Trump followers are racist, but there’s no doubt that you must be a racist to be a Trump follower.
Biden’s victory over Trump came in part because his slogan, his message, “saving the soul of America,” resonated. It was the first time since President Obama’s “Yes We Can” that Dems had a message folks could understand and get behind. Mainly a message that the ultimate swing voters, African Americans, could embrace. During the current campaign, when Biden says there’s a need to “save Democracy,” the message falls flat particularly to African Americans who have come to a reckoning that Democracy today, like the Confederacy of decades ago, doesn’t work for Black people.
So, what are they saving? A system that fosters outright racism from politicians, the emphatic truth that Black Lives really don’t matter, and more than 75 million, including a few who were born Black (Ben Carson, Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens, Jason Whitlock, etc.) show the worst of African Americans with their allegiance to slavery and their slave master Trump.
It indeed says a whole lot that Trump is the clear front-runner to return to office, where he promises that “on day one,” he’ll be a dictator. He’ll have people – read Black people — shot by police on the spot if they are deemed to have participated in shoplifting or any minor crime. Trump will get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which provides otherwise uninsured Black and poor people with life-saving healthcare coverage. He’ll release the seditious, murderous January 6 inmates whom he calls hostages.
Having already banned just about any book with a Black author or one that reveals true American history, Trump will ensure that publishing houses that produce such work will be shut down. That could also mean the Black Press of America, founded in New York 197 years ago before slavery ended in America.
Trump once proudly proclaimed that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and get away with it. He also exclaimed on national television that he and other celebrities are allowed to grab a woman, any woman, by their private parts without permission, and it’s okay. Subsequently, a jury found him civilly responsible for sexual assault, and he currently has 91 felony charges pending against him.
And with a favorable U.S. Supreme Court and three of the justices he put there, Trump is on his way to proving the accuracy of his declarations of committing crimes and getting away with them. America has been good lately about canceling sexual predators, even those who were only accused of sexual assault. America has been good of late with jailing some of the January 6 perpetrators. A judge ordered Trump to pay $5 million after being found guilty of sexual assault, another judge is on the verge of ordering Trump to pay more than $250 million for massive business fraud, and evidence recently emerged that Trump probably sold U.S. secrets to foreign entities while in office. Yet, he swept to victory in Iowa and may easily defeat Biden in November. To Trump, there’s no better parent, none more lenient, than America.
