Dear Trump Supporter

Dear Trump Supporter,
When Osama bin Laden recruited 19 men to attack America in hijacked jet planes, he promised them many ridiculous things, like glorious, instantaneous deaths where they would stand before a grateful Allah who would bequeath each of the hijackers 72 virgins. But there was one thing Osama bin Laden never promised those hijackers. He never promised to go along with them.

Just ahead of the riots at the Capitol building on January sixth, Donald Trump told the crowd, “We’re gonna walk down — and I’ll be there with you — we’re gonna walk down … to the Capitol.” Again, he said, “and I’ll be there with you.” But Trump didn’t go with them. He never intended to go with them. That was a lie.

Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project once said, “If Donald Trump said tomorrow ‘I’m in favor of child sacrifice,’ [Trump supporters] would say, ‘Well, we’ve got to reconsider child sacrifice,’ because that is the power he has over them.”

Now, that may not be entirely true, but doesn’t it strike you as a little true? Imagine if Donald Trump did say something like that. Can’t you just imagine Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz or someone on Fox News or OAN telling us that’s not what Trump really meant? It’s like when Donald Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and he wouldn’t lose any votes. That may not be completely true either, but isn’t it kind of true? Isn’t just about everybody who supports him willing to go to almost any lengths to excuse the things he says and does?

Now, I want to ask you something. Do you think that’s healthy? Do you think that’s a good thing?

I know what you’re probably going to say. When Donald Trump said to his crowd of supporters that they were going to walk down to the Capitol and that he would be going along with them he didn’t mean he was literally going to be with them. He meant he was going to be with them in spirit, right?

Let me ask you something else, and please think this over. If Donald Trump is so brilliant, if he’s such a great explainer, if has all the best words, if he’s so articulate, if he is a great negotiator of the art of the deal and a stable genius and all the things he claims, how come his supporters always have to explain what he really means? Why can’t he just say what he means and be done with it? More than that, when he said he was going to walk down to the Capitol with them, what do you suppose the crowd thought he meant? If he’s so smart don’t you think it would occur to him that they might expect him to literally walk with them? If he meant he was going to be with them in spirit, why didn’t he just say so?

You know what I think? I think he lied to them. I think Donald Trump lies all the time. And I think you know he lies all the time too. But I think you’ve reached a point where it’s almost impossible for you to admit it. So you go blind with rage at anyone who suggests he’s a liar. But on some level I think you know that Trump is a liar.

Now that the damage has been done and windows were smashed and people have died at the Capitol, instead of showing any remorse or responsibility for what happened, Donald Trump scolded his followers. He scolded them with a hypocritical speech about how opposed to violence he is.

By the way, the fact that the Capitol was invaded and sacked yet there was absolutely no effort to evacuate the president of the United States from Washington DC to a secure location tells you all you need to know about who was in charge of the attack. But here’s finally the point. Donald Trump should have never encouraged the angry crowd in front of him to go to the Capitol in the first place, whether or not he intended to go with them physically or in spirit. That was a tragic mistake that cost the lives of five human beings, human beings who would probably be alive today if Trump had discouraged the crowd from going to the Capitol, if he had discouraged any acts of violence.

It’s a mistake Donald Trump makes over and over and over again. He says something to a crowd and people die. He tweets something nasty about someone he doesn’t like and suddenly they and their families are getting death threats. Now if I said that Donald Trump is doing these things on purpose you’d probably get mad at me and say I was putting words in his mouth and ideas in his head. But they’re his own words. And if he didn’t intend these consequences, if he didn’t want people to die and families to get threatened, why does he keep doing it? Why does he never, ever learn?

If Trump is so smart, how come he can’t figure out a way to keep his words from harming people? I can figure it out. Can’t you?

But I think he does want people to get hurt and threatened with death because he’s evil and vindictive and self-loathing. Someone full of that much hate must truly hate himself. And let’s fact it, much of what Trump communicated when he had a Twitter account was hateful. Whatever the case, Trump should be impeached.

First I want you to understand something. My purpose is not to change your politics. If you want to be a Republican or a conservative then go right ahead. I think America is big enough and great enough for all points of view. I hope you think so too. Because if you don’t, maybe you’re in the wrong country. But what I don’t understand is, why on earth do you continue to support Donald Trump?

Much of the rage of Trump supporters is based on a conspiracy theory that we somehow stole the election from Donald Trump. We didn’t. Seven million more people voted for Joe Biden than voted for Donald Trump, and that’s an easily provable fact.

Sixty-one lawsuits claiming that those seven million votes were fraudulent, that we somehow stole the election, were thrown out. Many of those lawsuits went before Republican judges appointed by Donald Trump. They were thrown out because of lack of evidence. Carl Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is simply no evidence that the election was stolen. None.

There is lots of evidence that Donald Trump tried to steal the election and he failed. He began by trying to shutdown post offices so votes mailed in because of the pandemic wouldn’t be counted. Trump knew that after months of claiming the pandemic was a fraud and disdaining the wearing of masks, he had so politicized coronavirus that he knew that most of the votes cast by mail would be votes cast by Democrats. That’s why he tried to shut down post offices. He even admitted this.

Trump claimed for months in advance of the election that the election was rigged before a single vote was cast. He claimed this because he knew the polls indicated that he was going to lose. So he claimed the election was rigged before it ever even took place so he could dispute it after he lost and say, “I told you so.”.

Then he tried to get you and others like you to storm the Capitol. That was another way he tried to steal the election.

Donald Trump exploited the fact that Democrats took the pandemic seriously by pointing out that we didn’t attend rallies in huge masses of humanity. The truth is we avoided huge gatherings because we didn’t want to die, because we knew that coronavirus kills and it kills whenever large groups of people get together. You see, we don’t need to parade around in red hats and trucks with flags and banners to vote anyway. We are diverse enough and strong enough without big rallies, and we are out there in greater numbers. We aren’t looking for ratings or savage displays of loyalty. Joe Biden isn’t our warlord, he’s our president. He was elected by votes, not by boats, by ballots, not by bullets. That’s how America really works.

You see, I love America because of what America is supposed to stand for. America’s magic secret is in its name: the United States of America. That means you and me, black and white, religious or not. That means we all get to live and work and play in America free of oppression. The easy part of America is your own free speech.
The hard part is tolerating the free speech of others without violence or vengeance. It’s our willingness to do the hard part that makes us Americans.

Donald Trump wanted to divide us. He didn’t see a United States, he saw red states and blue states. He even punished states for being blue.

Again, I’m not asking you to stop being a Republican. I’m just asking you to stop believing in Donald Trump. We have a lot of work to do. We have a virus to defeat and economic devastation to fix. Wouldn’t it be better if we could fix those things together? Wouldn’t it be better if we could once again be the United States of America? Yours very truly, Robert Harrington, one of the 81 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden.

As I did last week with my article titled “Why Donald Trump needs to go to prison,” brothers and sisters, I created a YouTube video presentation of this article. You may watch it here:

In order to boost Palmer Report readership from the YouTube demographic I have included backlinks from the video to Palmer Report, so if you “like,” comment and subscribe to the video it will alert the YouTube algorithm to put my video in front of more people and boost our readership. So please do so provided that your likes, comments and subscriptions are sincere. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.