A history lesson for Sen. Pat Toomey
An open letter to U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.:
As a constituent, I’d like to thank you, Sen. Toomey, for finally saying that the pathetic, ongoing attempts of our president-on-theway-out the door to steal the 2020 election and undermine our democracy is “completely unacceptable.”
But, no thank you for adding this:
“A lot of Republicans across the commonwealth and across the country are sympathetic to some of the allegations being made by the president because they’ve witnessed the way he’s been treated for the last four years by the left and the press.”
The way he’s been treated? The way he’s been treated! He started it.
He started it many years ago with the birther conspiracy, insisting that our first Black president was not born in the United States.
His open racism goes back to the days in the 1960s and 1970s when he wouldn’t rent to Black people and when he took a full-page ad out in the New York Times calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five who were later proven completely innocent of raping the jogger.
I still vividly remember his telling TV interviewers when Barack Obama was elected that he had sent investigators to Hawaii and “you wouldn’t believe what they are finding.”
No, we didn’t believe it because he never had anything to tell us. He never sent such a team to Hawaii. And we all know that if he had, all they would have found was that Barack Obama had indeed a full-f ledged American citizen.
That was when many of us became aware of his habit of shameless, nonstop lying and his deep, abiding racism.
When he announced his campaign for president, he did it by riding down on a golden escalator in Trump Tower (look how much money I have!) to call Mexicans rapists and murderers, “and some good people.”
He carried on with his name-calling all through the presidential primary, calling Marco Rubio “little Marco,” Jeb Bush “low energy” and Ted Cruz a liar.
He had his pals at the real “fake news” National Enquirer, the ones who covered up his affair with a Playboy model, run a photo supposedly linking Cruz’s father to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
During the general election, he called Hillary Clinton all kinds of names, including his favorite go-to for strong women – nasty.
But the thing I remember most of all was his beaming at the Republican convention and countless rallies as his followers chanted “lock her up.”
His followers say they love him because he “tells it like it is.” I think they love him because he puts on a good show, just like a WWF match, even though the fans know it is phony.
Remember when Trump told four U.S. congresswomen( all women of color) to go back to the crime-ridden places they came from, strongly implying that they were not even Americans?
How about his telling the late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings to go take care of his own rat-infested district? He said something similar about the late civil rights icon John Lewis as well. (Two Black men).
There is a long list of your colleagues in both chambers, particularly women and persons of color, who he has treated with naked disdain and open name-calling, Sen. Toomey.
Then there was the appalling scene out of Charlottesville, Va., where we witnessed white thugs carrying torches chanting “Jews shall not replace us.” One of those thugs ran over a woman, killing her, but the next day, Trump assured us, “There were good people on both sides.”
In his one debate a few months ago with President-elect Joe Biden, he told the Proud Boys, one of our armed domestic terrorist groups, to “stand down and stand by.” They have been “standing by” with their AR-15s and bullhorns at the homes of honest election officials, frightening their children. They plotted to kidnap and murder the governor of Michigan.
The “left and the press” and just about everyone in the country hoped that his narcissism and lying was just an act, that when he was elected, Trump would grow into the office, would become more presidential, would bring some dignity, honor and judgment to his time as president. He never did.
You know perfectly well that Trump was impeached on good cause for misusing the power of his office to withhold military aid to Ukraine in exchange for partisan dirt he could throw at Biden. You Republicans just did not have the guts or integrity to hear the case and convict him.
Over this last hellish year, if he had just encouraged everyone to wear a mask, maintain social distancing and avoid large gatherings, if he had just said, “We are all in this together,” instead of worrying about how he looked in a mask, he would have appeared presidential enough to win re-election. He couldn’t do it.
Since Nov. 3, as COVID-19 ravages the country, he does nothing but whine incessantly and plot how to steal the election from Biden, who not only will get the same number of electoral votes as he did in 2016 but got nearly 8 million more popular votes than him. A real landslide.
On Saturday night he ranted about himself for an hour and a half at a rally crowd in Georgia, but on Sunday he could not muster one word to honor the 2,500 heroes who died at Pearl Harbor, even as we have now arrived at a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 of dead Americans every two days.
So when you talk about how he’s been treated by the “left and the press,” Sen. Toomey, think about this: If he had been smarter, a smoother talker, a better leader and less vicious about his own namecalling, if he had tried to govern the country instead of tearing the machinery of government apart, we would have had a lot less material to work with.