Trump’s sycophants will have to answer for past four years

Although I’ll hold my breath until the votes are counted, it is finally possible to believe that the reign of WEPOTUS, the Worst Ever President of the United States, is coming to an end. The return to normalcy will be welcome.

History’s verdict on Donald Trump’s presidency will be savage. Future generations will find it hard to believe that this cruel, crude, ignorant and probably criminally corrupt, man, was ever elected. Trump’s name will forever be synonymous with disgrace.

Now that the end is near, I have some advice for those who have been his willing enablers: It’s time to come up with some good reasons you did what you did. The likes of Mitch McConnell, who pushed his agenda in the senate,

Sarah Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany who lied for him from the White House press room, Kellyanne Conway who dissembled for him and invented the parallel universe where “alternative facts” thrived, Rudy Giuliani who defended the indefensible and proposed that “truth isn’t truth,” Bill Barr who allowed the U.S. Department of Justice to ignore the basic premise that no man is above the law.

Each and every one of his sycophants will have to answer for the past four years.

My guess is that many of them will try to escape the stain of their service to the blustering bully. They will say they recognized Trump’s failings, both as a president and as a human being. They will say they stayed on to try to restrain his wild impulses. They will say that without them, it would have been worse.

If that’s their plan, they’d better have kept a paper trail. It won’t be enough to say their hearts were in the right place. They’ll have to document the orders they ignored, the plans they scuttled, the fiats they modified, the whims they deflected, the decisions they watered down. Without that kind of solid physical proof, the henchmen and henchwomen won’t be off the hook.

It’s one thing for millions of Americans who voted for Trump to deny it to their inquisitive children and grandchildren in the future. Those closest to the president cannot escape so easily.

It’s not entirely clear who first reflected that, “You are known by the company that you keep.” It could have been Aesop in a fable about donkeys. There are several similar sentiments expressed in the Bible. Goethe once said, “Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are.”

The Trump contingent has much to answer for. We know that the president will never back down from his version of what happened. He may not even know the difference anymore between what is true and what is a lie. The rest of us do. When the inevitable tell-all books are written by those who must explain, don’t let them talk their way out of their complicity. Make them prove their case. Mark Bulgutch