Yesterday I was sitting in front of two screens – my laptop screen where I was writing this column, and my TV screen where I was watching CNN covering the motorcade carrying Trump from his airplane parked at the Reagan National Airport to the federal courthouse in downtown D.C. where he was going to be arrested and arraigned.
The streets around the courthouse were filled – not filled with Trump supporters protesting his arraignment or showing him how much they still love him. To the contrary, the people milling around the courthouse were either law enforcement personnel or members of the media.
On a streetcorner which appeared to be a block away from the courthouse, there was a small crowd, maybe 50 or 60 onlookers, who weren’t Trump’s troops at all because one of them was holding a sign which reads – COUP – on one side and THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING on the other.
I didn’t even see Marjorie Taylor Greene, although since it was only 3:30 and Trump was scheduled to appear in court at 4 P.M., maybe she was just on her way over to the courthouse when I started watching the TV.
Meanwhile, CNN had a panel of six ‘experts’ who were discussing the results of a new CNN poll that was released in the morning, which shows that 70% of all Republicans still believe that the 2020 election was fixed. And while this number continues to tick slightly up and down, the CNN spieling panel was much more concerned about the poll result which showed that nearly 60% of Americans believe that elections don’t ‘reflect the people’s will.’
So, here’s the latest attempt by the alt-left media conglomerate to get everyone all ginned up about the threat to American democracy represented by Trump. Now that he was inside the courthouse being arrested and charged with trying to overthrow the government he was heading at the time of his alleged coup, the Fake News has to shift its argument away from a direct attack on American democracy to a more generic fear that we don’t support our democracy anymore.
According to the Census, the turnout for the 2020 election was 67% of everyone in the country old enough to vote, which was the highest percentage of Americans who voted in the last six Presidential elections, the average turnout for the previous five elections since 2000 running between 60% and 63%.
In other words, the percentage of Americans who told CNN they don’t believe that American elections are honestly run happens to be the same percentage of Americans who don’t show up to vote.
Did the outfit which conducted the poll, SSRS, ask respondents whether they had voted in previous elections? Of course not. Why bother to ask people whether they have ever participated in a democratic process which they believe doesn’t exist?
You should know, incidentally, that it turned 4 P.M. and Trump was evidently sitting in the courtroom waiting for his indictment to begin. Meanwhile, another sweep of the area outside the court where spectators were being allowed to gather and sit or stand, there may have been a crowd of 30 people or less. Where’s Marjorie Taylor Greene?
I started watching George Conway and the other CNN spielers tell us what they believe was going on inside the courtroom and what this latest indictment really means. Don’t these so-called ‘experts’ ever get tired of saying the same, goddamn thing every single, friggin’ time?
I didn’t hear one word from anyone on the panel which was in any way new or different from what I have heard this same bunch over the last four months. Although I will give Dana Bash credit for at least saying that indictments of Trump are becoming rather normal and no longer such special events.
I think that voting is like any other activity – the first or second time it’s new and different, then it becomes something you just always do. And if you don’t vote you probably don’t think about voting because it’s something you just don’t do.
When Trump started his first campaign, what he said and how he said it was new and different. Ditto when he was indicted for the first and maybe even the second time. But like Dana Bash said yesterday, Donald Trump getting arrested and arraigned has now become part of the ordinary political landscape and ordinary people and ordinary things just don’t fly.
Oh well, at least Trump has certainly earned Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame.